The narrator views Bledsoe with a final-judgment-type mentality throughout his college experience, and possibly throughout the rest of the book. As he is driving Mr. Norton, he expects Bledsoe to find out exactly all of his moves and to judge him for it, and Dr. Bledsoe exactly meets this expectation. The narrator even describes the scene with the white visitors -- appropriately set in a chapel -- as a "formal ritual" which is "performed to God's own acting script" (111). In the same scene, the narrator describes the college as his "Eden," and states that "our world...out horizon and its earth, its seasons and its climate, its spring and its summer, [etc.]" is described to the listeners. Thus, while on the college campus, the narrator views himself and the other college students as a collectively living in an Eden of which some God is in charge...and it is Bledsoe who "demanded that everyone attend these sessions" (115).
However, when the narrator actually talks to Bledsoe, the idea that the narrator has committed some sort of initial sin that he cannot overcome goes hand in hand with the literal narration. And what was the narrator's initial sin? It was the act of giving Mr. Norton true knowledge about the campus. To push the allegorical theme farther, Trueblood (or the Golden Day, perhaps?) could represent the devil, and the vet could represent the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The wonders who could "intercede" for him during the judgment of his actions, but "knew that there was no one" (115); he must be alone. Bledsoe's resulting judgment is one of punishment for sin, not love in spite of mistake. His essential argument to the narrator is that "instead of uplifting the race, you've torn it down" (140), and that the narrator's "got to be disciplined, boy" (141). Thus, for giving Norton knowledge, he must himself be thrown out of the Eden of campus, despite the fact that he had previously been an exemplary student.
The narrator is then quite literally moved to a much less idealistic and far more realistic place: New York. There, his first real action is to turn "to the book of Genesis" which he "could not read" since it "made [him] homesick" (162). Yet the narrator remains attached to the idea of Dr. Bledsoe as somehow a good God: he says that "Dr. Bledsoe" knows "what's best for [him]" (189).
Yet all this changes when he reads Dr. Bledsoe's letter (191) and decides to "go back and kill Bledsoe," which he owes "to the race and to myself" (194). He has suddenly rejected what had been his God and his Eden through the rest of his life and has instead decided to follow devilish behaviors. He suddenly feels no necessity to bow down to those in technically charge of him in Chapter 10, and instead thinks of himself as an individual. He has detached himself from any one specific set of criteria that dictate how he should act at all times, and begins doing what he thinks is right in the moment. He is in the degenerate New York, where no one follows rules of conduct and each fends for himself against everyone else.
Ok I was really skeptical of this idea at first but wow-you're right there is an aspect of the narrator being thrown out of heaven for wrongdoing. But what does that make Harlem? You said New York (so I guess just Harlem which is all he experiences) is degenerate, but isn't this where he is enlightened most? Also out of curiosity, what does that make hell? Trueblood's farm? This is a really interesting premise Chels.
ReplyDeleteChelsea, like Caroline commented, I had never really viewed the novel or the narrator in any sort of biblical light. After reading your post however, I feel as though you make a really solid argument for this comparison. The narrator sees the college as his "Eden" or land of promise, which in turn makes Bledsoe the leader or "God." If Bledsoe is really viewed as God in the eyes of the narrator though, does that mean he is no longer religious when he discovers Bledsoe's wrongdoings? Is New York his new place of refuge and promise or the metaphorical hell compared to the Eden like qualities of the college? This is a really intriguing argument to consider and I'm glad you made this point.
ReplyDeleteChelsea, I really liked your comparison and also agree that the thought of Bledsoe as God and the college as Eden were connections I had not made. However, like most of Invisible Man, it's hard to fit Bledsoe or the college into just one metaphor. The narrator thinks of Bledsoe in a God-like way, but his obsession is not a portrayed very positively . While the narrator thinks of Bledsoe as a God, the reader could just as easily think of Bledsoe as the Devil- craftily hiding the truth, manipulating people, being two-faced. Perhaps Ellison is saying that on the surface Bledsoe looks like God, but in reality he is much more sinister. The, with the college, even though the narrator describes it as "Eden" like, its not really the idilic place we expect Eden to be. Maybe the different settings could point out that there is such thing as Eden- and then that there is no such thing as a straight and easy escape from the problem of American society. Your post definitely opened a new line of thinking about the book, as I had not yet tied it to any sort of religion, but like everything else in Invisible Man, it is hard to pin down exactly what Ellison is trying to tell us.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you all found this idea compelling!
ReplyDeleteCaroline, I was wondering the same about Harlem. My original thought was that Harlem might become the narrator's hell as the narrator continued to live there...but I didn't want to stress that point to much, because I wanted to wait and see what would happen once the narrator had spent more time there. The narrator has certainly seemed to continue comparing Harlem to his college experience on some subliminal level, even at this stage in the novel. However, he has changed from thinking poorly of Harlem's lack of social construction to thinking positively of it because of the apparent freedom it allows him. Thus, he seems to actually prefer living in Harlem to living at the college campus. This gives me reason to think, Abbi, that the narrator has ended up seeing New York as his new place of refuge (at least as of now).
However, I've been increasingly thinking that the narrator is becoming too addicted to the Brotherhood and its ideology for his own good. It might be that the narrator is simply more disillusioned by Harlem's promise of freedom of speech and action than he ever was by the promise of success to be gotten from humility at college, and never opens his eyes to realize that his speeches and his life in general are still entirely outside of his own control.
Sarah, I 100% agree with you that Ellison can be generally pretty unclear when he gives readers little glimpses of symbolism without much material with which to interpret the connections. Frankly, I sometimes secretly wonder if he just wrote this novel with some basic themes in mind that he knew he wanted to get across, and then threw in some other stuff for his own amusement to see what all the English-lovers would make of it :). I think you could definitely also make an argument for the fact that this novel has some sort of 20th Century-type motive to generally make comparisons to traditional literary staples like Eden/God images/figures, but then allow the comparisons to be somehow twisted as you suggest.
In my own post that tried to unravel this whole Eden/Paradise aspect of the narrator's "exile" from the "best of all possible worlds," I had posited Norton as the "God" figure and Bledsoe as a kind of Satanic disillusioner--the bringer of knowledge of good and evil (he now sees how things really work, even if learning this is painful and leads to exile). But, like so much in Ellison, it's complicated--I doubt we'll find strict analogs to every aspect of the Miltonic/Eden story. Bledsoe is, in the narrator's view, "higher up" than Norton (even though the Vet says, suggestively, that Norton is "like a god" to the narrator)--he's the one whose judgment he ultimately fears.
ReplyDeleteOh--and I hadn't caught the reference to trying to read Genesis making him "homesick." Add that to the snake, and the hints are all over the place!
Yes...even though the connections are pretty complicated, as you say, I think the fact that we both noticed some sort of similarity to a religions/Garden of Eden theme in the college experience chapters is pretty good evidence that the snake that caught your eye is probably not just a snake.
DeleteThe idea that it might be Bledsoe who is the Satan rather than the God is really compelling. Can he somehow be both? Possibly he is a Satan mistaken for a God, in which case the evidence we both found could serve to bolster and not undermine our arguments. However, could not also the vet be the Satan? He is the one who forces knowledge upon both the narrator and Norton. And yet it does not seem that the college is any sort of Eden for Norton...but then could not Trueblood be the Satan for Norton? It's a pretty messy allusion, if it is one. I think all we can say for sure is that Ellison's hints of intertwined allegorical elements help the reader mistrust the narrator's reliability and contemplate his disillusionment.
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