Ethan Roberts

Does the narrator in “Invisible Man” have total autonomy in his life? This is a very loaded question, so I want to analyze the narrator’s role throughout the book, up to what we have read so far (chapter 12). Very quickly we learn that the narrator is not taken seriously by white people -- think back to when the narrator was trying to give his speech, but he was met with inattentive ears -- but rather as a tool for their own entertainment. While the narrator doesn’t realize this, it is painfully clear to the reader that he is only a cog in the machine, going where they want him to go, doing what they want him to do. Moving on to the narrator’s life in college, we get an in depth view on what the narrator ‘is supposed to do’, his path, per se. When he takes Mr. Norton for a drive through some of the lesser known parts of campus, he receives a sharp correction from Mr. Bledsoe, explicitly telling him to strictly follow the predefined path. As a result, the narrator is shipped off to Ne...

In Richard Wright's Native Son, a primary aspect of Bigger's journey/life/story is how he interacts with white people and vice versa. Thinking about it, I can hardly think of any interactions between Bigger and a white person that can be considered 'normal'. The white people are either talking down to him condescendingly, taking advantage of him, or treating him like a novelty, with one possible exception (I'll get to that lat er) At first, it may be easy to discount this question with 'Well, they're just racist', and sure, many of the white characters in the book are unequivocally racist (namely all the police, people in the justice system, politicians, etc.), but what about the characters that are apparently not racist (or at least openly racist), even 'anti-racist'? Let's think about Mr. Dalton; while it may seem like he was just Bigger's employer, something wasn't completely right about him. He felt the need to prove that he wasn...