Invisible Man Chapter 1

I was planning to make my next Invisible Man blog about the rest of the prologue that I didn’t cover but I decided to skip ahead to Chapter one. Chapter one brings up many interesting themes that I think will be increasingly relevant as the novel progresses. Firstly, just like in Hamlet, we see the theme of seeming and “is’ing”/being. Seeming is what you appear to be on the outside. This is what others see or what they think they see. On the other hand, “being” is what you actually are. The old man tells the narrator that he has committed treachery when he gave up his gun in Reconstruction. In doing so, he gave up his ability to fight for the rights of blacks which meant he ultimately sided with the whites. He tells the narrator “I want you to keep up the up the good fight” but in a different, not with guns and fighting.  The narrator’s grandfather tells him to “Live 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 wide open”. In other words, his grandfather wants the narrator to seem to be happy with the whites. Pretend like you agree and that you want to be obedient.  However deep down he wants the narrator to remember that white people are his enemy. In doing so he can work against the whites while appearing not to be. This idea reminds me of Polonius’s famous line from Hamlet in Act I scene iii, “This above all: to thine ownself be true” because the narrator must always remember to put his own intentions before the whites.

Hamlet’s relationship with his father parallels the narrators relationship with his grandfather. They are both given tasks to carry out even after the death of the person who ordered it to them. I also found it interesting that the narrator also viewed his task as a curse like Hamlet does.  

"Oh No" by Robert Creeley

If you wander far enough
you will come to it
and when you get there
they will give you a place to sit

for yourself only, in a nice chair,
and all your friends will be there
with smiles on their faces
and they will likewise all have places.

~Robert Creeley

Robert Creeley in his poem, “Oh No”, portrays the dangers of being trapped by a society that institutionalizes his citizens.  The people of such a society go out in search of a better life until they end up in a tedious job that they must maintain in order to keep up with the rest of society. As a result, they end up in a nine to five job that they go to five days a week. Eventually they end up living to work rather than working while living. The first two lines, “if you wander far enough / you will come to it” describes an innocent journey into the unknown.  People leave home or their hometown in search of a bigger life or something similar to the American dream. The word “wander” implies that those who come here are lost and don’t intentionally come here or that these people don’t know exactly where they going.  What and where “it” is not explained which makes the place appear very mysterious. I think Creeley does so to suggest that the wanders, like the readers, also don’t know what it is and unknowingly find themselves in it.  However “it” seems like a very nice place at first. They  are given a place to sit which represents the new luxuries that these people are able to afford. The chair is “for yourself only” because you are working for your own benefit, not the benefit of society as a whole. It seems great because “all of your friends will be there” so you feel safe and in communion with them. You guys are all there for the same reason which is comforting. The “smiles on their faces” suggests that they are happy to see you and happy to be there. In what appears to be a Utopian society, everyone is happy and has a place or way they can contribute to society.

However the title of the poem suggests otherwise, that this is not a Utopian society; something is wrong. The phrase “Oh No” implies that there is a sudden realization that there is something wrong. In reality, society has lured these people by promises of money, opportunities, and other luxuries to wander into their chair, or place in society. But this is a society based on the ideal of survival of the fittest and you must fight for the things society has promised.  And though “your friends will be there”, they are not your friends in this context. Just like you, they are fighting for the luxuries that society as promised. Rather than happy smiles, they wear deceitful smiles because though they appear to be your friend, they will be willing to throw you under the bus in order to help themselves in society. Now you all have places. However society has not done you a favor by giving you a place to seat. Your seat is what traps you and now you can’t get up. You have now been trapped in a tedious lifestyle that no longer benefits you, but the society that lured you there. 

Invisible Man Prologue

From very early on I could tell Invisible Man was going to be a very insightful book. The narrator introduces himself as an invisible but unlike the scientists from H.G. Well’s Invisible Man, the narrator of Ellison’s version isn't actually physically transparent. Instead, he is invisible because people “refuse” to see him for who he actually is. I marked this in my book because I think it is important to note that people chooses not to “see” him. One way people do this is that they see him through a stereotype that they think he fits into instead of for him as an individual. As a result they don’t see him, they see the stereotype. They judge him based on his surroundings and they don’t look at him as an individual “it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surrounding, themselves, or figments of their imagination—indeed, everything and anything except me”.   They see what they want to see and not what is in reality there. This brings up the idea of illusion vs reality. People choose the illusion that they want to see and “refuse” the reality of what is there. From the prologue it is apparent that the book will touch on some existentialist ideas.

I thought it was interesting that the narrator doesn’t believe his invisibility to be a bad thing, “I am not complaining, nor am I protesting either. It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves” ,and he even goes on to say later, “I myself, after existing some twenty years, did not become alive until I discovered my invisibility”. So does one want to be invisible? I don’t think the narrator necessarily wants to be invisible, but he accepts that he is invisible. See other people “refuse” to see him; it is there blindness that makes him invisible and not is inability to be seen. He knows that he can’t make himself be seen if others don’t want to see him and as a result he tries to remain invisible “I remember that I am invisible and walk softly so as not to awaken the sleeping ones. Sometimes it is best not awaken them; there are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers”.

