From Fear to Blending In

When the narrator first goes to college, his feelings towards whites are that of fear and inferiority. He feels he is not good enough for whites, and that he basically has to act the part of the slave. However, as he sees the example of other blacks and he moves to the "melting pot" city, his opinions start changing, and he begins to see that other option.

For instance, it is an important event in his day when he realized he "too had touched a white man and [he] felt that it had been disastrous." (114) Not even physical contact with a white was within his limits. For the narrator, Dr. Bledsoe was like a hero, as he was the only man he knew who could touch a white man with "impunity." The irony with which the reader is forced to read this highlights Ellison's opinion about the social constructs relating to blacks and whites. Ellison disagrees with the force that prohibits the narrator from touching a white man.

Even words that include the word "black" are considered a contradiction, as the narrator proposes when the orator talks about "a white blacksmith." (122) Talking about the underground escape of the race during slavery, the orator highlights how "their own have always helped their own." (123) Whites are represented as antagonists who don't even help the race, yet the white founders are to be treated as godlike. The inconsistencies that occur throughout the book with regards to black's opinion of whites confuse the reader as to what Ellison really wants us to think.

However, when the reader finally thinks all blacks are submissive to the power of whites, Ellison brings up Dr. Bledsoe, who says he "had to act the nigger." (143) To become the powerful man we know him to be, Dr. Bledsoe had to know and understand that he would be seen as a nigger, and as derogatory as the term would portray him, he had to live with it. By faking that he was no danger for powerful whites, Dr. Bledsoe was able to get where he is now.

This same idea is expressed by the vet when the narrator meets him again in his trip to New York. He very wisely says "play the game, but don't believe in it -- that much you owe yourself."(153) The relationship between blacks and whites is therefore represented as a game in which whites decide the rules and the winner, and some blacks follow along stupidly while others understand it and play along. They might even win the game, like Dr. Bledsoe did, if they learn to use it in their favor.

After having such strong opinions about the white's and the black's place in the world, the narrator can't help but be surprised when he sees how different everything is "up north." "At the street intersection I had the shock of seeing a black policeman directing traffic--and there were white drivers who obeyed his signals as though it was the most natural thing in the world." (159) Seeing as this was probably normal already when Invisible Man was published, maybe Ellison did it this way so that the reader can't relate to the narrator's feelings.