艾立森《看不见的人》中的种族文化观分析

Abstract: Many critics hesitate to call Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man a black novel, though of course it is written by a black and is centrally concerned with experiences of a black. However unlike the black writers before him, Ellison does not depict the unfairness and discrimination of the blacks; instead, he remains calmly objective when it comes to the black –white relations and reveals his unique opinions on black’s search for identities. The strength of Invisible Man lies in its non-racial and universal question that Ellison puts forward for readers: how to achieve an identity in a hostile society? Ellison’s racial and culture views are completely showed in the novel. So I want to analyze Ellison’s unique ways to deal with racial issues and the forces in shaping his uniqueness of Invisible Man.

First, the hometown without a long-standing slavery tradition gives Ellison a more optimistic belief in life and possibility. The studies he made on western classics and his formal education helps his thought break through the racial restrictions. Second, His frontier spirit has such an impact that he has cultivated an optimistic attitude towards life, believing that almost everything is impossible. Besides, Ellison’s education in jazz empowered him to develop the unique viewpoint on racial and cultural issues. Ellison incorporates jazz into the novel to complement the protagonist’s quest for self identity.

Key words: search of identity; unique; frontier spirit; jazz

摘要：许多文学评论家认为不应该把拉尔夫·艾立森的《看不见的人》称做一部黑人小说，尽管很显然这本书是由一位黑人作家所写，且主要内容描述的是一位黑人的经历。但是与以往那些黑人作家不同的是，拉尔夫·艾里森没有刻意去描写黑人所遭受的不公与歧视，而是客观，冷静地去看待黑人和白人之间的关系；对黑人如何探寻自我的问题，发表了独到的见解。《看不见的人》的力量在于艾立森向读者提出了一个超越种族的具有普遍意义的问题：在一个敌对的社会里，如何获得一个身份？艾立森的种族文化观在小说中得到了充分的体现。所以，本文旨在以小说《看不见的人》为蓝本，分析艾立森独特的种族文化观及其形成的原因。

首先，缺少奴隶制传统的家乡使艾立森从小对生活对机遇抱有更乐观的态度。他对西方经典文学的研究以及他所受到的良好的大学教育是他的思想逃脱了种族的界限。其次，边疆精神促使作者形成了乐观的态度,认为生活中没有不可能的事情。艾立森把爵士乐运用到小说中，以此来补充说明主人公对自我的探索。另外，作者在爵士乐方面的教育给与他勇气提出不同于权人的种族文化观。

关键词：寻找自我；独特；边疆精神；爵士音乐

Contents

Abstract---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2 Introduction----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3 Chapter 1 The Causes of Disillusionment and Frustration ---------------------------- 4

1.1 The impact of American white culture ------------------------------------ 4

1.2 The complex relations and sharp conflicts-------------------------------- 4

1.3 The weakness of the Protagonist-------------------------------------------- 6 Chapter2 Ways to Establish Negro’s I dentity-------------------------------------------- 7

2.1 Acceptance of o ne’s past and history -------------------------------------- 7

2.2 Acceptance of o ne’s culture and tradition--------------------------------- 10

2.2.1 Black Folklore ------------------------------------------------------------ 10

2.2.2 Blues ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 11

2.3 Self-improvement------------------------------------------------------------- 13 Chapter 3 Independent Thinking in the Uniqueness of Man -------------------------- 14

3.1 The frontier spirit------------------------------------------------------------- 14

3.2 The impact of jazz------------------------------------------------------------ 15

3.2.1 Jazz—quest for personal identity--------------------------------------- 16

3.2.2 Invisible Man: an extended jazz performance------------------------ 17 Conclusion ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 17 Notes ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 19 Bibliography---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 20 Acknowledgements-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 21

Introduction

Ralph Waldo Ellison (1914---1994) was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Lewis Ellison, his father, named his son after the famous American poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, telling that he was “raising this boy up to be a p oet” While growing up, Ellison began performing on the trumpet during high school years. Among his friends were the blues singer Jimmy Rushing and trumpeter Hot Lips Page. With the help of a music scholarship, Ellison studied at the Tuskegee Institute in Macon County, Alabama (1933-1936). However, the atmosphere in Tuskegee was conservative and jazz was considered primitive. Ellison dropped out to pursue a career in the visual arts.

