And He Said,

“Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked” (19)

The narrator thinks this just before he enters the fight. He says it to a White woman that is there just before the battle scene is unleashed. It is funny how he now that if he looks he will be beat, or blinded, but he looks anyway to the beautiful sight.

It puzzles my mind… I am writing to see if I reach some kind of answer (sorry if it is kinda hard to follow)

Well “blindness” could be saying that the fact that he looks he will lose sight of the atrocity that is about to be unleashed with him involved, so maybe the blindness could be a good thing. The women, shifts his attention away from the pain that he is receiving.

Another reasoning that has come across my head is the fact that the women distracts him, letting him get crushed. Because she is white she lets him get beat, just like the men that encaged them into the fight.

I’m not really sure, but it’s just something that came up.

What Does't Kill Me...

Invisible Man, apart from the fact that it is a great book that one can re-read a million times and find new things, it touches a common theme for many African-American writer. Ralph Ellison, starts the novel off with the brute force that drives society.

To sum the story up in one sentence… It starts with the story-teller gives a great speech, which we never actually listen to (metaphor…), because of the speech he is invited to an upper-class white gathering, there is a forced brawl and a sexy lady. The Chapter’s most important scene is when the narrator gives his speech after the white men enjoy the blacks beating on each other. Funny enough the speech planned was about social justice. The crowd laughs until the narrator speaks of “social respect” and one crowed member jumps at him. As the narrator swallows his blood, his heritage one might say, he surrenders to the crowd member in shame.

Throughout the act it’s evident how the whites indirectly dominate the course of the blacks. The objective of the fight was for a collage tuition. What does this show? Well, it shows that the education of the blacks depends of the whites, it shows that collages are ran by whites and influenced by whites, it is true, but the hidden way that Ellison shows it is what interreges the reader.

These ideas are found through the novel.