The exam will be open book and open notes--but of course that means that I expect more from your answers than on the mid-term exam!
You will write one essay in response to a question on Invisible Man. This essay will be similar to the ones you wrote for your mid-term.
You will write a second essay on what it means to call someone a major American author. This will be an argumentative essay in which you provide evidence to support your claims. Some questions you may want to consider: What are the criteria for applying that label? Who gets to decide who is and who isn't major? Other than an accident of geography, is there some quality or attitude that makes someone a specifically "American" author? Should we still have a "Major American Authors" course at UNC? What do we gain from reading major American authors? Do their texts give us something that other authors don't?
You must cite and analyze at least 3 examples from our readings this semester: one of those examples may be a counterexample (e.g., "this scene illustrates that X is NOT a major American author because..."); the other 2 should be examples that support your definition. When you're providing your evidence, be specific and detailed. Your examples should be specific passages, scenes, or characters, not the entire text. In other words, these would be poor answers: "Emily Dickinson is a major American author because she wrote beautiful poetry" or "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym proves that Poe is a major American author because it's an important and interesting novel."
Thoughtful, creative, and/or original answers will be rewarded. Snarky answers may or may not be, depending on my mood. Don't forget your blue book.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009
I
The narrator's search for his identity is the main them of IM. One of the things I noted in the last bit of reading was the narrator's collection of significant items. Someone mentioned in class to pay attention to the brief case, which contained his diploma, his scholarship, the broken bank, and his brotherhood name. He also adds to his collection when he gets the paper doll from clifton, the anonymous letter, his rinehart-glasses, and brother Tarp's chain link. His entire struggle to find his identity is in his briefcase and i feel like the items symbolize something; old slavery and new racism, and the falseness of bledsoe and the brotherhood. The narrator undergoes a transformation when he falls through the manhole and is trapped. He is haunted by visions of all his former leaders/mentors and then decides he's going to stay in the hole and plan from there. We know by the prologue what happens and I wonder if the narrator has taken up a more nationalist mentality? He denounces the white leader of the brotherhood and we know from the prologue that he attacks the white man in the street. What is his new role in society? What faction does he fit into? Is he more like Ras the Destroyer than he thought?
Easy to Relate to
My first thoughts throughout reading this book revolved around the narrator making everything way more dramatic than it actually should be. The concept of invisibility and his struggles with it were drug out incredibly far. However, I never hated it. Ellison has such a great way with words that he writes things in a way for many people to relate to. Upon reading the narrators struggle with identity towards the end of the novel, I really saw that I could relate. The best place to really explain this is in the range of pages 506-512ish.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
racism is not the central theme; identity is.
Ralph Ellison the motivation speaker, like our narrator the motivational speaker, would say "I'm riding the race I'm forced to ride" when talking about the presence of class conflict and the oppression of african americans in Invisible Man. Racism is not the theme of this novel; it is ubiquitous because in the context of the time, it was inextricable and extremely relevant to the theme: the lifelong search for self-aware identity.
Ellison asks questions about class struggle through his characters - how does one ask a black man to sing without offending him? or, if the Brotherhood is not acting on behalf of the black race, what are they doing? - to lead the ruminating reader to wonder if the class struggle is more than about elevating the black race. (a ruminant is literally an animal like a cow that lives on something with negligible nutritional content like grass, and to compensate for low calories, protein, fat, vitamins, et cetera that you need to run a huge animal like a cow, the cow has to eat all day and have four stomachs to rip apart and combine everything. the ruminating reader must sift through questions and digest a lot of diverse incidents in Invisible Man to find any answers.) Recurring examples of identity crises and the progression of the narrator in relation to racism make me believe that Ellison writes about class struggle as another system of taxonomy for ones identity.
The narrator struggles with his self perception because he is comfortable in many systems that name him, instead of naming himself and letting his actions follow. He is a part of various institutions: 1.the south 2.college 3.blacks 4.the brotherhood. For the first half of the book, the Narrator's actions are determined by others because his position requires him to be vulnerable to circumstance. It can be argued that his entire life progress to New York City and beyond was determined by others - he went to college because he had a scholarship, he drove Mr. Norton to the Golden Day, he went to New York because Dr. Bledsoe gave him the letters. (I think that the deprecating letters were another of Ellison's and Bledsoe's hints to take a stand for yourself. They were written after the Narrator had resigned himself to his absurd fate without a fight, agreeing not to be bitter.)
