Nina G. African American Lit.

After our recent class discussion, I wanted to highlight some of the women we have seen in the book and share my thoughts on Ellison’s potential feelings on feminism. The first named woman we see in the novel is Mary. Her name first appears on page 252, yes Ellison writes a little less than half the novel before formally introducing a female character. Mary’s role is to care for the narrator in a motherly sort of way. She is constantly trying to lift his spirits and encourages him to get a good job. She wants him to make something of himself, not to have him move out and free up a room but just out of the sheer kindness in her heart. Sadly, our narrator responds with rejection. He is annoyed with her pushiness and complains about the cabbage she serves him. Toward the end of his time with her, he starts to feel bad and indebted to her. When reflecting on her contributions to the book and her role as a whole, she plays the stereotypical motherly role. Granted she runs her own busin

During our discussion of Invisible Man , we have run into the recurring theme of a mask. In the beginning, our narrator is in a battle arena where his eyes are covered with a white blind fold. The blind fold represents how our narrator believes that what the white man says or does is the righteous path. However, we see in the prologue that this “mask” is removed to reveal a character that is strikingly different from the one presented in the beginning of the book. We again see the mask in a more obvious way when the narrator’s grandfather is on his deathbed. He advises to have a mask when dealing with white folk but always have your own intensions.             Towards our more recent reading, we notice the Dr. Bledsoe has this same attitude. Our narrator is startled by this after believing in a certain white-people-pleasing persona. Dr. Bledsoe makes a point to say that he secretly controls white people, they just don’t know it. We may believe that this is the unmasked Dr. Bledsoe