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?
I find this argument very interesting, but I wonder what motive the author/older narrator could have for tinkering with the way we think about the world. With Jack, it's fairly obvious. He wants his Brotherhood movement to be spread and to eventually change the course of history. With the author I'm not too sure. If he is advocating for everyone to retreat from society and go underground, it would defeat the point because everyone would go underground and there could be no escaping the rest of society. Maybe I just haven't been disillusioned from the author yer, but I just can't see the motive.
ReplyDeleteEarlier in the book he mentions the idea of creating a splinter movement from the Brotherhood, but that, "Nor were there time or theorists available to work out an over-all program of our own" (Ellison 510). Maybe the book is his first pamphlet, and as a means of joining his movement and becoming a leading thinker you have to go underground from society, much in the way that Jack says, "Some of our best ideas were thought in prison" (Ellison 469). By creating a successful movement he could really spite the Brotherhood, and he could become a Founder like figure, who he had earlier in his life aspired to be.
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