Evolving Loyalties

When Beloved enters Sethe and Denver's life, she messes up the dynamic even more than when Paul D did. Many readers in my class at least, believed that she was the living form of the dead baby that had haunted 124.  On page 89 we get confirmation.  Denver figures it out, and Beloved admits it.  But when Denver tells Beloved not to tell Sethe about who she is, Beloved snaps, saying, "Don't tell me what to do.  Don't you never never tell me what to do" (89).  Beloved goes on to say, "She is the one I need.  You can go but she is the one I have to have" (89).  I was surprised by both characters reactions, but I didn't think much of it until later when they go to the clearing Baby Suggs used to preach at.  Denver believes Beloved caused Sethe to choke, and Beloved's only response is, "Look out, girl" (119).  This left me wondering why Denver doesn't immediately run and tell Sethe.  Beloved appears violent towards the one thing she wants, Sethe, so there's no telling what she'll do to someone like Paul D.  Instead, Denver chases after Beloved to try to make up.  She seems to care more about continuing a new friendship than protecting her mother, and sole companion of ten years.

This issue of loyalty has become somewhat of a theme throughout Beloved so far.  When Paul D first arrives,  Sethe must pick, does she remain loyally alone, in solidarity with Denver's perpetual loneliness, or does she welcome this man from her past.  She must then completely abandon her loyalty to Halle, when she invites Paul D to stay a while.  I didn't find either of these decisions to override total loyalty too strange.  When she decides to show more love attention towards Beloved than Denver, I was a little more surprised.  Denver has been the loyal daughter towards Sethe, she hasn't run away like her brothers, nor does she make trouble, she's just is a constant in Sethe's life.  But as soon as Beloved comes, Sethe begins to open up to the stranger more so than she ever did with Denver.  Maybe Sethe has figured out who Beloved is, she surely must have her suspicions, and that's why she is so openly loving towards Beloved, versus her normal shortness with Denver.  Whatever her motives, it's clear that Sethe is no longer as loyal towards Denver as she once was, and in that context, Denver's lack of loyalty towards Sethe is much more understandable.      

Ain't Nothin' But a Hound Dog

Your typical love story depicts romantic love, a bond between two people that through trials and tribulations grows over time.  It seems like the characters you want to get together always do, and they ride off into the sunset together.  All the Lonely People is not that kind of love story.  Dennis, the protagonist, at every turn is telling us how pathetic and dependent everyone else around him is, except Gerald, yet he isn't a "lion" like he says, he's what he would deem a "real hunter," or maybe not even a member of that group.

We first meet Dennis in a cafe, late at night, talking with Alfred.  Alfred immediately seems like the down-trodden one of the pair-spilling his guts to this man he doesn't really know in a coffee shop.  We see Dennis attract the attention of a woman, causing him to leave the cafe after her.  Dennis lights her cigarette, but then walks immediately away from her.  What I initially took as aloofness on Dennis' part, by the end of the story I think was a lack of confidence.  He left her before she could possibly leave him, therefore maintaining his belief that he can be selective about who he goes out with.  Betty, the girl who Dennis expects the night Alfred comes over, doesn't come, instead postponing their rendezvous, but he is so desperate for her he said he, "was prepared to lie relentlessly just to have her there that one night" (148).  That's not quite the type of behavior you would expect of a lion who is being hunted.  Dennis becomes so desperate that week, that he needs his friend Gerald to set him up with Gloria, a "community chest" as they described her.  Yet Dennis can't even close this deal, one that Gerald has practically set in his lap.

Dennis isn't a lion.  He is not hunted by others, and he's too ashamed to be a real hunter so instead he subtly uses his friends to hunt for him.  He judges everyone around him, which to me makes him worse than anybody who he's deemed below him.  Even in the last section when he finally begins to examine himself, he still has to judge Alfred for not being home at 2:00 a.m. though he then goes to the old coffee shop at 3:00 a.m. and sits alone.  Dennis is the saddest character of them all, not because he doesn't have girls hunting him, but because he has to put down everyone else to construct his self-superiority.    

With Friends Like This

The ending of White Boy Shuffle was strange, very strange.  The saddest part for me was Chapter 12 when Scoby goes over the edge and kills himself.  While reading those five or so pages where we see Scoby go from "bizarre" (203) behavior to killing himself, I couldn't help but yell at Gunnar in my head.  What was he doing when his best friend was all but telling him flat out that he wanted to kill himself?  Scoby asks him, "To kill yourself you don't need a permit or anything like that, do you?" (204) then leaves his cassette player on the beach with Sarah Vaughan still playing.  Every reader at this point has to know that Scoby is going to jump off the law school building, and Gunnar certainly has to know, but instead of going to stop his friend, he drinks beer, listens to jazz, and writes a poem on the train ride home.

