Every little detail in Invisible Man, seems to have some sort of implication; everything Ellison puts in the novel seems to be there for a specific reason. Having this idea in mind, after reading the scene where the narrator is asked questions by the “doctors” after his “treatment”, I couldn’t help but wonder why Ellison had included the question “Boy, who was Brer Rabbit?”.
Brer Rabbit is one of the main characters of a collection of African American folktales written by Joel Chandler Harris. Brer Rabbit is described as a trickster, as seen in the the story “Brer Rabbit Falls Down the Well” when Brer rabbit fools Brer fox into falling in the well to get himself out. “The animal trickster represents an extreme form of behavior that people may be forced to adopt in extreme circumstances in order to survive”. Brer rabbit stories embody an idea that is considered universal among oppressed people-- that a small, weak, yet intelligent character can triumph over a large, strong, unintelligent character, such as the Brer fox.
This idea of tricking powerful characters to overcome struggles parallels a recurring idea presented in Invisible Man. Before he dies, the narrator’s grandfather tells the narrator to “live with your head in the lion’s mouth. I want you to overcome ‘em with yeses, undermine ‘em with grins, agree ‘em to death and destruction, let ‘em swoller you till they vomit or bust open”. The grandfather is telling the narrator to behave how white people want him to behave, but tells him to be himself on the inside so he will be able to eventually defeat the white people. Essentially, like the actions of Brer Rabbit, the narrator’s grandfather is telling the narrator to trick the white people into doing what they want him to do so that he can defeat them.
This idea is again presented when the narrator encounters Bledsoe. On the surface, Bledsoe displays himself as calm and inferior to the white men. Yet on the inside, he believes that black people should submit to the white people and trick them into doing what they want. When Bledsoe is yelling at the narrator for taking Norton to the wrong places of town, Bledsoe says “we don’t take these white folks where we want them to go, we show them what we want them to see”, showing that the school fundamentally runs on the basis of tricking white people into seeing what they want.
Your connection with the grandfather's words and Brer Rabbit reminded me of the scene where Brother Jack suggests to the narrator that he will be the "new Booker T. Washington." The narrator is dismissive of that idea and says to himself "I would do the work but I would be no one but myself--whoever I was." He's establishing that he'll pretend to be what they want but will still follow his own agenda, which is pretty similar to what his grandfather said, yet the difference is that the narrator is dealing with black people and not white people in his situation. Keeping in mind the experience the narrator had with his college, it looks like this novel's making a statement about black people that are in positions of power trying to tell what other people of their race can or cannot do. I think the presence of the narrator's affirmation of his identity, along with his grandfather's haunting words and the question about Brer Rabbit, foreshadows the events that will lead to the narrator realizing he is invisible.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really interesting observation. I like the idea of having to play tricks on the white man not just to get what you want, but in order to survive. Another thing I though interesting about when they asked him about Brer Rabbit in the hospital is that it's the first time the narrator isn't ashamed of his black southern roots.
ReplyDeleteThis is a fascinating and somewhat unnoticed aspect of the Narrator's invisibility. The idea that the Narrator's "playing of the game" is very amusing to him. The animal trickster seems to very well reflect the identity of the Narrator that we see in the prologue, someone who has completely and utterly taken advantage of his "weakness/invisibility" and goes around messing with people like when he beats the man up.
ReplyDeleteYou'll learn a little more about Brer Rabbit in history but you hit it spot on. So far, Invisible Man just doesn't want to trick white people. He keeps trying to earn their respect by being honest and trying to prove himself. I think after this experience being a speaker for this organization, he may begin to do otherwise.
ReplyDeleteDo you think our narrator was previously Brer Fox, gullibly believing a ton of shit like Bledsoe giving him a briefcase full of recommendations, and falling into pitfalls, or is that reading too much into it?
ReplyDeleteWe didn't get to this part of chapter 11 in your section, but we can see the narrator starting to assume something of this "trickster" mentality at the end, in his interview with the director, when he asks whether he knows Norton or Bledsoe (or Robin!), and especially when he ironically states, with mock formality, that he has "enjoyed [their] little palaver." As I pointed out in 3d period, "palaver" refers specifically to a formal meeting between a colonial power and representatives of the local population--so recasting this "exit interview" in terms of colonial politics and power relations definitely seems like a subversive, critically astute joke, and we also see the narrator joking satirically mainly for his own amusement--he doesn't care if the director gets it or not. He's at least seeing some liberatory potential in a Brer Rabbit persona here, even if he doesn't yet fully go down that road (as things get quite *serious* with the Brotherhood).
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