The Brotherhood Mask

A few days ago during class, when we were revisiting the topic of Bledsoe's mask and considering the broken bank-of-the-smiling-black-figure-with-huge-red-lips, it occurred to me that all of the Brotherhood men required the narrator to follow certain actions, mannerisms, and figures of speech similar to that imposed on the narrator when he was at college.  When at the college, the narrator appears disillusioned: he takes everything only at face value and willingly acts in humility to his own detriment.  On the other hand, when the narrator first encounters Brother Jack, he is very mistrustful.  I wanted to explore how the narrator moved from mistrust and complete rejection in Chapter 13 to complete acceptance of the Brotherhood's charges against him at the end of Chapter 18.

When Jack first meets with the narrator, Jack acts similarly to the one Bledsoe uses when he speaks to the rich, white college benefactor.  Looking back at the scene now, I note that the first thing Jack says is that he is the narrator's "friend" (287) and "admirer" (288), and he is always wearing a smile during their first encounter.  The narrator even notices that he seemed as though he was "acting a part" (288).  Later, he says, "perhaps it was a trick of some kind" (294).

When he accepts the job, his mistrust of the Brotherhood is slowly dissolved away.  Even after overhearing Emma wonder if he "should be a little blacker" (303), he assures himself that the initiation into the Brotherhood is "real," even though it reminded him of "being initiated into my college fraternity" (308).  Next, the author hints something with the scene of the bank figure -- we can't be sure what, but we know that the narrator rejects this image.  Maybe he is rejecting the idea that the Brotherhood is treating him like such a figure even though they are very successful at acting otherwise.  Thus, by the time he makes the speech at the rally, he starts telling himself, "I had to trust them.  I had to" (334).

And in trusting them, he accepts that he will need to change himself, and repress himself in humility to their ideals once more, in order to successfully become part of the organization and to act and speak the way they want him to.  In other words, he goes to Hambro knowing he will have to be taught something.  The Brotherhood is in control of his ideas of how the blacks for whom he is speaking should be improved.  The whites are again in control.

At the opening of Chapter 17, the narrator seems to again reflect some of his mannerisms from college.  All of a sudden, he is looking up to Brother Jack as a person for whom he wants to work (like he had wanted to work as Bledsoe's assistant).  By Chapter 18, when the narrator encounters Brother Wrestrow, who tells him that the Brotherhood "has lots of poison around" (393) and that some people are different to your face than they are to your back, even in the Brotherhood, the narrator is appalled, does not listen, and dislikes him.  Similarly, the narrator cannot accept that the racially-charged warning letter might actually be from someone within the Brotherhood.  It is against the Brotherhood's ideology, so to the narrator, the idea cannot exist.  This is just the opposite of the narrator's inability to accept Bledsoe's advice that blacks not actually be humble, when he was so fully intent in believing the ideology of the college.  The narrator, thus, has again been brainwashed in the Brotherhood.  This time, however, it is much more effective and seemingly less harmless: the narrator still has a self in this scene.  However, if it is actually the case that the Brotherhood does not have all good goals for the narrator, the new brainwashing could be completely detrimental: he thinks he's actually equal (or above) the majority of the people in the rest of the Brotherhood, and the Brotherhood is content to keep him thinking that, while they make him follow their own motives.

Note: I make the Brotherhood sound really sinister here, and I know that they probably aren't....but I wanted to raise the issue that they might very well be, and that maybe they are just so successful in what they are trying to accomplish by teaching the narrator their ideology that even readers may not realize....