At first I didn't blame Gunnar, I figured he was probably in denial that Scoby would even consider killing himself.  But now that I think about it, my theory is that Gunnar wanted Scoby to commit suicide.  He makes the statement that, "I ain't ready to die for anything, so I guess I'm just not fit to live.  In other words, I'm just ready to die.  I'm just ready to die" (200), but after saying that, he's receives huge cheers calling for him to become the leader.  Later, when he returns to Hillside, he is the unofficial leader of Hillside (with Physco Loco's help) and the budding leader of angry people everywhere.  He knows, while he is still in Boston, that he can't kill himself, he means to much to too many people.  Then the only way for his suicide pact to not look totally hypocritical is for him to lose someone close to him, and Scoby is perfect for that role.  People know about Scoby, the perfect basketball player, and they know that he and Gunnar have been best friends for years, so for Gunnar to lose someone so close to him to suicide shows that he's all in, saying these things from a leadership position isn't a game to him, he means every word because it's real to him.  Though in fact, he doesn't take being a leader so seriously, his public actions (like cutting off his finger) keep up his serious leader persona, and make Scoby's death seem all the more convenient.

Rooting for Bangers

In almost every other book I've read I've known who to root against, or at least not to really pull for.  In a lot of these books I find myself rooting against gang members, as in these books they normally terrorize the main characters or kill innocent people.  But in White Boy Shuffle that's who Gunnar is turning into, and certainly who Psycho Loco is.  He is introduced to us as the leader of the Gun Totin' Hooligans, and as being, "home on parole for killing a paramedic who refused to give his piranha Esta Lleno mouth-to-mouth resuscitation" (Beatty 84).  Later we hear that a big part of Gunnar's favors to Psycho Loco consists of "My backyard became a burial ground for missing evidence; warm guns and blood-rusted knives" (Beatty 97).  In real life Psycho Loco, or Gunnar, is not the kind of random stranger I would walk up to and start talking to on the street.

Even with their less than legal and nice behavior at some points, I can't help but root for them.  When they went to attack the rival gang (who didn't do anything wrong this time) I was rooting for No M.O's balloons to find their mark, and when one of the Ghost Town guys shoots at them with a shotgun I feared one of them would be hit.  I laughed when they were rolling through a nice neighborhood smashing cars indiscriminately.  Maybe the reason I like these characters so much is because of how outrageous some of their actions are, like killing a paramedic for not reviving a fish, or maybe it's because of how human they are.  When Physco Loco is in Gunnar's bathroom crying hysterically I saw a side of him I haven't ever seen before, normally the calm and calculated leader, his actions seem more like the Gunnar we saw fresh out of the car from Santa Monica.  So far it seems to me that Paul Beatty does such a successful job showing people like us who live in a largely protected small town (compared to LA) what it was like to grow up an African-American male in the inner city in large part due to this humor and compassion that he brings out in seemingly hardened main characters.

Tea Cake's Everlasting Impact

Tea Cake's impact on Janie, both during his life and in death, is profound.  She wasn't the only one he changed though.  I'm not sure if I would say that the people of the Muck were changed by him; Motorboat, Sop-de-Bottom, and Stew Beef don't seem to change much from when we first meet them to when Janie leaves the Muck for the final time.  I believe that instead it is the people of Eatonville that change due to Tea Cake.  They are gossipy when Joe is around yes.  They continue to gossip once Tea Cake comes and after he's gone, true, but they no longer live in the same way.

I would say Phoebe is a prime example of the town's change due to Tea Cake.  When she cautions Janie about him at the end of Chapter 12 saying, "But anyhow, Janie, you be keerful 'bout dis sellin' out and goin' off wid strange men.  Look whut happend tuh Annie Tyler.  Took whut little she had and went off tuh Tampa wid dat boy...It's somethin' tuh think about" (Hurston 114).  Phoebe is warning Janie out of love for her, but there is also a disapproval of Tea Cake that she tries to project onto Janie.  By the end of Janie's story upon her return to Eatonville, Phoebe, "[A]in't saitisfied wid mahslef no mo'" (Hurston 192).  She want's the love affair that Janie had, and she appears jealous of the fun nature of Janie and Tea Cake's relationship, though she wholeheartedly disapproved of him--and his fun care-free ways--earlier on.

