Saturday, November 04, 2006

Invisible Man

The first chapter of Invisible Man
A beautiful piece that evoked a lot of emotions in me! I think it was beautifully written highlighting human tendencies. I was particularly fascinated by what the grandfather said on his death bed. The narrator doesn’t talk any further about his grandfather and his life but I think what the grandfather meant by this was when your oppressor is very powerful, then it’s wise to go along with him and win his confidence, get into their good books and do your job of educating the masses clandestinely and no one would ever doubt you for that. He was a spy but no one noticed that as he seemed to be so meek. Resisting violently or openly against people who have much more power is not always a wise decision. This reminds me of the presentation that I attended yesterday on Israeli-Palestinian issue. The speaker said one thing that probably I’ll never forget. She said that for the common Palestinians living in the occupied land, “Existence is Resistance.” When you are living under powerful people, who consider you to be an unwanted element, then asserting your right to exist by doing nothing but continuing staying there is a powerful way to resist their oppression.
This piece filled me with disgust. I am not sure against whom- The white southerners who treated African Americans as animals or the black narrator who went through this entire thing still feeling like a winner. This entire “battle royal” thing did not change his attitude towards the “white southerners”, well not in the first chapter at least, I don’t know about the rest of the book. This was why I was literally filled with anger against him and though he was so badly hurt, he gathered no sympathy from me. As I think further, I realize that people who have been oppressed all through their lives develop immunity to oppression and they stop reacting to it altogether. The narrator is a part of the society that has been historically oppressed in this country. Therefore he accepted that what we in today’s world cannot accept. This is the extent to which I am ready to understand things from his perspective. How can he not have any resentment against people who treated him so badly? He was so openly humiliated and what was the reward? A scholarship in an all black college! I don’t know if this is a real story. I hope it is not. Because I would have a hard time accepting the fact that people of his kind exist in the world. People might not openly go against people who humiliate them and treat them like animals, but they would surely develop strong resentment against them. The complete lack of any such feelings just made me hate his character. In fact the narrator was grateful to those guys for giving him the scholarship!
I couldn’t help but be reminded of the movie “Crash” that had a strong effect on my mind ever since I watched it and changed my thinking quite a bit. I was of course not ready to believe what was said in the movie. It was a movie after all but after talking to a lot of people about it I discovered that it was in fact true. I knew that racism exists but did not realize that things were that bad. But I fail to realize what would make people to react that way. What about the color or race of the person would make them hate him so much. It’s something that I have been trying to understand but have never been able to do so. I wonder what goes on inside their minds. Why would they hate someone who hasn’t done anything bad to them? I can understand why would Kurds hate the Sunnis in Iraq but the hatred we are talking about here is nothing of that sort. I wish I were able to solve this puzzle.
The narrator definitely had no dignity. I hated him more when he thought himself to be superior to people against whom he fought in the ring and why did he think so? Because he got a pat on the back by his oppressors? Because he got a scholarship to go to an all black college? The people who fought in the ring did that to get money. They did that out of necessity and though it’s not mentioned in the piece, I m pretty much sure they had their grudges against those people. But the narrator had no feelings of this sort whatsoever! I would say he was way inferior to those people. He had no self-respect and no respect and no thinking ability.
I think the piece succeeded in doing what in aimed at doing i.e., evoking strong emotions in the readers and forcing them to think.