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Example
One: Fools Gold
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Reflections
on the Invisible Man
The
early Americana bank which the narrator of Invisible Man
discovers one morning in his room at Mary’s house is a
reflection of the narrator’s state throughout much of the
novel. The offensively exaggerated Negro figure provokes an
instant hatred in the narrator due to the tolerance it suggests.
However, the narrator becomes personally offended by the object
because of the similarities it holds to himself. While smashing
the pipes with the bank, he yells out to his neighbors who are
banging on the pipes, “‘Get rid of your cottonpatch ways!
Act civilized!’” (320). Thus he associates the hatred he
feels for the bank figure with his neighbors who are acting no
less civilized than he is. He is not aware of his own “cottonpatch
ways” it appears.
In
describing the bank, the narrator states that it is the kind of
bank that flips coins from its hand into a large grinning mouth.
In order to put money in the bank, one must feed the smiling,
hungry Negro. At a point in the narrator’s life where he has
no money and has decided to join the Brotherhood out of a debt
he owes, the bank’s symbolism is simply too close to reality
for him and he tries to destroy the self-mocking figure. He
notes, “In my hand its expression seemed more of a
strangulation than a grin. It was choking, filled to the throat
with coins”
The
quotation is especially interesting in light of the coins thrown
at the battle royal earlier in the novel. The boys are made to
grab for coins thrown on an electrified carpet. Like circus
animals, they are electrically shocked every time they reach for
the shiny gold in order to entertain the white audience. The
narrator attempts to avoid the shocks but cannot help grabbing
for the coins like the rest of the boys. The boys, in a sense,
are being fed money by the men for amusement and are choked by
racism. Furthermore, the narrator hungrily eats up the
degradation they feed him. Even though the coins turn out to be
artificial, he does not mind because of the scholarship the
white men give him. In effect, he smiles like the bank when
given the award, and runs out. As the text states, “My eyes
filled with tears and I ran awkwardly off the floor. I was
overjoyed; I did not even mind when I discovered that the gold
pieces I had scrambled for were brass pocket tokens advertising
a certain make of automobile” (32). He accepts subordinate and
degrading treatment in order to gain a few coins and praise.
As
the story progresses he becomes further and further choked by
the artifice and pretense of the society in which he
participates and accommodates -- at the factory, in the
hospital, and with the Brotherhood. Seeing a figure like the
bank so glaringly representing his own strangulation causes him
to attack its smiling face. The figure breaks into many
fragmented pieces that he tries to rid himself of when he leaves
Mary’s house. Yet each time he tries to lose the bank someone
refuses to let him and returns it to him against his will. The
broken image thus remains in his brief case along with the other
remnants of his past, such as his high school diploma. He cannot
shed his past and his acceptance of his subordination simply by
dropping it on the sidewalk. Instead, the narrator brings it
into his new apartment where he resides during his period with
the Brotherhood. His role as a tool of the Brotherhood enhances
his position as the fragmented smiling Negro and creates a
parallel to Clifton’s Sambo doll. The narrator is first unable
to see the strings that yank the Sambo around, causing him to
dance. As the narrator describes, “A grinning doll of
orange-and-black tissue paper…which some mysterious mechanism
was causing to move up and down”
Not
surprisingly, the narrator only can dispose of the bank at the
very end, underground, when he exorcises the materials of his
past that he has gathered in his briefcase (568). Until this
moment, the bank weighs him down, as the looters notice during
the riot (539). He is not fully aware why until he can break the
strings and face his own invisibility.
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