Monday, September 17, 2018
Who are you speaking for?
After the narrator experiences the happenings in the "Factory Hospital", we get a sense that he's back at square one. And up until he meets the man selling the yams, this is essentially the case. However, we still see a shadow of his pre-operation self in the beginnings of his speech to the mob. What is interesting is that during the course of the narrator's speech, you can see his change in mentality as the tone of the speech changes. It goes from "law-abiding" citizen to essentially f*** the police. This change isn't a product of his own doing, but it seems like it was brought about through the consistent pestering of the crowd. In the narrator's efforts to move this crowd to take some form of action, he listened to their words and essentially allowed himself to be affect by this mob mentality, becoming their voice. I think this may be because of his lack of own personality at the hands of the factory-hospital. Whatever the case, I think this speech is a good example of the narrator being affected by his environment. Or maybe the narrator had his complacent personality erased and now wants revenge against the authority?
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Good post! I also wanted to bring up that after "the surgery," the doctors say that our narrator has been "fixed." As if before the procedure, there was something wrong with him. I believe this something to be the same thing you described above: a law abiding citizen. It was interesting what you said about how the mob persuaded our narrator to change his character. I think it may be the combination of starting a new life in this city as well as the mob's ideas.
ReplyDeleteI think what you mentioned about whether the speech is him being effected by his environment an interesting comparison point for looking at Invisible Man compared to Native Son. How much is Ellison arguing for naturalism. How does the narrator come to his realization of invisibility? You propose that maybe it's because he essentially gets his personality wiped. How is this narrator different from Bigger in this way? I've left more questions than a comment, but thanks for the awesome blog post!
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