Phoebe leaves Janie's presence at that point, in the middle of the night, to go fishing with Sam.  Her nonchalant attitude about leaving Janie to go do that shows just how much the culture of the town has changed.  When Janie goes with Tea Cake early on in their relationship to go fishing at night, "[S]he felt like a child breaking rules...Then she had to smuggle Tea Cake out by the back gate and that made it seem like some great secret she was keeping from the town" (Hurston 102).  Granted, Sam is no Tea Cake, he seems respected by pretty much everyone, but still, where before it would have been a huge scandal, by the end of the novel it isn't something needing to be hidden at all.  While Tea Cake may not have physically impacted the town any where near as much as Joe Starks did, in terms of social change, he may have done even more than the great Mayor Starks in all his years in Eatonville.

A statue I found while in
 Chicago last weekend

I know it's kind of late to still be discussing Invisible Man, but on my trip to Chicago this past weekend I went to my uncles' house.  They live on the second floor of a building, and the owner of the building lives on the first floor.  She is my uncle's (a different one's) mom, and over the years we've become friendly.  For the first time I noticed this statue thing (I couldn't find anything closely resembling it in size or design on the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, though I suspect it is part of the lawn jockey category) this trip, with it sitting right at eye level as you walk in the stairwell, in front of her back door.  She is an old white lady who I've never heard say anything racist, or do anything racist.  So the question remains, why does she have it, and especially in such a prominent location?  

I suppose she comes from a time where images like this were, for many, not even a statement about their views on people, but instead just normal trinkets to pick up from somewhere.  Maybe in the 50's that would be an acceptable answer, but nowadays, I would think everyone knows how racist and unfair these images are.  Maybe her reasoning behind keeping the statue out were the same as Mary's.  She wants to hold onto her past, and objects like this (or the bank in Mary's case) are a reminder of her past.  But there isn't any contradiction to her though, because unlike Mary, she doesn't actively push for equal rights, nor does she let others live in her home rent free.  Maybe she is just an old woman who doesn't even remember its there, and means nothing by it.   But even if she doesn't mean anything by it, what does it say about our society that statues like this are still in found in everyday life, have we really not come any further than Mary Rambo of the 30's?     

Do you see it now?

In class today, we were asked how we interpreted the last sentence of Invisible Man, "Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?" (Ellison 581).  When I first read the end I wasn't sure what it meant.  During the writing time in class today, I still wasn't sure how I felt about it.  Then we began discussing it as a class, there wasn't a consensus, but most people seemed to be leaning towards a warning to the reader, or some kind of advice to us.  I began to agree with a version of what other people were saying until the very end of class when a completely different interpretation popped into my head.  The more I tried to reason out why it didn't make sense (and even as I write this I'm still not sure it completely does), the more it took hold in my mind and wouldn't let me push it away.  The last line isn't a warning but instead a challenge.  It's asking us if we really understood the story we just finished reading.  Because if we did, then we should reject it what the author has been telling us.

The narrator's entire story is told to us in first person, with no physical descriptions of the narrator beyond a few passing comments here and there.  This allows us to experience the events of his life first hand as if we ourselves experienced them.  We are given a new identity, much like the narrator is by Jack, by the author.  It's just written down on a piece of paper (his book) for us, and thrust into our waiting hands.  We are given ideological arguments about humanity and society and expected to publicly endorse them to others around us, both to people who have read the material and those who haven't.  Meanwhile, like Jack writing his pamphlets in his industrial hole downtown surrounded by believers, the author of these ideas is not doing so from reality, but instead in his own secure location where he is never challenged by anyone.  He is not in touch with the world in which we live, instead his ideas only are based on memories of life and reality.  I believed in the author's story of himself.  I didn't see that he was trying to control how we viewed the world around us.  Now I think I do.

This in not to say I've rejected Ralph Ellison's work, in fact I really like Invisible Man, it's by far one of the hardest books I've ever read, but it's also one of the most worthwhile.  Ellison is not the author I have been referring to previously. The author I'm talking about is the older version of the narrator, while he is writing in his hole, the book that spans the course of Ellison's work.  This author is trying to pull our strings, in the same way that Jack tried to control the narrator-the younger version of the author.  So if I've broken the trance of believing in the author, does this make me an invisible man as well or less of one?  Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I may be speaking for you too?

