Invisible Man

So the reading assignment for Invisible Man is coming up and I have only read about a quarter of the novel. I just finished with chapter 6 so I will write about my first impressions. First and foremost, I noticed it’s a relatively slow moving novel. I usually like to read intense and fast-paced books so this isn’t my cup of tea really. But at the same time, I can see this novel being really powerful because it is in a sense, a documentary on black life in the early 1900s. The first thing I noticed about the main character and narrator is his public speaking skills. It was mentioned, I think in the 1st chapter, that he gave his high school graduation speech. As he recalled the speech, I noted that the speech contained a lot of Booker Washington’s ideas. It largely talked about being submissive to the white people so that they may advance. Dubois similarly advocated submission to whites and giving up their political rights so that they may economically advance. Understandably so, Dubois received a lot of criticism from his own black community. This kind of “submission” was described by the narrator later when he talks about the embarrassing competition the white people set up for the black teens. The competition almost seemed like the white people were treating the blacks as animals because it was essentially a survival of the fittest for the black teens. The humiliation and embarrassment the young black competitors faced must have been harsh. But nonetheless, the narrator is handed a scholarship to a black college. As the narrator continues to recount his experiences, he talks about Norton and the incident at the black saloon at college. I thought it was significant when the doctor veteran helps Norton regain consciousness and then criticizes the narrator for regarding Norton as some type of God. I think that up until this point, the narrator didn’t really think there was anything wrong with submitting to white people. But I think that veteran in a sense, opened up the narrator’s eyes a bit. According to the veteran, the narrator is blind because he can’t see anything wrong with being submissive. Ironically, that same veteran cures his “blindness” by telling him that he’s wrong.