The narrator's life of circumstance ends after a circumstantial hospitalization and strange rebirth scene. What is purged from his system is his affiliation to everything, he is a clean slate. And though he is without drive or purpose, he is not without history or education. He is reminded to be earnest in Central Park when he tastes the orange sweetness of loyalty to his upbringing. He summons forth his refined competence for the melodic cadence of speech writing from years of listening to talented sermons (practice and listening is how one develops jazz improvisation! - I can hardly see how speeches are different.) A man with a wealth of talent was once crippled by the obligations his role was expected to fulfill, and when he lost everything, he created the space to seek success that is not gilded. After biting the sweet potato the narrator asks, "What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?" (the person who read my book before me put a check next to that, so it must be important.)
The funeral speech struggles along and falters like Narrator's raw and shifting emotion. For this reason it is the most accurate depiction of the author's genuine sentiment. In a series of speeches for the brotherhood, the conflict between extemporization and prescriptive, deliberate, scientific speech making recurs. Faced with another institution of questionable morality, the Brotherhood, the narrator finally has enough self-assuredness and clarity to buck the system. He is moved to fight on behalf of the negro race not because another person demands it, but because the narrator's own morality demands that he fight for freedom of expression in any manifestation.
nyssa collins
Ellison asks questions about class struggle through his characters - how does one ask a black man to sing without offending him? or, if the Brotherhood is not acting on behalf of the black race, what are they doing? - to lead the ruminating reader to wonder if the class struggle is more than about elevating the black race. (a ruminant is literally an animal like a cow that lives on something with negligible nutritional content like grass, and to compensate for low calories, protein, fat, vitamins, et cetera that you need to run a huge animal like a cow, the cow has to eat all day and have four stomachs to rip apart and combine everything. the ruminating reader must sift through questions and digest a lot of diverse incidents in Invisible Man to find any answers.) Recurring examples of identity crises and the progression of the narrator in relation to racism make me believe that Ellison writes about class struggle as another system of taxonomy for ones identity.
The narrator struggles with his self perception because he is comfortable in many systems that name him, instead of naming himself and letting his actions follow. He is a part of various institutions: 1.the south 2.college 3.blacks 4.the brotherhood. For the first half of the book, the Narrator's actions are determined by others because his position requires him to be vulnerable to circumstance. It can be argued that his entire life progress to New York City and beyond was determined by others - he went to college because he had a scholarship, he drove Mr. Norton to the Golden Day, he went to New York because Dr. Bledsoe gave him the letters. (I think that the deprecating letters were another of Ellison's and Bledsoe's hints to take a stand for yourself. They were written after the Narrator had resigned himself to his absurd fate without a fight, agreeing not to be bitter.)
The narrator's life of circumstance ends after a circumstantial hospitalization and strange rebirth scene. What is purged from his system is his affiliation to everything, he is a clean slate. And though he is without drive or purpose, he is not without history or education. He is reminded to be earnest in Central Park when he tastes the orange sweetness of loyalty to his upbringing. He summons forth his refined competence for the melodic cadence of speech writing from years of listening to talented sermons (practice and listening is how one develops jazz improvisation! - I can hardly see how speeches are different.) A man with a wealth of talent was once crippled by the obligations his role was expected to fulfill, and when he lost everything, he created the space to seek success that is not gilded. After biting the sweet potato the narrator asks, "What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?" (the person who read my book before me put a check next to that, so it must be important.)
The funeral speech struggles along and falters like Narrator's raw and shifting emotion. For this reason it is the most accurate depiction of the author's genuine sentiment. In a series of speeches for the brotherhood, the conflict between extemporization and prescriptive, deliberate, scientific speech making recurs. Faced with another institution of questionable morality, the Brotherhood, the narrator finally has enough self-assuredness and clarity to buck the system. He is moved to fight on behalf of the negro race not because another person demands it, but because the narrator's own morality demands that he fight for freedom of expression in any manifestation.
nyssa collins
Glass Eye
I feel that Brother Jack's glass eye is significant. Jack states that the glass eye justifies his authority and shows the sacrifice he has made for the Brotherhood. However, the narrator later retorts that the sacrifice of the leaders is of their own doing and is justified as they have authority and knowledge of their own actions. What is not right is the sacrifice of the lower members who do not have say (kind of like taxation--> taxation of senators is definately justifiable as they are the one who spend the money, while taxation of those who are not represented is wrong because these people have no say in government and do not benefit, but give all the sacrifice).
