The Brotherhood

The brotherhood represents the ideal of stripping yourself of your individuality in order to join a group in which everyone works toward a common goal. The brotherhood is similar to a machine that is made up of multiple parts. Each person represents a replaceable part of the machine that come together to make the machine work and achieve something. However the importance of each part is small relative the importance of the machine as a whole. The brotherhood doesn’t see its members as individuals, but means at which they can accomplish various tasks. They only tell the narrator as much information that he needs to know in order to accomplish his tasks. As a result, membership with the brotherhood leads to the stagnation of the narrator. Because the narrator loses his identity and wears the identity that the brotherhood gives him, his progression as individual is stunted. The narrator says, “You might not recognize it right now, but that part of you is dead! You have not completely shed that self, that old agrarian self, but it’s dead and you will throw it off completely emerge something new. History has been born in your brain” which suggests that the narrators seeks the strip himself of the identities that the brotherhood and the rest of society has given him and starting anew by creating his own identity based upon his own perceptions.

It is also interesting that the name of the brotherhood’s building is the chthonian which is also the name of the gods of underworld. People gave these gods sacrifices in order to appease them. Similarly, the members of the brotherhood sacrifice their individuality in order to work towards the goals of the brotherhood. The brotherhood is also god like because they have control over their members and what happens in Harlem. Many of the descriptions of the brotherhood and the chthonian involve frozen water which represents the stagnations. In the lines, “I could see the word Chthonian on the storm awning stretched above the walk as I got out with the others and went swiftly toward a lobby lighted by dim bulbs set behind frosted glass” the light represents enlightenment which covered by a “frosted glass” which prevents individuals from reaching enlightenment.  The frost on the glass can also be seen as a contaminant that prevents you from looking from the outside and seeing the light through the glass.

Not only do I see the members of the brotherhood as blind, but I also see the leaders as blind as well. One of Brother Jack’s eyes falls out which reveals that he has one fake eye. His one eye suggests that he is at least partially blind and that though he may have good ideas, he tries to achieve them through incorrect means. Eyes also symbolize a way to look into someone’s soul. The fact that Brother Jack places a fake eye to cover the crevice where his other eye would go suggests that he is covering up something within his soul that he is trying to hide.