Year 12 IB Extended Essays 2018

Anonymity is applied to all African Americans in the setting of the novel, mainly by contrasting the behaviours and actions of whites and blacks.

In Invisible Man , Ellison explores African American culture as it has evolved under white oppression. Ellison breaks down traditions to show the fragmented African American consciousness and then reconstructs the pieces in an attempt to define the African American identity. By focusing on three major scenes in the novel: the ‘battle royal’, the narrator’s speech following the battle royal, and the narrator’s encounter with a ‘Sambo’ puppet, one can see how all African Americans as a race were assigned an identity by their racial counterpart of white society. The ‘battle royal’ begins when ten African American boys are forced to watch a naked white woman’s sensual dance. The experience is humiliating, and they do not know whether to watch or hide, yet they are demanded to watch by the whites in the room. Ellison, here, points out the contrasting roles white men place on African Americans: on one hand, they are meant to conform to societal values, on the other hand, they have been forced to perform against those values. The narrator had felt “a wave of irrational guilt and fear” and he was strongly attracted and looked in spite of (himself)” (pg 18). Continuing, the men are then forced to fight each other, dive on the floor scrambling for loose money, and are treated as animals by the white male viewers. The events of this battle royal reveal the way in which members of the black community are perceived by whites: at best, they are a source of cruel amusement. The white men would yell for them to beat each other senseless, “slug him, black boy! Knock his guts out!” (pg.23), which the white men yelled for the entertainment of watching. Having to adhere to this stereotype is what strips African American men of their individual identities, as they must act and be treated as what the white society view them as. Therefore, all African Americans, not just the narrator, struggle to establish their own identity, as they are forced to adhere to the values their racial counterparts assign them. Directly after the ‘battle royal’, comes the narrator’s speech he was to give to the town’s leading white citizens. However, after having to participate in the battle royal, the narrator’s speech is seen to be an afterthought, as the narrator is struggling to speak and bloodied in the face. “(The narrator) spoke even louder in spite of the pain. But still they talked and still they laughed, as though deaf with cotton in dirty ears” (pg.30). There is irony in the words of the speech which suggest cooperation between the white and black communities with the metaphor of “casting down your bucket” (pg.29) which is a metaphor for white society to aid black society by giving a helping hand to help them to more successful lives in America. However, it is unclear how this can occur when black people like the narrator are so obviously mistreated by the men in the room. Whenever the narrator uttered a word of three of more syllables a group of voices would “yell for (the narrator) to repeat it” (pg.30). The consequence of the white audience laughing and ridiculing his speech is an overt way of symbolizing anonymity of blacks, as the perpetrators laugh only because the narrator is black, and not because of the contents of his speech. Regardless of how persuasive or powerful his speech may have been, the white

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