Ellison was so excellent that he won a scholarship in 1933. At that time he had already become a classically trained musician who was steeped in the blues and who wanted to capture their explosive power in classical powers. During his time, a book that deeply engaged him marked an important touchstone toward his transition to writing. That was T. E. Eliot’s The Waste Land. If The Waste Land was the first book which showed Ellison the enthusiasm of literature, it was Richard Wright who became his mentor and prompted him to become a writer. Though years later Ellison denied that Wright was a writer who had great influence on him. It is no doubt that Wright’s The Black Boy and The Man Who Lived Underground are important to Ellison’s Invisible Man.

Apart from the influences from those American and European writers, Ellison is also influenced by American folktales and blues. As a black writer, Ellison’s consistent concern is to capture the essential truths of the Black Man’s experiences. Ellison wrote many essays and short stories, but he had only one novel published before death, the novel Invisible Man has established him among the most important American novelist of his generation, a position that was not only that maintained but enhanced in the following decades.

In a border sense, the protagonist’s experience is also the experience of all human beings, black or white, east or west. As we all know, it is inevitable that one has to go from ignorance to maturity in one’s life. So one can hardly avoid confusion or in growth. The narrator’s life provides such a good example. Therefore, there is no exaggeration at all that the novel’s theme is universally applied.

In the addition to the universality of its theme, the novel is at the same time replete with many other elements that deserve our attention and careful analysis. For instance, the author’s political stance on racial issues is quite different from other Negro figures. In my thesis, I will dwell on his unique treatment of Negro identities and what lies behind his special attitudes.

Chapter 1 The Causes of the Disillusionment and Frustration

It is a fact universally acknowledged that Negroes have been in an unfavorable position in American society since the first day they arrived at the continent of North American. From the novel, we learn that the narrator undergoes a long journey of searching for self and the value of existence, which is full of disillusionment and frustration. There are three major factors that lead to the difficult situation.

1.1 The impact of American white culture

It is well known that every country has its unique culture complex. To American, one of its culture complexes is American dream, which embodies the American’s typical idea and traditional value. It is based on the beliefs of equality, freedom and success. Before the middle of the nineteen century, the American dream was beautiful and romantic. However, towards the late the nineteenth century, with the rapid the development of economy in the capitalist country, the conventional American dream was degenerated into a Dream of Gold which led to moral corruption, spiritual collapse, and individual loss. The traditional American culture became either decaying or dubious. The Americans were confronting a critical cultural and spiritual crisis.

The American dream has caused great concerns of American writer and been reflected in the literature works. Such as Fitzgerald’s Great Getsby, Theorodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, and Hemingway’s The sun Also Rise, which explore the negative influence of American dream upon the American people. In Invisible Man, under the great the impact of American white culture, the ambitious narrator longs desperately to achieve a personal success. He dreams he will be another potential Booker T. Washington or Dr. Bledsoe:

Bledsoe was the example of everything I hoped to be: Influential with wealthy mean all over the country, consulted the matters concerning the race; a leader of his people; a possessor of not one, but two Cadillacs, a good salary and a soft, good-looking and creamy-complexioned wife. What was more, he had achieves power and authority.

However, in this racial discrimination country, the door of opportunity is closed to the narrator.

1.2 The complex relations and sharp conflicts

The narrator’s disillusionment and frustration are also caused by the complex relations and sharp conflicts between whites and blacks and among Blacks themselves. The narrator has to confront sharp conflicts and deal with the various complex social relations. One common, personal conflict is that a man usually feels contradictory as he has unit with other people and live with them in harmony but at the same time he must try to keep his own independent individuality and freedom. Under such a dilemma situation, the society usually sacrifices independence, freedom and dignity of individuals to protect its own interest. Therefore, men find themselves unable to avoid the constant conflicts with the society, and the relations of human beings are tangled.

