The Brotherhood and the narrator

The simple question of the effect that the Brotherhood has on the narrator's life is seemingly easy to answer. The Brotherhood gives him a job, allows him to speak and be a leader in a social movement, and propels him in a direction that the narrator believe will allow him to get in a good position in the future. But, is the Brotherhood really all that good for the Narrator?

The Brotherhood seems to put us in a familiar place. The narrator may simply be being used. As in the battle royal scene at the beginning of the book, where the narrator is simply being used for the entertainment of the rich white patrons of the town, in this case he again may just be a tool for the Brotherhood to advance their cause. In both cases the narrator is working towards giving speeches, never really doubting the direction he is being pointed in or the situations he is put in. As how the narrator never questions the people pushing him around in the beginning of the book, he also never doubts the Brotherhood, even if he does not completely agree with all of their ideologies and methods.

The initial drive for the narrator to accept the job is money. The narrator wants to pay back Mary and he accepts the job, but as soon as he does, he complete forgets this reason. This can be seen in how when Ras the exhorter mentions women and money as the reasons why he thinks the narrator and the others join the Brotherhood it does not resonate with him at all. Money is important to everyone, but as soon as they have enough they take it for granted, never looking back to the real reasons that they did the things that they did.

The narrator also believes that he can achieve a high socially respectable position by working with the Brotherhood and working his way up. This very much points to the narrator still clinging to the image of Bledsoe being in a very socially respectable position. The narrator cannot get rid of the idea that a position like that is the final goal as he had been leading his whole life, up until he was expelled, to attain that.

With the narrator just wanting to give speeches and achieve a good social position the Brotherhood could very easily just be exploiting the narrator for their own advancement with the narrator not realizing it at all, similar to how he was used previously for entertainment.

The "old story" in "The Wrong Street"

In "The Wrong Street" by Cornelius Eady, one of the last lines says, "but now you run in an Old story." The poem is about a man who is basically in the wrong place at the wrong time, being accused of a crime that he did not commit and trying to run away, but realizing that he can't. The question is what is the "old story" that the narrator is talking about.

My interpretation of this line was that the "old story" contained the basic elements of a person who was falsely accused of a crime because of his skin color and being in the wrong place after the person who had actually committed that crime had run away. The old story is the familiar one of a person caught in circumstances that they have no control over, and because of something they cannot get out of the situation. Usually in these situations, the person caught in the situation finds a way out, either by someone else noticing who they were or by the person caught noticing some facts that don't match up. These outs don't exist in the situation at hand. The figures of authority don't seem to differentiate at all between the people of the same skin color. This means that any other person of the same skin color (presumably black) who was caught in this place at this time also could have just as easily been accused of the crime.

I think that the "old story" represents what I said earlier, someone being accused of a crime that they didn't commit because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but this specific case is different because there is no way out for those falsely accused. The other reason that this is different is because of how the accused were accused. You can assume it was mostly because of their skin color and gender, and this promotes the question of how much people should be judged by how they look and their defining characteristics. How well can you really know a person if you only know what they look like?

Although the answer to this is probably very complicated, I think the fact that this situation is called an "old story" points to an answer that would say that at this time the figures of authority thought you could tell almost anything about some people by just how they look. The "old story" could also refer to the familiar stereotyping of these people as dangerous.

What is your interpretation?

Jim Trueblood's story as a rationale for invisibility

Jim Trueblood's story in Invisible Man can be taken many ways. One of these interpretations made by looking at the reaction of the narrator is how each african-american person seems to represent more than just themselves. They represent the community they live in and the african-american community in general. I also believe that the story provides some sort of rationale for invisibility, especially if you look at it from the present narrator's (the one in the prologue) point of view.

If we take invisibility to mean the narrator's isolation and separation from society, then we can see that his crimes, although somewhat noticed, cannot be traced back to him at all. The narrator steals power from Monopolated Light and Power with the company only knowing the area in which the power is being taken, not knowing anything about the narrator or where he is. The narrator also lives right under white-only housing, but draw no attention to himself because he is invisible. His invisibility give him the freedom to do almost whatever he wants because there is nobody who knows that he did it, and if nobody knows then no person can give him repercussions.

I draw this in contrast to Jim Trueblood as his "act" draw a large amount of attention from both the people directly around him, his community, and even people who don't even know that he existed before they heard about the incident, like Mr. Norton. As Trueblood is very visible to everyone, his actions have direct repercussions, such as his community shunning him.

The problem with nobody noticing your actions is that when you do something positive, or noteworthy, no one is there to give you praise for it. This means that unless you want to live a completely solitary lifestyle being invisible is not a great option even if you don't want repercussions for your bad actions.

Overall, would you want the narrator's invisibility, or do you think it would lead to a lonely and unbearable lifestyle?