In this poem “Little Annie’s Ramble” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author wants to tell his
readers and audiences that in today’s society, people as they growing up and getting older, they
behave in strange way by forgetting were also a child. The author used imagery as theme to
develop his passage where he states that “None but myself and little Annie, whose feet begin to
move in unison with the lively tune, as if she were loth that music should be wasted without a
dance. But where would Annie find a partner? Some have the gout in their toes, or the
rheumatism in their joints; some are stiff with age; some feeble with disease.” This demonstrate
that the little girl was enjoying her time by moving and dancing. She wish she had someone who
could joined her, unfortunately, it didn’t happen because she was surrounded of older people
who were in a bad living and health condition.
Racism behind Invisibility
“I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids — and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination — indeed, everything and anything except me.”
In the “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison, we can already can see the central struggle of the novel. The narrator begins the prologue by introducing himself as invisible.”I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me,” not that it is one of his superpowers, nor is it due to accident, but because people in society ignore him because of the color of his skin. With this the narrator explains to the reader that this invisibility duos as an advantage yet a disadvantage. Yes, he doesn’t have to deal with other people’s problems and ordeals yet he aches to be seen and treated with respect his peers. The narrator write this prologue without ever saying his name. In doing so, the narrator is using his invisible as an advantage, to freely speak his mind without having to risk the consequences. His identity is even hid to the reader that he is confessing all of his feelings too.
The narrator realizes that the reason he is invisible to white people is because he is black, therefore, he describes them as blind. Stereotypes play a huge role in the setting of the novel. This is during postwar America in which whites viewed blacks in a certain light, as untrustworthy, muggers, etc. The narrator does not like how there are multiple identities given to him due to the color of his skin. Instead of his individuality, his qualities, his personality, people see him as something entirely different. This is seemingly difficult for the narrator as it doesn’t allow him to put his best foot forward in situations. This makes the narrator struggle with how others perceive him as well as how he perceives himself. This explains racism as a whole in itself, as those that are affected can relate to how stereotypes are used to describe them as a person.
What Did I Do To Be So Blue?
Ralph Ellison’s first-person narrative in monologue form reveals the pains black people were suffering in American society over half a century ago.
When I finished absorbing the last sentence of this article, there was a voice ringing in my head as though hearing a sorrow tune in the distance… “What did I do to be so black and blue…” A deep sense of compassion overwhelmed me and I quickly flipped back to the first page and restart from the very beginning.
Ellison first introduces the main character in the first-person, who laments his invisibility to the white “sleep-walkers” of society. He tells a tale about how he almost killed a “sleep-walking” man on the street after the man blindly cursed him, even after being severely beaten. The narrator uses the metaphor of invisibility stating that this maltreatment towards black people is not because they are born invisible, it’s because they are born into a society that chooses not to see them.
As Ellison portrays in his work, what triggered this almost-murder is the insults the “tall blond man” shot at the invisible man. The white man was blind to the harm he did to the invisible man and kept cursing at him, although a simple solution would have been a sincere apology. Synonymous words to “invisible” repeatedly appeared in this passage, including the blind, unseen, and formless. These words emphasized the discrimination black people were subjected to and the extreme illness of a society at that point. Through the vivid depiction of the invisible man’s thoughts after the incident, readers finally understood the significance of “blue” in his sorrowful song. “I was both disgusted and ashamed. I was like a drunken man myself…Then I was amused.” Beating someone within an inch of his life and the yet absolute refusal of the sleepwalker to apologize hit the invisible man with a stark reality: “Would he have awakened at the point of death?” He would forever remain invisible.
Living in Invisibility
- “I say this to assure you that it is incorrect to assume that, because I’m invisible and live in a hole, I am dead” (Ellison 6)
- “I am one of the most irresponsible beings that ever lived. Irresponsibility is part of my invisibility…to whom can I be responsible, and why should I be, when you refuse to see me?” (Ellison 14)
Using the archaeological dig for The Invisible Man, I first want to say that at first it was difficult for me to see what invisibility actually was. After reading thoroughly through the pages, I then began to realize connections with racism. “Invisibility” is just a metaphor for being an African-American in society.
“I say this to assure you that it is incorrect to assume that, because I’m invisible and live in a hole, I am dead.” (Ellison 6) This quote stuck out to me, because the first time I read this passage, I truly felt as if maybe he was dead, or it was a metaphor for freedom or another idea. He lives as an invisible man, but not like a ghost. This got me thinking. Is he not dead? If he is not dead then what is this story? In the first paragraph Ellison states “when they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments or their imagination–indeed, everything and anything except me,” (Ellison 3). Reading this at first, I immediately assumed that the invisible man was actually a metaphor. The first few pages, I went in thinking that this was a non-existing thing, until I reached the quote assuring me that he was a living being.
