While his first work day in the factory, our lost narrator has an accident. This accident (maybe caused by his boss?) is so strong that it is enough to knock him out of his senses and even forget his identity and place in the world -- if he ever had one--. Just when he is about to totally lose his conscience, the protagonist describes how he was "shot forward with sudden acceleration into a wet blast of black emptiness that was somehow a bath of whiteness." (230) His final loss of conscience accounts for the loss of blackness in himself, as instead of seeing black, he is faced with a white vastness. This is kind of how he must've felt when he was being born. In this way, this moment is like a rebirth for him.
The protagonist, upon his awakening, discovers that he no longer believes the ideas that had so long ago been planted in his mind for him. He says "But we are all human, I thought, wondering what I meant." (239) No longer does the protagonist believe that they are all human, or at least he is starting to questions its truthfulness. The idea that they are all equal and that blacks and whites co-unite in this perfect world is not sounding as appealing as it did before.
When the protagonist can not remember who he was before the accident, he faces himself preferring to keep it like that. Understanding that he was never truly an individual before, he cares not to be someone specific anymore. He says "I lay fretting over my identity. I suspected that I was really playing a game with myself and that they were taking part... they knew as well as I, and I for some reason preferred not to face it." (242) Giving up on "the game" of life is what the protagonist decided to do once he found out he was only a piece in the game. There was no identity necessary if you are just a piece of someone else's game.
After this revelation, the protagonist decides that he wants to be free. He knew it could destroy him as a human, but in the way it could also destroy the whites' construction. Under this pretext, he says "I had no desire to destroy myself even if it destroyed the machine; I wanted freedom, not destruction." (243) He had no true idea of how he was going to accomplish this freedom without destroying the ties that united him to the white society, until he realized "when I discover who I am, I'll be free." (243) The protagonist thought he knew who he was before, but now that he has gone through a personal awakening, he realizes that he hasn't figured out who he is yet. It is only until that moment in which he deciphers his true identity that he will be able to free himself of the limitations he possesses. As he recovers his conscience, the protagonist begins to do these small actions that place him closer to the realization of his true self.
Even having decided to find who he is, the protagonist has trouble processing the ideas that will help him find his place within -- or outside -- society. Living with Mary, the woman who offered her house after his shaky release from the hospital (notice the biblical name), the protagonist is faced with her conversations that push him to be a better person. She always reminded him what was expected of him, and tried to form him into a leader of the race who could change their position in the world. However, the narrator "found living with her pleasant except for her constant talk about leadership and responsibility." (258) Even in his apparent search, the protagonist knows he is supposed to become someone who matters for his race, but his fear and his idleness prevent him from becoming that man. This may be a message from Ellison, showing us that men like the protagonist, who have all the capacity to do something yet choose not to do so, are what keep the race in the position they were in.
No comments:
Post a Comment