 Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
|
Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
A STEP BEYONDTESTS AND ANSWERSTEST 1_____ 1. The "battle royal" where the black boys are made to fight each other symbolizes
B. the way whites manipulate blacks by turning them against one another C. the way things were in small southern towns 50 years ago
B. his grandfather and Jim Trueblood C. Mr. Norton and Mr. Emerson
B. "Blacks and Whites Can Become One" C. "Separate But Equal Is Best"
B. American businesses were opposed to unionization C. the narrator ought to work for a company owned by black people
B. the Communist party C. "the brotherhood of man"
B. decision that he has made a mistake in coming North C. decision to move from Men's House to Mary Rambo's
B. glass eye C. business suit
B. have all blacks return to the South C. keep blacks and whites totally separate
B. secretly brought about by the Brotherhood C. in part the result of Tod's own despair of finding answers
B. tries to think through the things in his life that got him there C. plots revenge against Bledsoe, Norton, and the Brotherhood 11. Explore the theme of "invisibility" in Invisible Man. 12. Write an essay on the symbolic use of names in the novel. 13. What view of white people emerges from a reading of Invisible Man? 14. Would you view Invisible Man as a "black" novel or a "universal" novel? Give evidence from the novel to support your opinion. 15. Analyze the role of black folk materials (jazz, Negro spirituals, folktales, dialect humor, etc.) in Invisible Man. TEST 2_____ 1. The narrator is expelled from the college because he
B. exposed aspects of black life Dr. Bledsoe wanted to keep hidden C. was guilty of insubordination with Dr. Bledsoe
B. because he personally despised Bledsoe C. in order to get revenge on his father, whom he resents
B. remind him that his southern folk heritage is part of his identity C. reinforce the hopelessness of the black situation in New York
B. moves from surrealism to realism C. is predominantly realistic throughout the novel
B. naive narrator C. prejudiced narrator
B. Brother Tarp C. Brother Tobitt
B. it does not reflect their scientific, rational philosophy C. it makes the other speakers look bad
B. suggest the way many blacks have behaved for whites in America C. suggest the good humor and comic nature of American blacks
B. allows the narrator to undermine Ras the Exhorter C. allows the narrator to survive in a world of chaos and confusion
B. the end of contemplation and the beginning of action C. his compromises in order to survive in life 11. Explore the symbolic use of the colors "black" and "white" in the novel. 12. What view of American blacks emerges from the reading of Invisible Man? 13. Would you view Invisible Man as an optimistic or pessimistic statement about the human situation? Why? 14. Analyze the development of the narrator as a character. How does he change during the course of the novel? 15. Discuss the imagery of sight and blindness in Invisible Man. ANSWERSTEST 1
11. You might begin by carefully rereading the Prologue and Epilogue. Here the narrator defines "invisibility" clearly and discusses some of the consequences of being invisible. Many of the later chapters, especially Chapters 22, 23, and 25, develop the theme of invisibility in different ways. It is important to note that the narrator becomes more aware of his invisibility as he becomes more experienced; thus the closing chapters are more important in a study of this theme because it is here that the narrator develops a true perception of his condition. You may wish to explore the relationship between invisibility and the narrator's decision to stay in his cave. Will he still be an invisible man when he comes up and returns to the real world? Two main directions you might take stem from the two major strands of the theme: (1) the idea that invisibility derives from white people not being able to see black people, and (2) the idea that invisibility is one's own fault, that it stems from a person's refusal to develop his own identity. The sections on "Themes" and the "Prologue" in this study guide may be of particular help to you as you sort out these two aspects of the invisibility theme. Which do you think is Ellison's major emphasis? There is evidence in the novel to support both. White behavior reinforces (1) and the behavior of the narrator reinforces (2). 12. This topic could produce a rather lengthy paper if you try to do all the names. So you might wish to select some of the more important ones and use them to illustrate Ellison's method. See The Characters section for the names of major characters. Names of most minor characters and place names are treated in the notes for the chapter where the name makes its first appearance. Generally Ellison uses names that are symbolic rather than realistic. The symbolism may be drawn from a variety of sources. Sometimes the symbolism comes from a play on words like "Bledsoe" and "bleeds so" or "Wrestrum" and "rest room" or "Tobitt" and "two-bit." A second source for symbolism in names is mythology and literature. Ellison chooses names that have historical, mythological, literary, or archetypal significance. Some examples are Chthonian (the hotel where the Brotherhood meets), Ras (also a play on words), Emerson, the Founder, and Jim Trueblood. 