What has he got in his pocketses?

In chapter 23, the narrator is wondering the streets and uses glasses and a hat as a disguise. After putting the glasses away, he remarks that his “pocket was getting overloaded” (489). He describes that the pocket was being filled with the “leg chain and Clifton’s doll” (489). This line stuck out to me because all three of these objects carry such deep emotional significance. I interpreted them to represent three different levels of freedom (and racism) that he has experienced. However, the pocket serves to conceal them from others. These objects are a physical and emotional burden just like the bank earlier in the book.

The first thing he received while at the brotherhood was the ankle chain from Tarp. This represents maximum physical racial repression that he endured with a weight chained to his leg. The narrator has not experienced something this brutal, but his emotional connection--including a sense of protection--to what it represents is evident (did I use the em dash correctly?). There is clearly no free represented here. The second item is the doll that Clifton was selling before he got shot. This dolls, as discussed in class, carries many metaphors including a parallel to his work in the brotherhood as being controlled by invisible strings. This character demonstrates a little more freedom, and even appears to dance. However its brutal racism is still blatant. The most recent item to be added to his picket are the glasses that he is using as a disguise on the street. These glasses go beyond disguise, however; the narrator begins to realize that they provide to him the power of invisibility. He immediately is recognized as a man who is succeeding at being invisible. This invisibility, not yet clearly defined by the narrator, is very hard to pin down, but the role of theses glasses give the reader some indication in this chapter. The invisibility gained by donning the glasses is far beyond that represented by the other objects. The narrator carries all of these parts of him everywhere he goes and he is starting to become “overloaded” (489).

Two bosses, Lots of Hate

In chapter 10 of Invisible Man, an important chapter for a variety of reasons, there is a definite turning point in the narrator’s treatment of authority. Up to this point, he has been very subservient and excepting with his first major outrage coming from the realization falsification of the letter in the previous chapter.

He has very similar feelings about the two bosses that are assigned to him in the chapter, however, his actions are very different. His mental abuse of Kimbro and later physical abuse of Brockway both show the transition in his character.

The first man who assumes power of the narrator in the pain factory is Kimbro, who in initially described to the narrator as “terrible” (194) by a co-worker and the narrator’s opinion gets steadily worse.. Throughout his time with Kimbro, the narrator thinks very poorly of the man. He quickly questions the motives of this man, wondering if he was “trying to kid me?” (195). The anger felt toward Kimbro is deeper than his anger with Bledsoe in their confrontation. The narrator curses Kibro with words like: “flunkey, a northern redneck, a Yankee cracker” (196). His contempt for the authority is evident when he considers “writing the owners” (202) to complain about his treatment.

After being given a new boss, the narrator immediately appears to have no respect for the man. His first confrontation with the man resulted in him turning up the stairs. He goes on to continually be wary of Brockway and wonders how such a figure could earn such power. What sets apart the narrator’s reaction with Brockway from that of Kimbro is the physical actions of the narrator. When threatened, the narrator, “throwing myself forward” (221), fought instead of running out of the basement.

The beating up of this frail man shows a strong connection to the scene in the prologue where the narrator beats up a random man in the street. The progression from submissiveness to ‘invisibility’ is very evident with two steps in his rejection of authority being indicated in this chapter.

When No One Else Ever Cared

We studied “The Rose that Grew from the Concrete”, written by Tupac Shakur in class and I was taken by the last line. It reads: “when no one else ever cared”; it does not have enough context to explain all of the implied elements such as the object of the caring. This ambiguity was frustrating at first, but I have discovered that is able represent multiple relevant social issues, all of which can be explained through the context of Bigger Thomas. He represents the flowers that never made it through the concrete.

The first interpretation is that nobody ever cared about or noticed what the flower was doing until it got out. The flower had to go through the process of “proving nature’s law is wrong” before ever being noticed. The people that are referenced as “caring” would be the rich or white people because that is what the concrete represented. For Bigger, none of these people ever noticed him until he made his crack in the concrete (though he never blossomed). He was nobody to the white people in his society.

To take the word more literally, it could mean that no one ever cared for and helped the flower grow. The poem describes it as not “having feet” and learning by itself; the feet are the foundation provided by others that it never had when oppressed. Bigger feels very hopeless in this regard. He reminisces on how his ambition was stripped from him.

Lastly, the subject of the caring might be the all of the suppressed people. This flower was the only one “to breathe fresh air”. all of the others did not even care to try. They were lacking all ambition to accomplish something great beyond what the suppressors allowed them. Bigger Thomas was one of those that did not care and his friends never had plan to even try to escape their situation. Only after the first murder did bigger start to care.

I believe that any of these interpretations are possible, backed by the rest of the poem. For me, the last line of a poem is the most important and this one is masterfully constructed. The ambiguity that I once did not understand, I now venerate.

Free will in Native Son

The central motive and conflict in Native Son is discrepancies in free will. Throughout the novel, Bigger Thomas’ free will is suppressed and he feels cornered by the white people, who have ultimate freedom. The perception of such freedom is largely dictated by propaganda from both sides. The scenario involving no free will is demonstrated in one of the opening scenes in which Bigger hunts a rat who has entered the apartment. It, like Bigger, lacks any opportunity to do anything beyond flee its pursuer.

There are multiple levels of free will in Chicago in the 1940’s. Each character is defined by how much control they have over their life and their happiness based on how much freedom they perceive to have obtained. Mary and Jan represent the white youth and they exercise excessive free will. Mary is able to enter into black society simply because she feels like seeing what it is like. She is a very happy and carefree character because she finds joy in doing whatever she please, especially when she blatantly disobeys her father. Youth in white society were also told that they could do anything they wished in their life by their parents. On the other hand, Bigger feels as though he has no ability to achieve. He describes how the white people have both physically forced them “to live in one corner of the city” and did not allow them to “fly planes or run ships” (23). This crushed all ambition for Bigger and thus made him depressed. Additionally, he does not have the freedom to visit white society in any capacity beyond service (a role inherently lacking free will). This one sided nature of society is shown bluntly by the sign depicting the political candidate who symbolized the weighted voting with the slogan: you cannot win written on it. However, in the novel, Bessie is a character that had even less freedom than bigger. He ordered her around and dragged her into the crime. After doing so, Bigger posses all power over her as he rapes and kills her. This demonstrates that gender can diminish one’s opportunity even further.

Because of all the oppression, Bigger wants “anything” (23) interesting to happen in his life to make it meaningful. For example, he admires Hitler, without consideration for morality, simply because he has accomplished something great with his people. Therefore, when he is running away from the white people after he has murdered, he feels the peak of freedom. Bigger feels a sense of twisted happiness when he realized he has accomplished something, even though it is bad. Additionally, during his time in jail, he takes responsibility for the murder that was considered an accident by him and the reader up to this point. This is because “he had never given himself wholeheartedly to anyone or anything, except murder” (383). During the confession, he feels an amount of pride in his actions because he himself did them.