“I am one of the most irresponsible beings that ever lived. Irresponsibility is part of my invisibility…to whom can I be responsible, and why should I be, when you refuse to see me?” (Ellison 14) After reading the first quote and beginning to switch up my angle of what the invisible man is, I began to see the connection with racism. His connection to Luis Armstrong, where he’s asking similar questions and implying the struggles that they are both invisible, but Luis Armstrong just doesn’t know it. I asked myself, what does the narrator and Luis Armstrong have in common? The break down of Luis Armstrong’s music and what the narrator felt from it really is what gave me the answer to who is the invisible man. The quote about irresponsibility was a strong one. When reading it, I felt why he chose to be invisible, rather than allow people to make him invisible. He knows what he is doing is wrong, but if he is going to be treated like less than a person, like an invisible man, then he will take the advantages that come with it, such as being irresponsible. To agree that he is irresponsible, we are assuring him that he is invisible, because to him responsibility comes from being seen.
Invisibility and Responsibility
Early on in Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man”, the story is kind of dark. The narrator introduces himself as the invisible man. “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me” (Ellison,1). In the first paragraph he kind of makes you wonder what he means by this, is it literal or figurative?
“Irresponsibility Is part of my invisibility; any way you face it, it is a denial” (Ellison,14). The man feels that since he has been perceived as invisible throughout his life by people up until this point, that he can continue to be in this state of denial that he is visible. “Whom can I be responsible, and why should I be, when you refuse to see me?” (Ellison,14), here again the man illustrates that since society refuses to see him as a person he shouldn’t be held responsible for his actions. “Responsibility rests upon recognition. Take the man who I almost killed: Who was responsible for that near Murder-I?? I don’t think so, and I refuse it.”(Ellison,14). Again, he believes that since the man bumped into him, and insulted him, the man should have recognized the invisible man’s “danger potential”.
“All dreamers and sleepwalkers must pay the price, and even the invisible victim is responsible for the fate of all” (Ellison,14). Towards the end, though, he feels a sense of accountability for the isolated life he’s been living and ultimately calls himself a coward. “But what did I do to be so blue?”
Emotions Behind Invisibility
The narrator begins introducing himself as an “invisible man”. Behind the title he gives himself, lies an emotional distress. He mentions, “It’s when you feel like this that, out of resentment, you begin to bump people back. And, let me confess, you feel that way most of the time. You ache with the need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world, that you’re a part of all sound and anguish, and you strike out with your fists, you curse and you swear to make them recognize you. And, alas, it’s seldom successful.” (Ellison 4) Words such as ache, strike out, curse, swear, and seldom all relate to negative energy of emotions. There is no way that the narrator is saying it happily since he also states the need to reassure his own existence. Moreover, a person who isn’t in an emotional disarray is unlikely to carry out actions like bumping others back or attacking someone else like he had done to the tall, blond man in the dark. Having not received the apology he seeks for after being called an insulting name, he resorts to an emotional outburst. “And in outrage I got out my knife and prepared to slit his throat…” (Ellison 4) Had he been okay with the fact that he wasn’t noticed by others and is just invisible, he neither would have kept a knife in his pocket nor used it out of anger.
In contrast, he diverts his misery and validates his presence through his desire for light by commenting, “Light confirms my reality, gives birth to my form.” (Ellison 6) It is obvious that the narrator is unhappy of how he fits in among society as a different race. Since he feels that he is unseen without light, he steals electricity from Monopolated Light & Power to wire 1,369 bulbs in his underground home. From this instance, it can observed that wiring a significant amount of light bulbs stems from being in a negative mood, the urge to deny that he is nonexistent. If a person in a healthy emotional state is using electricity solely for the purpose of having his or her room to be lit up, he or she would assemble only a few. Therefore, being socially unaccepted influences emotional reactions.
Through enLIGHTenment You Will Find Yourself
“And I stopped the blade, slicing the air as I pushed him away, letting him fall back to the street. I stared at him hard as the lights of a car stabbed through the darkness… a man almost killed by a phantom,” (Ellison, 4)
“My hole is warm and full of light. Yes, full of light. I doubt if there is a brighter spot in all New York than this hole of mine” (Ellison, 6)
The prologue of any literary piece serves primarily as an introduction to the themes and ideas to come in the book. In the case of “Invisible Man”, the prologue introduces many of the themes to follow in Ellison’s book. The narrator of this prologue as we come to find is black. He is invisible to the inner eye of whites because of their preconceived notions of who he is and as a result he is invisible. The narrator is not a true human being in the eyes of their society, and Ellison tries to highlight this struggle African-Americans have in this search for their identity and individuality. The theme of light as seen in these two passages of the prologue is used to try to connect the idea of light to the narrator’s sense of identity. As he states, “The truth is the light and the light is the truth” (Ellison, 7). Just as the narrator is about to kill a blond man, as he calls himself a phantom rather than a man as he is doing so. Then, as a car’s lights shine through the darkness at him, he is given an identity and his reality is reinforced that he is a human being. This idea of light that he fills his new home with that he is stealing from the ‘white’ power source, is associated with knowledge. This idea of light could also be connected to this process of enlightenment the narrator is going through as he is finding his individuality and identity.