13. Ellison's treatment of whites makes a particularly interesting essay topic because it allows you to explore the kind of social statement this novel makes about the burden of blame white people bear for the condition of blacks in America. The white characters that you see may be broken mainly into two groups: (1) the trustees and businessmen and (2) the members of the Brotherhood. The first group includes Norton and Emerson, the second group Jack, Tobitt, and Hambro. There is also the terrible Mr. Kimbro at Liberty Paints. As with his black characters, Ellison does not treat his whites merely as types. He does not reduce them to caricatures. If they are in many ways to blame for black conditions, they are still human beings. Their major fault as a group is to view black people as conveniences to be used. Remember the distinction made in this study guide between I-You relations and I-It relations. All whites have the tendency to use black people as Its. The trustees and the Brotherhood members are members of groups, of classes. They think they are "helping" blacks, when in reality they are helping their own groups or classes through their activities with blacks. The section in this guide on The Characters and the appropriate Notes from the story section for those white characters not treated under The Characters should be useful. The whole section of the novel that takes place at Liberty Paints (Chapters 10 and 11) is a kind of symbolic portrait of white America. You may find a rereading of those chapters most helpful. 14. Invisible Man has been a very popular novel among both blacks and whites for more than three decades. It has survived the existentialism of the 1950s, the black protest movement of the 1960s, and the feminism of the 1970s. Something about it seems to appeal to young people, no matter what their race, their historical situation, or their geographic region. "Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?" asks the narrator as the very last sentence of the novel. Does the narrator speak for you, whether you are black or white, old or young, male or female? That might be the topic of your essay. If you want to defend Invisible Man as a universal novel, it might be wise to concentrate on the narrator. Is he a character you identify with? What sorts of problems does he have that are also your problems? What sorts of dreams and hopes does he have that are also your dreams and hopes? You might follow him through the course of the novel and review his quest for identity, his search for a self that is meaningful. Is that search a universal search? Is his growing up, his testing through a series of trials, mistakes, and missteps, something that all young men and women go through? What, in your personal experience, might parallel the narrator's adventures? If you want to stress Invisible Man as a black novel, then you will want to look most closely at those aspects of the narrator's experience that seem least universal and most limited to what a black man would go through. Are there aspects of his experience that, as a white or oriental, for example, you cannot identify with? 15. This topic has been widely studied. Robert O'Meally and Raymond Olderman (see Critical Works under Bibliography) are very helpful. Under the heading of black folk materials you might include music, especially jazz, the blues, spirituals, and gospel music. You might also include folktales such as those of Brer Rabbit and Brer Bear and the use of traditional black storytelling such as that of Jim Trueblood in Chapter 2. Black dialect characters like Peter Wheatstraw and the yam seller supply still other examples of Ellison's use of black folk materials. When some or all of these elements are studied together, certain patterns appear. When the narrator attends college, he tries to become educated in such a way that he can be accepted in the white man's world. He goes to New York and doesn't want to be thought of as an uneducated, inexperienced black boy from the South who doesn't know his way around. So he avoids the language, food, music, and clothes associated with that southern past. He tries to be white. In the Brotherhood, he also avoids black styles and customs. Later in the novel, as he begins to develop a self, an identity of his own, he begins to see that these aspects of his past are important. In his cave he listens to Louis Armstrong. Ellison does not reject those things that his narrator rejects. Notice how sympathetically the black folk figures like Jim Trueblood and Mary Rambo are treated by Ellison. Why? What qualities do they have that Ellison seems to admire? Note also the role of black music. There are a lot of "blues" in the novel, a form of music that expresses better than any other the essential nature of the black experience in America. TEST 2
11. Ellison, in his interview entitled "The Art of Fiction," talks about the symbolic use of the colors "black" and "white" to suggest not only the black and white races but also the traditional struggle between good and evil, so often symbolized in Western literature by black (evil) and white (good). You will see right away that there is a direct irony in the symbolism, because in a system of white racial superiority, whites pretend that they are good and blacks are evil, when it is often the reverse. Thus, Ellison's symbolism is very complicated, and it will require careful attention. Look especially at Chapter 10 where Ellison uses the symbolism of black and white paint to play with the whole structure of American life. There is considerable commentary in this study guide on Chapter 10, where "Optic White Is the Right White" becomes the motto of a paint company whose real aim is to fool the public with optical illusions. The symbolism of black and white is also associated with ignorance and knowledge, darkness and light. The narrator ends up in a black cave from which he will come up into the light at the end of the book. Is it the blackness of his skin or the ignorance of his mind that has led him into such darkness? Ellison invites you to explore such questions through his symbolism. He doesn't answer them easily. 