Don't be smart now boy

We all remember the scene at the end of the Battle Royal where the narrator is giving is speech, and after having to repeat the same phrase over and over again he finally slips up and says social equality instead of social responsibility.  The reaction is a generally angry one, but one man speaks directly to him, "We mean to do right by you, but you've got to know your place at all times" (Ellison 31).  Throughout this chapter, all of these men at the Battle Royal have appeared as stereotypical racists of the Jim Crowe south, so I put that little dialogue way back in my mind.  Surely, I thought, the narrator's reaction to the whole night is much more important than one man's reaction.  And so I believed this until I read Chapter 22.

In Chapter 22, the narrator arrives back at his Harlem district office, to find the committee member waiting for him.  Early on in the interrogation of the narrator he describes his use of personal responsibility.  Brother Jack quickly retorts "His personal responsibility...Did I hear him correctly?...This is astounding, where did you get it?" (Ellison 463).  Brother Jack is not happy at the initiative of one of district chiefs, instead he completely turns on the narrator.  He begins mockingly calling him the "great tactician" and from that point forward, with the help of the rest of the committee he attempts to put the narrator in his place.  He orders him to go be indoctrinated by Hambro again, who makes it clear that they have decided to abandon Harlem, or as he puts it "your members will have to be sacrificed" (Ellison 501).  This kind of move could only come from someone as powerful as Jack, so it is just one more way he tries to put the narrator back in his place.

Social equality and personal responsibility may appear to be totally opposing ideas, but the Brotherhood fears individuality, much like the racist Southerners fear organized masses.  To the Brotherhood, one person openly saying he is following his own ideas and not propagating the ideas of the committee, is the ultimate fear, especially by a popular Black figure.  Taken in this context, Jack's reaction is much the same as the Southern racist.  The one place that the narrator thought he could get to the top of, the Brotherhood, is just a Northern manifestation of the culture he fled.  Now not only do we see firm evidence of something we have suspected all along, but the narrator finally realizes it too.  For the first time in his life he understands his current situation, not his past, so he can fight back at the group that has lied to him all along.

Keep America Duped with Liberty Paints

When the Narrator goes to the paint factory, I didn't expect much to happen.  But right when he gets there, with the slogans and the manner in which Mr. MacDuffy treats him, we know he's in for something.  Then the narrator gets to Kimbro.  Kimbro is a busy man, so busy that he, "won't have time to stop and explain everything." (Ellison 199).  He doesn't explain to the Narrator what he is doing, just that he has to do it, and that he has to do it quickly.  The task the Narrator is assigned is to put ten drops of dope into white paint and stir it until it disappears.  Unfortunately for the Narrator, he refills the dropper with the wrong dope, and messes up the product, though Kimbro doesn't catch it the second time.

The metaphors in this scene are quite striking.  Liberty Paint's signature color, Optic White, is supposed to be the whitest white in the world.  Now, something is wrong with it, so to fix it, they must put in a black substance to return it to its natural shine.  But not the wrong black stuff, like what the Narrator accidently does, because then the black stuff will partially overpower the optic white, and you'll be left with an ugly grey.  That black stuff the Narrator took was in fact concentrated remover.  I took this as saying, without people like the Narrator (at this point in his life), the whites couldn't be so  much in control, but if people like the Vet were to be publicized it would totally mess up society.  He would strip away all the infrastructure built up to keep the status qua the same, the whites on top, with the whites choosing which black people can escape share cropping. The only problem is that to most whites, those two types of people appear the same, so much like with the dope, the whites are fearful of whomever they choose to support, because they don't know which one will help cement their place, and which group will remove their hold on power.

The whites don't want that grey tinge, but they also can't see it when it's there.  When Kimbro comes back to check on the Narrator, he only discovers the mistake by, "Smearing his finger over one of the samples. 'This stuff's still wet!'" (Ellison 203).  Yet when he returns a second time, "Holding it close to his face, he ran his fingers over the surface and squinted at the texture. 'That's more like it,' he said. 'That's the way it oughta be.'" (Ellison 205).  The Narrator still notices the grey tinge that transcends the optic white, though Kimbro doesn't see it, or maybe doesn't want to see it.  If that grey is there, he loses money and maybe even his job.  On a broader scale, though people like Dr. Bledsoe exist, that are visible in the world of whites, maybe there are more that aren't spoken of, because the whites are afraid to admit that more black people are near their level, and in turn they aren't the only ones in control.  Or maybe, this is just another reference to invisibility, the black people in power are invisible to whites, there is a part of their mind that just can't or won't allow them to see that grey tinge in society, that they fear so much.  

Is Invisible Man like Shakespeare?