The first conflict appears between whites and blacks. In the racial discrimination society, the backs suffer all kinds of humiliations and pains imposed upon them by the whites. They are either invisible or inferior to the whites. For instance, when the innocent narrator is expelled from college, the white trustee, Mr. Norton, though assures the narrator that the young is his own fate, doesn’t protect the narrator or defend his innocence in this incident. And Mr. Norton fails to recognize the young hero a few months later. That Norton describes himself as the benevolent protector of Negroes is just a hypocritical lie instead of reality. Mr. Emerson, according to Dr. Bledsoe’s order of “keeping this Negro boy running”, refuses to meet the young hero, let alone offer him a job. It is clear that the blacks are rejected and looked down upon by the whites. The blacks hope that they can squeeze his way to the top of the white society by their hard work, thrifty and obedience, but this turns out to be merely a beautiful daydream. It is clear that there are still “fear and hatred” and “terrible tension” between whites and blacks.

As long as the racial discrimination system exists, the conflict between the blacks and whites will never been dissolved. How to solve this problem? There is a long way to go.

The second conflict is among the black.

We will never forget that president Dr. Bledsoe, who is a black man and the president of the black college, takes advantage of both whites and blacks to climb to the top position and preserve his own power. He always cringes before whites while he is ruthless and tyrannical to blacks. To the whites, he is always eager to please them and has his favorite spiritual “live -a –humble”, “he approaches white visitors too often with his hat in hand, bowing humbly and respectfully”.1 To the blacks, he will “h ave every Negro in the country hanging on tree limbs by morning”2 if they get in the way of his climbing up or threaten his power or reputation. The true face of Dr. Bledsoe is fully demonstrated in his speech to the narrator during their

final interview when he expels the innocent young man from his college. Dr. Bledsoe calls the narrator a “Nigger” and “a black educated fool” contemptuously for believing that the young man can never buck against him. Dr. Bledsoe is in control of everything, he tells the narrator how he has attained and used his power.

We will never forget the impressive scene where three black men; the “Exhorter” and “Destroyers” Ras, Clifton and the narrator fight in the street because of the whites. It’s a fierce without consciousness, self-respect and intellect. Ras angrily denounces Clifton and the narrator as traitors who sell out their brothers for money and white women. Ras struggles against Clifton with a knife attempting to kill him. But he draws back his knife three times, for he can’t kill Clifton because he is also a black man, which indicates his contradictory feelings towards blacks. On the one hand, he keeps his black heritage and the brotherhood; on the other hand, his hatred of whites only slightly exceeds his hatred of blacks whom he considers to have betrayed his people. Therefore, his conflict with the narrator is irreconcilable. Once again, the narrator comes across Ras on the night of Harlem riot, when the “destroyer” Ras and his hoodlums attempt to catch the narrator as the Brotherhood’s spokesman. This time, the weapon with which the “destroyer” Ras attacks the invisible man is not a knife but a spear hurled through the air at the hero. What a cruel vivid picture that the black fight against the black! The young hero has realized the essence of the fighting and he wants to awaken his black folk by his shouting:

They want the streets to flow with blood: your blood, black blood and white blood, so that they can turn your death and sorrow and defeat into propaganda. It is simple; you’ve known it a long time. It goes, “Use a nigger to catch a nigger.” Well, they use me to catch you and now they’re using Ras to do away with me and to prepare your sacrifice.3 It’s a pity that no one listens to him because the black soul seems to become distorted by the cruel society. The blacks are so ignorant that they can’t understand each other and be united together. The black outrage is so great and out of control that they are blind to the reality. Consequently, they can’t solve their co nflicts with the whites and among themselves and consequently can’t avoid their tragic fate.

1.3 The weakness of the Protagonist

The narrator has taken a long hard journey in searching for self and his place in contemporary white society. The difficulties and frustrations not only lie in political, social and economic elements, but also in his weakness.