12. This has been a particularly controversial subject, one that black critics and reviewers have disagreed widely about. You will find a range of opinions in the criticism and in the excerpts from The Critics. You might approach this question by listing the major black characters in the novel and describing their behavior. Do they fall into certain groups and types? There are the southern educators, the Founder and Bledsoe; the black members of the Brotherhood, Brother Tarp and Tod Clifton; the black nationalist rabble-rouser, Ras the Exhorter; and the less-educated folk types- Jim Trueblood, Lucius Brockway, Mary Rambo, Peter Wheatstraw, and the unnamed yam seller. There is also the narrator himself, who seems to embody at one time or another, characteristics of all these types. A quick look at these characters might indicate why some black radical writers thought Ellison was degrading blacks in his work. None of the characters is an ideal. They all have human flaws, some more so than others. Ellison certainly does not idealize his black characters, but he presents them as real human beings. Is he saying something about blacks in America by doing that? On the other hand, Ellison does not treat all these groups alike. He seems considerably more sympathetic to characters like Tarp and Mary Rambo than he does toward Bledsoe, Ras, or Brother Wrestrum. You might analyze what Ellison seems particularly to like about the positive black characters before developing your thesis. The section on The Characters will be particularly helpful to you, as will the commentaries in The Story section in the chapters where the particular characters are most important. 13. Here again, there is much room for debate. You may find articles listed under Critical Works on both sides of the question. How can that be? Can a novel seem optimistic to some and pessimistic to others? This one can. The optimists tend to look at the comedy in the novel, the word play, the humor, the obvious love for life that Ellison shows through the imagination and inventiveness of his style. They see the narrator as a comic hero, one who learns from his mistakes and comes out stronger for his experience. They see the novel as the story of a person who does finally find an identity and learn to be himself, and enjoy it. This is the story of the education of a young man, who will go on from the end of the novel to live a better and wiser life than the one he's experienced in this book. If you're an optimist, you will want to put some emphasis on the last couple of pages of the Epilogue where the narrator emphasizes such positive qualities as love and social responsibility. The pessimists argue that the narrator undergoes a series of tragic adventures in which he is taken advantage of and abused over and over again. The world is so cruel to him that his only solution is to literally crawl into a black hole and hide. He ends up dropping out of the world because there is no place in it for him. Ellison's view of the world and the possibility of a place in it for a sensitive and thoughtful black man is pretty bleak. If there is hope at the end, it is a naive hope and one that is not really part of the action and its meaning. The emphasis for the pessimists is on the action and its meaning. For the optimists it is on the style and the tone. 14. Invisible Man may be read primarily as a story about the narrator's development. It is a first- person narrative, and because you experience the novel through the narrator, you get to know him better than anyone else. You must be careful, however, not to interpret the action the way he does, because that is to ignore his limitations and shortcomings as a character. Thus, to be able to interpret the action yourself, you must know where the narrator is in his development so that you can decide whether or not his judgment is reliable at that point in the novel. One famous pattern of development is that of innocence to experience. At first the narrator is extremely innocent and does not understand what is happening to him. He does not believe people are bad. He does not see that Bledsoe is making a fool of him. As he suffers, he learns. With experience he begins to see the world more as it really is. Experience teaches him to be a better judge. Whatever pattern you select, there is one certainty: The narrator does change. The questions are where? How? Why? And finally, how much? You might want especially to contrast the opening and closing chapters. The degree of change may determine your answer to the question of what sort of identity the narrator finally has. 15. A lot of blind and half-blind people and animals appear throughout Invisible Man. For starters, note that Brother Jack, the leader of the Brotherhood, has a glass eye. Note that throughout his first speech for the Brotherhood in Chapter 16 the narrator refers to black people as one-eyed mice. There is a direct allusion here to "Three Blind Mice." The idea is that black people start life with only one eye because of their racial situation, and that white people would just as soon have them lose the other eye in fighting one another. Then, you may remember, the whites blindfold the black boys during the battle royal in Chapter 1 so that they strike out blindly at each other. These are just some blatant examples of Ellison's use of the imagery of sight and blindness in the novel. Sight, you may remember, is associated with insight or perception or knowledge. Blindness is associated with lack of these things, with ignorance, with stupidity. The imagery of sight and blindness is closely tied to the theme of invisibility. People are invisible because others do not see them. If you don't see someone, you are blind. Though the narrator can see physically, he is perceptually blind. So there is not always a direct association between physical blindness and figurative blindness. A fascinating example to study is the revelation at the end of Chapter 5 that Homer A. Barbee, the minister who has just told the story of the Founder so movingly, is blind. What might that mean? TERM PAPER IDEAS AND OTHER TOPICS FOR WRITING
© Copyright 1985 by Barron's Educational Series, Inc.
|
|
|
|
|||||||