My favorite scene in the book so far is when he nearly kills a man that he “bumped” into. The man is like a sleepwalker who the narrator rouses when he bumps into him. However as a sleepwalker, the man is still sleeping/ dreaming and thus still sees the world through the illusion of the dream rather the reality of what’s there.  The narrator realizes this before he is about to slit the man’s throat and he stops himself and lets the man live, “it occurred to me that the man had not seen me, actually; that he as far as he knew, was in the midst of a walking nightmare”.   Here we see the dangers of when reality and illusion mix together.

There is so much more to analyze in the prologue. However I will leave that for another discussion or blog. 

King Hamlet's Ghost

                Many of the early scenes revolve around the ghost. The guards are frantic and become hysterical when they discover that it is the ghost of King Hamlet. However the ghost’s relevance surpasses just what it does and mainly resides in what it represents.  Firstly the ghost represents the disorder that has befallen Denmark. King Hamlet is murdered by his own brother Claudius who forms an “incestuous marriage” with King Hamlet’s wife.  As a result the current aristocracy has been built upon a throne of disorder.  Now there is a ghost to fully bring home that “something is rotten in the state of Denmark”. Denmark has become like a rotten apple that appears fresh from the outside. Denmark tries to “seem” like they have everything in control to other nations while in actually they are falling apart from the inside.  King Hamlet was murdered and thus unready for death so he ghost continues to walk the Earth. The dead are supposed to stay dead. The fact that the spirit of a dead person can roam and interact with the living exemplifies this chaos which is so bad that it not only affects the world of the living, but the realm of the dead.  

                

More importantly the ghost represents what Hamlet might have been looking for since the marriage of his uncle and his mom, a reason to further justify his detest for them and to take action.  He was already unhappy that Gertrude and Claudius were able to so easily get over the death of his father. He knew something was array but in his current position he was unable and didn’t have just cause to do anything about. Now the ghost of his father has come to him and tells him that he was murdered by Claudius and that he wants Hamlet himself to avenge him.  Like the God that Hamlet idolizes him to be, King Hamlet comes and gives Hamlet divine like instructions to bring order to Denmark. And like a orthodox follower of a religion, Hamlet swears to not be distracted by any other “baser matter”.  King Hamlet and Hamlet are shown to have more of God to religious follower relationship than a father- son relationship. This connects back to Act I scene ii when Hamlet refers to his father as the Sun God. I think this is why it becomes a burden for him to carry out his father’s wishes because he feels like it something a god has chosen him to do and thus it is something that he must do as he says “O cursed spite that ever I was born to set it right”. It becomes his “duty” which is a recurring theme. This task becomes so important to him that it appears to drive him mad. Though we know he is likely acting/seeming mad initially as he says “As I perchance hereafter shall think meet to put an antic disposition on”, I wonder if eventually might be driven mad by his burden as the tragic hero. 

"These are the days when Birds come back" by Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson, in her poem, “These are the days when Birds come back”, comments on the uncertainty of religion and implies that religion can be neither proven nor disproven.  In the footnotes in Perrine’s, it says the time of year represented in the poem is an Indian summer. An Indian summer is a sudden heat wave that occurs in the fall. Even the time of year depicted in the poem is representative of uncertainty as even when it is supposed to be cold, there can be a sudden, unexpected shift in temperature. I think the heat wave represents any unexpected or difficult time in life.  In the first stanza, “ a Bird or two” is fooled by the Indian summer and think that summer has returned.  Birds symbolize a higher connection to God which is represented by the fact they in flight they are physically closer to God. The fact that the word Bird is capitalized indicates that these birds are connected to God in some way and may be angels. The Birds looking back could be a metaphor for religious people who in an unexpected time of trouble, don’t look to God, but “take a backward look” or look for solutions from other sources.  The reason why religious people look back is because God can be neither proven nor disproven and thus they can’t be sure if God is the solution to their problems.

In the next stanza, “The skies resume the old”, as in they return to normal when the trouble has passed. However this transition is described as “sophistries of June” because the troubles appear to have passed for misleading reasons. The religious people think that the reason that their troubles have passed is because of God, but this can’t be proven. This image is depicted in the last line of the stanza: the portrayal of “a blue and gold mistake” is representative of a summer day where the sky is clear and the sun is shining.

Even though the Indian summer fooled the birds, it is a “fraud that cannot cheat the Bee”.  In the footnotes of Perrine’s, it says that the bee is “an allusion to one of the apocryphal tales of Solomon, who distinguished between real and artificial flowers by pitting a bee in the room; the bee of course flew to the real”. According to this description, the bee represents the ability to distinguish between the real and the artificial. Dickinson says that she was “almost” fooled which “induces” or influences her beliefs.  So unlike the other followers, she wasn’t fooled to blindly believe in God, but appears to take a more neutral stance on religion. He may or may not exist.

