Lili's Blog :)

Throughout Invisible Man,  Ellison hides many metaphors that relate to the narrators life. From the reoccurring theme of running to the coin bank at Marry's, but one particularly interesting one was the doll that pops up before the climax of the book. He stumbles upon Clifton (who he doesn't notice till later) advertising and selling racist puppet dolls. Like everyone else, the narrator finds himself sucked into the doll fascinated with how it moves, he doesn't even realize Clifton is the one selling the dolls nor does he get upset that they're racist dolls. The police eventually come and everyone runs away and the narrator grabs a doll off the ground later putting it into his brief case (another reoccurring metaphor). Upon picking it up he finally realizes how the doll was able to move, it had tiny black strings which Clifton were using to move it in such a way.  This scene essentially creates a puppet on a string metaphor. In many ways, the Narrator is the puppet on t...

Ellison's Invisible Man, women are portrayed as either crazy, helpless, motherly figures, or sexual objects. They are all represented in a surface level 2D way, much like they in Wrights Native Son . We never really get to learn each women's story or see them have any character development. In fact, the women are always used as plot twisters, or extra add ons, or even just to set back the narrator, rather than becoming major parts of the story.  For now I'll touch on the Dancer and True Bloods daughter and wife which are the most minor female characters in the novel. The Dancer at the very beginning of the novel was placed into the situation just for entertainment and to throw off the narrator. There was only that brief moment of eye-contact between the two of them where the narrator somehow thinks he can relate to her situation because she looked terrified at what was going on. After that, we hear or see nothing of her again. Next in the story comes True Blood's daught...

     The narrator in Invisible Man undergoes a lot of dream like sequences of events throughout the novel. in the opening scene of the book, the narrator seems to know who he is and what he wants, that is, before he tells the story of how he got there. The character we've seen up till where we are in the book is clueless to who he is. he's constantly trying to people please and base his identity off of other people. Slowly he learns to start questioning the people and the world around him, but still bases his identify off of other people but in this case instead of people pleasing he's trying to prove people wrong.      For example, up until the narrator is sent away to New York, all he does is try to people please. Specifically Dr Bledsoe, the narrator want's to be his assistant and tries to be the best model student he can be. He doesn't really have a personality of his own and he blindly follows the rules that even the reader questions. B...

Richard Wright’s Native Son has a lot to unpack with each scene containing even just the slightest detail to hint at a bigger picture. One of the many things to unpack in this novel is the depiction of the female characters particularly Bessie and Mary. They are both portrayed and betrayed in somewhat similar ways yet treated differently based on race in class. All of the female characters in Native Son are all 2D, their stories don’t really get told the way the male characters' stories and personalities get dove into.       For starters, we don’t really get to learn a lot about who Bessie is as a person from the time that she is first introduced through the time that she is killed. She’s constantly labeled in the book as Bigger’s girlfriend or just not really looked at twice at all. From the beginning we can see how Bigger sexualizes her while at the movies and doesn’t really seem to emotionally care for her. Later in the book he tries to get her in on his plans an...