Firstly, he is over-ambitious and na?ve. Under the white culture’s impact, his initial self

aspiration often remains entrapped in leadership, fame and achievement. His ambition drives him into a slavish imitation of whites. However, his dream of becoming another Booker T. Washington through education, hard work, patience and obedience while conforming to the white- dominated society are dashed by the cruel reality, no matter how many cards he holds, no matter how carefully he studies the rule of the game, and no matter how ambitious he is.

Secondly, the narrator loses the individuality because he does not view life in sufficient depth to comprehend the human spirit. He has ever got excessive “faith” in the “gods” who have ruled his world— Norton, Bledsoe and Jack, and has been betrayed by all that he has previously trusted. He lacks the mature mind, independent spirit and courage of a “fighter”. How can he survive in the society without the power to protect himself？

Finally, the narrator has once denied his black essence and heritage. Suspending ambiguously between the black and the white world, he has at one time been ashamed of being a Negro and refused to emerge as a black man. For example, he feels superior to the other Negro boys who participate in the debasing prizefight because of his ginger-colored skin. During his first days in New York he disclaims his Southern background when he refuses a breakfast of pork chops and grits. He has been ashamed of Trueblood. “I didn’t understand in those pre-invisible days that their 「the college officials」hate, and mine to, was charged with fear. How all of us at the college hated the black-belt people, the ‘Peasants’ d uring these days! We were trying lift them up and they, like Trueblood, did everything seemed to pull us down”.5It shows his contempt and hatred for the uneducated Negroes. When he joins the Brotherhood, he removes from the house of Marry— a kind hearted old black woman who is just like his mother, which symbolizes his braking away from his black ethnic tradition. It is not until he is awakened from his dream that he realizes his black essence and returns to his black ethnic tradition.

Chapter 2 Ways to Es tablish Negro’s Identity

Over the course in the novel, the narrator reveals that the complexity of his inner himself is limited not only by the racism of the white but also by the racism of the black. He follows several blacks’examples successively but he fails on all occasions. Here, Ellison not only criticizes racial prejudice but also shows the common fate of all human beings, for the black’s absurd position in the hostile white society just represents the irrational and abnormal relationship between human beings.

In order to induce whites to abandon the opinion of the inferiority of the slaves, the Negro must change. Unlike the other writers, Ellison’s scope of vision is more broadened and

more optimistic as far as racial issues are concerned. Therefore, Ellison puts forward solutions to the Negro problem.

2.1 Acceptance of o ne’s past & history

One of the truths Ellison wants to remind us in this book is that a person’s present situation must be associated with his past. Losing his past or history means the loss of himself, the loss of his own identity. History is closely related to himself. The past is always with us; whatever the Negro people are now is the evolutionary result of all that they have been. If they fight for full freedom today, it is because they were denied freedom from the American past. So it goes without saying that he must learn the best of the past, and add to his personal version.

As is mentioned before, in order to be visible among white, the narrator refuses to have his favorite food and tries to change the tradition and habits of his race. What’s more, he even refuses that he is from the south and tires to hide his accent. Needless to say, it is ridiculous because to disown his southern origins is to disown himself, to repress his identity. After the narrator’s figurative rebirth in chapter 11, however, his relationship with Mary represents his second childhood, a rebuilding of his identity. In a sense, Mary is a mother figure. She prepares the narrator for his entry into the society and helps him reclaim his southern heritage. Her name, too, seems symbolic, evoking Mother Mary and images of the Virgin Mary cradling the baby Jesus.

On the day of the first winter snow, when he emerges from his safe retreat in Mary Lambo’s home, he encounters an old street vendor named Petie Wheatstraw who baked yams in an improvised oven. Seeing the yellow sweet potatoes and inhaling the fragrance reminds him of the past days when he habitually enjoyed it in the south. It is no wonder that he remembers his childhood in a flood of emotions. Therefore, instead of rejecting it, as he rejects pork chops and grits previously, he buys one and then two more hot baked yams with melted butter, eating them in the sight of everyone. This act reassures the old yam seller, previously on guard against him because of his collaged-trained voice, that this young man is a fellow southerner. To the young black man, eating food he likes without apology is a declaration of freedom, freedom from accepting the white man’s taste in the manner of Dr. Bledsoe. The yam, sweet and tasty, becomes the symbol of all sensory pleasures, none of which should be a source of shame. Buying baked yams and eating them as he strolls along, he openly asserts his relationship with his blacks and southern origins.

