The prologue of Invisible Man shows the reader a glimpse of what the narrator will be like by the end of the book. He is almost the complete opposite of the narrator in the first chapter: he lives an “invisible,” or secluded life and knows that he can’t rely on other people. Throughout the book, the narrator slowly evolves from a young and naive character that is very trusting in others, to the narrator from the prologue, that has discovered his own identity.
The first scene where the narrator has a thought that is completely his own is in the fight club in the very first chapter. Throughout the chapter, he goes along with what the white men tell him, very excited to give his speech, and believing that all of the men really care about him and want to hear him talk. Before he gets to the speech, however, the narrator is forced to fight with the other men like animals, and has this thought:
Each time he grabbed me I slipped out of his hands. It became a real struggle. I feared the rug more than I did the drunk, so I held on, surprising myself for a moment by trying to topple him upon the rug. It was such an enormous idea that I found myself actually carrying it out. (28)
This moment, though it is very short, is very significant to the narrator’s development into the narrator in the prologue because his thought goes against what the white men want him to do. As the narrator has this thought, he even surprises himself, so much that he actually goes through with it.
As the chapters go on, the narrator has more and more of these “rebellious” thoughts as he grows into the narrator from the prologue.
Another scene that I saw as an important turning point for the narrator was when he realized that Bledsoe had not been on his side all along after reading the letter he had written for the narrator. The narrator was enraged and even wanted to kill Bledsoe:
When I stopped, gasping for breath, I decided that I would go back and kill Bledsoe. Yes, I thought, I owe it to the race and to myself. I’ll kill him. And the boldness of the idea and the anger behind it made me move with decision. (194)
This example shows the narrator getting mad at the man he used to only admire and look up to, which is a big change for him. I think that this scene is particularly important in the narrator’s development because he says that he not only owes killing Bledsoe to himself, but to his race. This is a development for the narrator because he was not only thinking about himself, but he identified with his whole race, which is a big part of the identity that he struggles with throughout the book.
I hadn't thought of this before, but we might compare this fleeting "rebellious thought" during the scramble for coins to his fleeting "slip" during his speech, where he "accidentally" says "equality" instead of "responsibility." He claims that this is due to the fact that he was "swallowing blood," but we also know that he has learned the term ("equality," a thoroughly abstract idea for this young man, based on his experience) from seeing it "denounced" in newspaper editorials--he is aware that it's a "rebellious" concept, even if he seems to utter it with no conscious intention of deviating from the script. That self-reliant consciousness is *there* from the beginning, but it's deeply repressed and takes a while to rise to the surface.
ReplyDeleteI like the ideas you bring up in the post. In addition to the points you make, I think Mr. Mitchell's interpretation is also compelling. I feel the prologue gives a surprisingly meaningful base for what is to come in the rest of the book. (I feel like this is often not the case for some prologues) It is very interesting to see these small acts of rebellion and how they begin to pile up in later chapters (for instance in his meeting with the Brotherhood). These rebellious outbreaks are no longer isolated incidents, as the Narrator develops himself he begins to see things with a more critical eye and challenge the ideas that he's always followed. I think I can understand the difficulty of finding that rebellion inside, straying away from all you've been conditioned to believe is very difficult. And chapter after chapter, we can see the narrator continues to break down that conditioning.
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