In class we keep talking about this "game" that the characters are playing, so I've been thinking about the story in these terms. "The game" is more than just the obvious game of life that everyone has to play, it's sort of the journey through society that the characters have to take. Society (and therefore the white men that dominate it) makes the rules, and all the different characters react to these rules in different ways. So far I think we've covered the basic possible points of view for a black person to have towards "the game".
First we have the narrator in the early chapters. He's completely oblivious to the game, even though people remind him over and over of it's existence. He knows the rules but does not think about them explicitly (as is probably true for most people of their society's encouraged behavior). He just follows the rules obediently, taking the strangely unlucky hand he's been dealt honestly and without question.
The narrator's grandfather has done one step better. He's aware that the rules are unfair, but he plays the game honestly nonetheless (although he's quite good at bluffing, but I suppose that's allowed).
Bledsoe has moved beyond this even. He is extremely aware of the rules and using this, bends them (and almost undoubtedly breaks them occasionally) with ease. He's cheated to get to a place he's really not supposed to be, and lied to disguise the fact that he's there. He would never admit to the white people that he has control over them because that would earn him a considerable point deduction, but he's aware himself. He even tells this to the narrator who, through an amazing feat of denial and blinding optimism, manages to remain completely in the dark about the whole thing.
And on the far end of things we have the vet and future narrator who have dropped out of the game entirely. Upon realizing the corruption in the rule book (instead of cheating their way into a fair game or sucking it up and pushing forward) they just quit. Which, honestly seems fair enough when you've been dealt such a terrible hand. They have distanced themselves from their society and its confining, twisted rules, and come out with an (admittedly strange) sense of freedom and happiness.
I'm not sure that the last option is exactly what Ellison is recommending to his readers, but he does seem to convey his thoughts on the matter largely through the vet, and portray these characters as the happiest and most enlightened. In Native Son the "game" was just a maze- one way in, one way out- but in Invisible Man it's made a little more complex. Though none of them are really ideal, there are more options. The game-and by extension, in my opinion, the book-becomes a little more interesting.
The Vet does seem pretty content (or resigned?) to his confinement in the asylum, but the implication is that he did not voluntarily "drop out." He refers to being prohibited by racist violence (the Klan) from practicing medicine, and it's implied that he has been committed to the asylum as a way to keep him "off the streets." As charming and insightful as the Vet is, it's tragic to imagine that there's no place in society ("the game") for a guy like this--he could be a doctor, of course, but he also could be a writer. Paradoxically, he has a voice (unlike any other in the novel to this point) seemingly *because* he's locked away--he can speak freely because he is not free. (Cf. Bledsoe, who is "free" but can't speak freely.)
ReplyDeleteWe don't (yet) know the circumstances of the narrator's "dropping out," although he does allude in the Prologue to stumbling on his basement apartment while fleeing attackers of some kind. So his dropping out might not be voluntary, even if his *remaining* underground is a choice. And remember, he frames it as a "hibernation"--a temporary preparation for some future "action." Time passes between the Prologue and the end of the novel, where we'll revisit him in his hole--he's writing this entire time, sorting out his life, making sense of it. But then, perhaps he will climb back up aboveground.