More importantly the loss of an eye represents the white perspective towards their black conterparts. Jack's half-blindness causes him to compensate for his handicap by predicting people's action and having the authority to know where people are at all times. The narrator did not know this until it was too late. In the same way, the white leaders of the Brotherhood appear to be all seeing and empathetic to both the white world and the black world, but rather they only see one perspective--the white perspective on racism--just as Jack can only see through one eye, even though he pretends to see out of his dead eye just as the white leaders pretend to see the black perspective. Furthermore, the white leaders place extensive authority on the black brothers, wanting to know their whereabouts and motives, not because they actually have interest in the movement, but rather so they can promote their own interests and have full confidence in their power.
More importantly the loss of an eye represents the white perspective towards their black conterparts. Jack's half-blindness causes him to compensate for his handicap by predicting people's action and having the authority to know where people are at all times. The narrator did not know this until it was too late. In the same way, the white leaders of the Brotherhood appear to be all seeing and empathetic to both the white world and the black world, but rather they only see one perspective--the white perspective on racism--just as Jack can only see through one eye, even though he pretends to see out of his dead eye just as the white leaders pretend to see the black perspective. Furthermore, the white leaders place extensive authority on the black brothers, wanting to know their whereabouts and motives, not because they actually have interest in the movement, but rather so they can promote their own interests and have full confidence in their power.
Burn the past, find your future
For me, the most pivoting scene in all of Invisible Man comes when the narrator is forced to burn everything in his briefcase for a few brief moments of light. Never in my life have I come across a scene with more symbolism than this one. Although there are many ways to take this scene, readers can get just as much out of it without ever even considering the metaphors explicitly. It needs no analyzation; it is a simply beautiful portrait of the narrator’s last moments as a visible man.
However, it is certainly able to be analyzed. Obviously, all of the items being burned are the narrator’s most prized possessions. These possessions comprise the narrator’s past; they are souvenirs of a naive life, a life in which he thought he could be the catalyst for change. Ellison writes, “I realized that to light my way out, I would have to burn every paper in the brief case.” With multiple people chasing him literally to death, the narrator’s only way to find the path to survival is the burn everything left behind him. Although sometimes we survive by fighting, many times, we survive by “yessing.” We must accept what has been given to us and docilely let go of previous battles... we must become invisible.
However, it is certainly able to be analyzed. Obviously, all of the items being burned are the narrator’s most prized possessions. These possessions comprise the narrator’s past; they are souvenirs of a naive life, a life in which he thought he could be the catalyst for change. Ellison writes, “I realized that to light my way out, I would have to burn every paper in the brief case.” With multiple people chasing him literally to death, the narrator’s only way to find the path to survival is the burn everything left behind him. Although sometimes we survive by fighting, many times, we survive by “yessing.” We must accept what has been given to us and docilely let go of previous battles... we must become invisible.
PUPPETS!
I guess I am still really moved by the scene of Clifton’s death. The irony and the tragedy of the scene left me really feeling some of the betrayal and confusion that the narrator lives with. I think Clifton’s death is really symbolic and intense because it shows that a very smart and capable young man can “plunge” into the bottom of society, become the very characture he is fighting against, so quickly. The doll exemplifies the worst of racist thought in being a dancing sambo, but more interestingly I think is that the narrator carries it around in his pocket. Because he now has the chain that was given to him and this sambo doll, which I feel like shows that he is still tied down (or “chained” down…) to this racist depiction of blacks. Also the dolls points out how dependent the narrator still is on the (I think) white organizers of the movement, and how both he and Clifton were just pawns (or puppets!) for Brother Jack and others. The puppet symbolizes not only the racist idea of all African Americans are entertainers (ie the singing scene) but also that Clifton and the Narrator are puppets of society and of the Brotherhood.
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