The narrator is searching for an identity in a world that puts him in the shadows, and this theme of light is a symbol of his finding individuality in a society that doesn’t see it in him.
Living in the Dark and Light of the Society
When interacted with other people, the Invisible Man maintains a negative and dark aroma around himself. But when alone, he lives in light. The darkness symbolizes eeriness and danger. Walking through the dark, it is understood to walk with fear and uncertainness of what is to happen next. While the light symbolizes purity and freedom. The light gives a sense of security and alertness that isn’t available in the dark. We soon learn that the Invisible Man is in fact a black man. One dark night, the invisible man was approached by a man that called insulting names towards the Invisible Man. Throughout the fight, the night was dark and had no trace of lightness. The Invisible Man kicked him repeatedly and prepared to slit his throat. At that moment, the slightest streak of light from a car stabbed through the darkness. With the slightest streak of lightness, the fighting stopped and the man was free, just like the fight never happened. The light confirms his reality, the fact that he is in fact nothing supernatural. The light symbols the white society, and how they reject him as a person due to the color of his skin. The author uses the symbols of light and dark by portraying good and bad of the different races.
The Invisible Man is nothing supernatural. He is a man of substance, flesh and bone, and possess a mind. In the world that he lives in, he is simply invisible to those who refuse to see him based on the color of his skin. Only one can become invisible if others refuse not to see him. This begins a recurring idea of blindness. The blindness of the Invisible Man shows how people willfully avoid being able to see the truth and accept his race. In this society, “That invisibility to which I refer occurs because of a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those with whom I come in contact.” (Ellison, 3). This can be related into todays society, the constant struggle of #BlackLivesMatter. African Americans are constantly portrayed by the color of their skin instead of how they are. Today, people clutch their purses a little tighter and lock their car doors when African Americans are within sight.
Racism = Invisibility
“I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids — and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination — indeed, everything and anything except me.”
In “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison, I used the archaeological dig close reading method to analyze the first paragraph of the prologue.
Without giving a name, the narrator introduced himself as an “invisible man.” (Ellison 1) But he told us he is not a ghost or anything supernatural, “No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms.” (Ellison 1) He is an actual human being with “flesh and bone, fiber and liquids.” (Ellison 1) He explains that his ability to be invisible is because people refused to notice him. When the narrator said, “When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination — indeed, everything.” (Ellison 1) This suggests that people are able to see him, but they choose not to acknowledge him.
Taking a closer look into introduction, we can figure out the narrator is a human, a black man. The major theme of “Invisible Man,” is about racism. The metaphor of invisibility demonstrates the effects of racism on the victims. Because the narrator is black, the “white people” refuse to see him as an actual person. Therefore, the narrator characterizes himself as invisible. The narrator struggles with how people perceive him and also how he perceives himself. The word “invisibility” is frequently used because it expresses how victims of racism feel when they are the minority. And the majorities are blind and cannot see the minorities because they can only see the surroundings.
The Mirror of The Adults
” As the pure breath of children revives the life of aged men, so is our moral nature revived by their free and simple thoughts, their native feeling, their airy mirth, for little cause or none, their grief, soon roused and soon allayed. “
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s sweet little tale took us on an interesting journey back to 19th century where a black-clad gentleman spent hours rambling with a five-year-old, whom this black-clad gentleman intimately addressed as Little Annie. They strolled through the sweet-shop, the toy shop, the bookstore, street by street, and they toured the circus where they’ve got to observe the same-self wolf, a hyena from Egypt, a bear of sentiment, two unsentimental monkeys that are called “queer little brutes”, and a “ridable” pony. Then they heard the town criers again, who announces that a little girl has strayed from home. The black-clad gentleman then realized his failure to inform little Annie’s mom that he was gonna take her on a ramble. On their way home, the black-clad gentleman reflected their journey and felt as if “after drinking from those fountains of still fresh existence”, which helped him “return to the world” and “do his part in life.”
Some vocabularies that repeatedly appeared in this text: weary, childhood, children, child, ramble, hand. Kept in mind these several words, I got to construct a picture in my head where there are only that black-clad gentleman who came off a little bizarre and the sinless little girl Annie with the purest spirit exist in the remote world. By stressing the youth, the purest heart of Annie and her motions and expressions, the contrast between the adult and the child becomes sharp, which appeared to be a little bit awkward to me at the beginning of his narrative. As their journey progressed, I imagined myself marching on with them side by side while they are wandering hand in hand. The inharmony between the two figures, Annie and the ‘creep’ adult who desperately craves for hanging out with a little girl, slowly disappeared. Then here lies, instead, a purely platonic relationship between the two beings, from which I perceive them as two spirits from the same body encountered when they are at different stages. The journey serves as a mirror that allows the adult to reunite with the old self with the same pure breath of little Annie.