Looking back on the opening few chapters of Invisible Man I now see a similarity to Shakespeare's works.  Since Elizabethan times, most works of fiction don't include a prologue that explains the plot of the work.  In the prologue of Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison doesn't exactly explain what happens to the narrator, in fact he never even tells us the narrator's name.  But, the images and descriptions found in the prologue stuck in my mind as I was reading the first few chapters, and I imagine will continue to until I finish the book.  In this essence I find it similar to Shakespeare.  His prologues also stick in a reader's mind (or listener), and serve as a kind of foreshadowing for the rest of the work.  Though Shakespeare didn't write the protagonist of his play as the speaker of the prologue, while Ellison did, they both serve to create a frame narrative, a story within a story.  In a Shakespearean play, the prologue usually serves as a warning to the audience of what happens to the characters, with the chorus knowing are characters.  Likewise, the speaker of the prologue knows that the subsequent people are characters, understandably so because he is the author of the inner story.  I'm not sure yet if the narrator is cautioning the reader about the experience of the character in his book, but I bet by the end of the book it will be clear whether he was cautioning us or not; who knows, maybe the similarities to Shakespeare will grow.

Who is Wright Protesting?

              Native Son is a protest novel.  In my opinion, any work of art that goes as deep inside such a complex social issue as Native Son does, must be protesting some aspect of that issue.  I would think it impossible to spend such a vast amount of time and thought on a topic to create such a work as Native Son, and have no editorialisation seep into the work.  This is not to say that I believe Wright intended for this to be a protest novel.  He edited his work so heavily as to minimize the amount of direct social commentary. Though the language is subtle, any careful reader can spot what Wright is writing against, and that is thought.
              So far as I can see, Wright is protesting how three groups of people think.  There is the obvious group: the white racists who work the keep African-Americans below them.  Then there is the second group who it can be argued also keep African-Americans down: the rich and charitable.  Finally there is the most unlikely group of the bunch, a group who is actively working to equalize life for all: the Communist Party USA.  Each group thinks differently yet their actions based off those thoughts all result in similar consequences for the people they act upon
              In Native Son, there are few characters who could be described as belonging to the first group mentioned.  Mr. Britten, the PI Mr. Dalton uses, could fit into this category.  Bigger is always wary of him, believing that Britten is always trying to trap him, even when he appears to be focusing on the Communists as the suspects.  He never is an outright racist towards Bigger, yet he is so tightly controlled by Mr. Dalton that there are only glimpses into who is really is.  The only nominal character that is openly racist is D.A. Buckley.  While Bigger is being held in jail before his inquisition, Buckley is unable to fathom that Bigger committed all the crimes on his own, that he was capable of thinking and planning in advance, without a white accomplice.  During the trial, the language Buckley uses to describe Bigger and his use of Bessie's body for evidence show his total lack of respect for African-Americans as human beings.
              Mr. and Mrs. Dalton compose the membership of the second group.  They are very rich but they do give a considerable amount of money to different charities to help the poor.  Their donations of things like ping pong tables, while nice on the surface, only serve as temporary distractions from the harsh world beyond those tables.  The Dalton's don't do anything to try to fix that reality, and in fact Mr Dalton's companies help perpetuate the problems the very people he donates to, must face on a daily basis.  Wright is pointing out that those who feel proud of donating money to buy what are basically distractions are in fact not helping as much as they may want to believe.  The people like the Daltons whom he is criticizing are probably many of the readers, as they probably make up a large portion of Book of the Month Club members, so Wright is taking a big risk in potentially offending them.
               The Communists serve as the members of the last group.  They are probably the only people in Native Son who believe in Bigger's humanity.  Jan even remains loyal to Bigger after he has killed his girlfriend, framed him for the murder, and pointed a gun in his face, an admirable if somewhat strange feeling for him to have.  Max defends Bigger, talks to Bigger more than anyone had up to that point in his life, and connects with him.  Mary associates with Bigger like they are on equal levels, she eats, talks, and drinks with Bigger.  They are all trying to undo a wrong that has happened in some form or another for hundreds of years, but by going about it in the manner in which they do, they merely compound the problem.  The only people hated by the white, rich, and powerful just as much as African-Americans at that time were the Communists.  By defending Bigger, Max is unintentionally helping enrage the court and the public against him, adding his name to the list of condemners, along with Buckley and the thousands of people in and out of the courtroom.  Had Jan and Mary not been so forward, Bigger would probably not have been in the situation where he had to kill Mary.  Though I think Wright supports what the Communists are trying to do, he uses these three characters to show they need to change the way they go about things, so that they don't contribute in reality to what happened in the fictional Native Son.