Mary and Bled
In Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, we are presented with several different characters whoa attempt to push our narrator to become a “race leader”. Of these, the most important so far are probably Mary and Mr. Bledsoe. These two characters present similar views, but treat the narrator in radically different ways. Bledsoe is a terrifying force in the narrator’s life, who punishes him repeatedly for harming his interests and what he believes are the interests of “the race”.
Mary, on the other hand, while also a profound force in the narrator’s life, which he describes as such, is infinitely more caring and less hostile. She allows the narrator a place in her home for free, where he is allowed to stay for months on end, without fulfilling his obligations in terms of rent to her. She believes in the narrator, and in every previous person who has stayed in her house. Bledsoe believes in no one except for himself. For him, the narrator, like for Mr. Norton, is just another cog in the machine, a leader who he hopes that he can produce. But, when the narrator fails, Bledsoe kicks him out. He has no actual need of the narrator, only a need for the narrator as a symbol.
For Mary, the narrator is an individual, with individual desires, and an individual path in his life, even if she wants him to follow a particular path. She encourages him constantly, but recognizes that the narrator that comes out of the factory with his new experiences would not be able to continue with his former life at Men’s House, that he is now a radically different person.
While I suspect that the Brotherhood will not be kind to our narrator in the long run, at the end of our current segment, before Chapter 16, it appears that our narrator has finally found the kind of job he had always wanted. And this has been the work of Mary, not Bledsoe, who instead destroyed his dreams over and over again (though how much those dreams were his lies in severe question). It is Mary who helps him out of Liberty Paints and restores the narrator to feeling capable.
In retrospect, I never even considered the narrative similarities of Mary and Bledsoe. They both attempt to help him, but for very different personal reasons. Like you said, Mary was the one who ultimately helped in a positive way and there's one example which stood out to me. When the narrator had come home from giving his speech at the home eviction, he become hungry but notices Mary's cooking cabbage. He knew they'd had cabbage many times recently and realized that she was making them to save money because he pitched in after his fund money ran out. After this thought, he becomes motivated to take on his new job as a public speaker. I think this example shows that Mary's sacrifices to achieve her goal of helping the narrator were the force driving his decision to move his life forward.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the narrator finds Mary a little off-putting because she reminds him of Bledsoe in a subconscious way. In a sense, the whole world is like Mary and Bledsoe with their expectations of the narrator. Perhaps those expectations are even self-imposed--it does seem like it's usually the narrator's fault. He did not have to drive down that country road to trueblood but he did. Maybe the narrator unconsciously sets himself apart. In a way Mary does kick him out like Bledsoe, because she made it so that he could not continue to have her in his life.
ReplyDeleteThat is an interesting connection to make. While I agree that they both push the narrator towards leadership roles their similarities certainly end there. I think that to some extent they might even be described as opposites, with Mary's more personal connection with the narrator vs Bledsoe who like you said only sees him as another cog in the machine. However, you are certainly right in that they are forces which somehow drive him into the next stage of his life, for better or for worse.
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