Dickinson describes death as the moment when one discovers whether or not God exists. The “altered air” represents a kind of enlightenment.  “Oh Last Communion in the Haze” is when you become enlightened to the existence or nonexistence to God as it is when the “haze” is lifted. When we die we “partake” in “bread” and “wine”. This represents the body of Christ, and in eating, we are becoming closer to God in the afterlife after we die. However, bread and wine are also associated with the death of Christ; so possibly upon us dying and not going to the afterlife, we will realize that God doesn’t existence and our idea of God dies. Either way we won’t be sure of the existence of God until we die, but at that point it is too late. 

The Alternate Ending of A Doll's House.

The alternating ending of the play changes everything. As I wrote in my previous blog, the original ending is powerful because Nora’s fate is unclear. Will she break free of society? Can anyone break free of society? A woman leaving her husband in the 1800’s was unheard of and was societal suicide. Ibsen pushes against the boundaries of society and critics the confines that favor conformity over individuality. Of course this is the sort of stuff we love in AP Lit. We could have a seminar on this for all 6 periods if allowed and I think this is what Ibsen was aiming for when he wrote the play. He wanted to challenge the social norms of society. However the problem with that is that society at the time didn't want to be challenged. It is ironic that the very thing that Ibsen challenges, the suffocation of individuality by social conformity, ends up causing him to write a new ending. Driven by a need to make money and “survive”, Ibsen conforms to society and writes the ending that society wants. Sounds familiar? Kristine conforms to society and gets married so that she can “survive”. Nora plays along with Torvald so that she can “survive”.  In all of these cases, social conformity = survival. For Ibsen “the wonderful” would be when society is ready to read the original ending of A Doll’s House. Maybe this is another reason why Ibsen hated the alternating ending; he realized that in writing it he exemplifies that not even he can break free.

I actually like that there are two endings. It shows the impact that the final lines of a work have on the meaning of a play and it is an interesting point of comparison. However seeing the alternate ending only, as many people did when the play was released, completely changes everything. Many of the questions that the original play evokes become answered. Nora can’t break free of society, that’s why she stayed with Torvald. Also, as a woman, she wouldn't dare give up her “sacred duties” to her husband and her children because in society’s eyes, her only reason for being alive was to fulfill those duties. If Ibsen took away all the allusions to sex and alcohol, it could be a Disney movie where the loving wife tries to save her husband whose hubris won’t allow him to receive help and this gets the wife into trouble. Her husband comes to her rescue and accepts her wrong doing. Actually this sounds exactly like Nora’s fantasy. The difference is while in the original ending the doll house falls apart and Nora decides to leave it in favor of living a life based in reality, in the alternate ending Nora returns to the doll house and nothing changes.  In the alternate ending, the play loses its original purpose because the boundaries of society aren't challenged, they are accepted. Each ending represents various paths in life we must between in many decisions that we make. Do you take the path of individuality or conformity? Do you take the difficult route of uncertainty or do you take the path of least resistance and familiarity? Whether or not you know it, the conflict of the doll’s house is present in your daily decisions. 

The Original Ending of A Doll's House

The final scene of A Doll’s House dictates how you read the play. The whole plays builds up to the ending in a way.  The final scene represents a moment of enlightenment for Nora who realizes that in trying to meet the social expectations of her, she has given up her own individuality. Torvald even tells her, “you are a wife and mother before you are anything else”, which exemplifies that society expects her to put her husband and children before herself. At this point Nora probably feels like a slave to a family and society that takes her for granted; she dedicates her whole life to serving her father and her husband. Of course Torvald, a man who has strictly obeyed his gender role in society, is baffled by Nora. A woman leaving her husband was something that was unheard of in 1800 society. It is ironic that while the man is expected to be the enlightened one who guides the ignorant wife who blindly follows him, Nora is the one who is enlightened about the true nature of their relationship and thus guides Torvald who has been blindly following society. Nora leaving Torvald represents her breaking the societal chains that have kept her from developing as an individual. Yet this raises the question, can you really break free from society? I mean unless you on a mountain by yourself, everyone is shaped by the society they live in. Sure Nora has left her societal obligations to Torvald and her children, but she will still be confined by how the outside world judges her. She will be looked down upon as a woman who left her husband and she will have difficulty finding work.  So is she truly free of society? Will Nora, who has lived her whole life sheltered by the warmth of the doll’s house, be able to survive in the harsh, outside world? I think implies that she won’t. Kristine, a foul for Nora, is pushed back into marriage. Nora says for her to return, “the most wonderful of all would have to happen”.  The wonderful represents when Torvald can treat her as his equal which would allow them to have a “true marriage”, one not based on lies or pretending. However I don’t think the most wonderful thing will happen. Torvald’s last line in the play, “The most wonderful -?!” ends with a question mark, meaning that he still questions what the wonderful is.  If Torvald doesn’t even know what the most wonderful thing is, how can he ever achieve it? Though Ibsen seems to imply that Nora will be unsuccessful in breaking free of her societal expectations and possibly changing society, history tells a different story. Women’s rights was achieved by independent who forcefully went against the grain such as by entering the work force and showed the world that women can operate in society without being babied by their husbands. Some women like Kristine did so out of necessity while others like Nora did so for personal development. The unresolved fate of Nora is what makes this play so thought provoking, possibly implying that the struggle between the individual and society is forever on going.