I remember when we first started talking about Native Son in class and how everyone, me included, started complaining about how much they didn't like Bigger Thomas. Now, three chapters into Invisible Man, I'm finding this narrator even harder to sympathize with.
Maybe I should use a term like 'understand' or 'identify with' instead of sympathize. Sympathize seems to express more approval than the other terms, and while I can understand and identify with Bigger Thomas, I cannot approve of him.
Bigger is easy to understand because he is motivated by feelings we all have. He is at first motivated by fear, and by extension anger and shame. He has this idea to rob Blum's store, but "Bigger was afraid of robbing a white man and he knew Gus was afraid, too" (28). He is ashamed and angry at his fear so to rationalize it he he became mad at Gus. "Toward the lone man who held out he felt a hot hate and fear; he had transferred his fear of the whites to Gus...he feared Gus because he felt that Gus would consent and he would be compelled to go through with the robbery" (28). He beats up Gus, hoping that this macho act would cover up for his fear. As a reader, I certainly do not approve of his actions, but I can see where he is coming from. Later he becomes motivated by flight, meaning he will do anything to get away. This too is understandable. Finally he has this feeling of fate, which is also understandable. Throughout the book, Bigger Thomas is easy to understand and identify with even when he is hard to like.
The narrator in Invisible Man is just as hard to like and a lot harder to understand. (I should make a clarification here, I am talking about the narrator starting in chapter 1. I really liked the narrator in the prologue.) While Bigger is motivated by fear and shame, it's hard to figure out what the narrator is motivated by. Bigger gets angry at his mistreatment, but the narrator is not at all upset.
His humility is not only hard to believe, it makes me upset. When he has only "misgivings" about having to fight a boxing match before giving a speech, and that only because he"didn't care too much for the other fellows" (21) it angers me as a reader. When, despite the fight and the electrocuted rug, he is "overjoyed" (34) at the end of the night, I find it hard to identify with him, hard to like him. Why does he just take it like that? And it's not just an act he puts up for white people, he believes it himself (or else he is lying to himself as well).Why isn't he angry and bitter like Bigger Thomas?
I never would have thought I wished a character was more like Bigger Thomas, but I do.
Your clarification in the final paragraph is a crucial one: with the prologue in mind, we know that our narrator will (thankfully) not remain in this utterly credulous, naive state. What we see at this point is a young man who believes entirely in a screwed-up system--and as a result, he seems entirely screwed up. But stay tuned--this state doesn't last forever. Now, whether or not his transformation moves you closer to "sympathy" or "understanding" is another story . . .
ReplyDeleteI actually ended up spending a good chunk of time thinking and discussing the Narrator starting in chapter 1. It seems to me that his demeanor is confusing but not totally unbelievable as you say. He tells that his grandfather (if we ignore his dying words) was deferential and meek, and that he was generally liked in the community. Growing up in a community being taught that the only way to get ahead was to do exactly as the white folks wanted you to, while simultaneously being fed a white supremacy spiel by many of the authority figures outside of his home life he could easily become the naive high school graduate in chapter 1 who believes what he says in his valedictorian speech.
ReplyDeleteI think the point you make is a valid and good one: but I think there is one crucial difference. With Bigger Thomas, we get to see him interact with his close friends and family, which we do not for the Narrator in ch. 1. The scene that strikes me is, of course, the airplane scene, where Bigger comes out of his shell a bit and is able to reveal his inner feelings to his close friend (because his friend is in the same circumstances). It is a private and secretive discussion meant only for the two young boys' ears, but we, as readers get the opportunity to listen in. With the Narrator, the only setting we have seen him in is the chaotic, dangerous "town meeting", where the other boys in his presence are not particularly close friends of his. Maybe, if there was an "airplane scene" of sorts with the Narrator in _Invisible Man_, we would have glimpsed the same vulnerability and unhappiness from the Narrator. Maybe we still will, in chapters to come.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that you feel a sense of anger towards the narrator, which is accompanied by your dislike of him. I too feel a strong dislike for this character who just keeps on taking the blows that people throw at him, and sends nothing back. No body likes to see another person being humiliated in the ways that he has been, and perhaps if I didn't know what kind of a character the narrator ends up as, I too would feel anger at how he lets others treat him. For me, however, I'm coming to find a certain humor and enjoyment in seeing these ridiculous thing happen to him. Not because I would ever wish these things upon him, but because I know exactly what these events turn him in to. I don't feel a sense of anger towards the narrator because of his humility. If anything I hunger to see these events happen because I know that it's these events that are going to shape him into the witty sarcastic human being we see in the prologue. I think, however, that our reactions to the narrator in the early parts of the book are closely tied to one another.
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