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The Invisible Man
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1 comment:
Ellison uses metaphor in chapter 1. The black boys are blindfolded and made to fight in a ring, resulting in mass chaos. This takes away from the individuality of the boys and portrays them as animals forced to fight for the entertainment of a more “supreme” class. They are forced to conform to the stereotype that black men are violent, savage, and oversexed beasts. Their blindfolds demonstrate their inability to see beyond the masks of the white men, to see the racism that they truly feel.
Irony is also prevalent. The narrator is forced to fight like an animal, and then give an eloquent speech for which his slip-up is strongly criticized and his entire speech is laughed at, and finally he is given a scholarship and a briefcase. The men’s instruction to the narrator to consider the briefcase a “badge of office” is ironic, in that such a badge normally constitutes an insignia or emblem denoting a person’s job, position, or membership in a group. However, the only “office” that the narrator has assumed is that of the good slave, an “office” that the white men have forced upon him. The white men take on the violent and barbaric nature by forcing the men to fight then “rewarding” with coins strewn upon and electrified rug.
-michele
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