Now, the narrator no longer devotes himself, as he did at college, to the prescribed role of the model black citizen by affecting the sophistication of white culture and rejecting

perceived barbarism of black culture. He abandons that affection and chooses to behave as he wishes, seizing freedom and celebrating his own background. Therefore, he returns to the culture of his childhood, which the college tried to strip from him. This is his awakening after his long journey of frustration and struggles in various forms. And to be precise, this is Ellison’s expression of embracing one’s culture as the way to freedom.

Other remainders of the narrator’s heritage come from Brother Tarp, who as a character represents the idea of the imprisoned black running for his? A theme appears in too many works to be enumerated. In a way, both Brother Tarp and the narrator see themselves running for something. This aligns them in a kind father-son relationship which is symbolized by the gift of steel link from Brother Tarp’s leg chain that he wore as a member of the chain gang. Had the narrator not left his home, he would realize that he would be receiving a watch which belonged to his grandfather; but instead he is accepting the Brotherhood of Brother Tarp and so he receives the chain link. Tarp’s gift, a chain link, serves as an icon of the suffering of the past. Although he escapes the brutal conditions of the chain gang, Tarp continues to suffer from the wounds that he incurred during his nineteen years of slavery; his persistent limp attests to these wounds’ permanence. Though no longer enslaved, he still walks as if in chains. He also believes in the importance of remembering his dark past: although he limps involuntarily, he quite deliberately chooses to keep his shackle as a reminder of his bondage. Like the narrator’s grandfather, he cautions the narrator never to become to complacent about his freedom and never forget their real cause of struggle. In a sense, Brother Tarp’s gift of the chain link symboli zes the desire and occasional ability of the black to be able to say “No”. That is, Brother Tarp had earlier refused to give in to the white man (refused to say “Yes”) and had lost everything, including his family. Thus the chain link also symbolizes the suffering of the black people in the past. Historically speaking, if a son is to receive an inheritance of his past, it must not be the watch, but the chain link that is symbolic of the slavery history.

Even with these reminders of his heritage, the narrato r gets lost in the Brotherhood’s sense of history. Before he can gain any real understanding of the past and the true brotherhood, he will be influenced by one person: Tod Clifton. Tod Clifton, whose first name means “dead” in German, learns how much the B rotherhood has exploited innocent belief. The narrator finds him in the street selling sambo dolls. The doll, with a smiling face, controlled by invisible black strings, symbolizes the Brotherhood manipulation of black people. While the narrator watches, Clifton deliberately gets into fight with a policeman who helps him “plunge outside of history” by shooting him. Tod’s death is one of the key turnin g —points from which the narrator intensifies the exploration of his own identity and begins to recognize more fully the possible identities of others. The narrator plans a public funeral for

Clifton in hopes of organizing the black community in response to a particular sensitive incident: the shooting of an unarmed black man by a policeman. The construction he puts on Clifton’s death differs markedly from the Brotherhood’s because he places such a premium on the fact of race. For the protagonist, it is more politically significant that Clifton as black rather than a defector. The Brotherhood’s spokesmen, in contrast, see Clifton’s death is primarily the death of a traitor. They therefore rebuke the protagonist for organizing a hero’s funeral. The Brotherhood’s response to Clifton’s death and the funeral confirms the narrator’s worst fears about the organization. He has mistakenly thought that by upholding the Brotherhood’s ideology, h e would find purpose and meaning for his life. Clifton’s death and his reprimand show him that his life will derive meaning from the platform only if he renounces the prior claims of his own judgments, his own priorities, and incidentally, his own race. To put it in another way, he will have an identity in the Brotherhood only if he concedes the possibility of creating the meaning of his life for himself. At last, the narrator consciously chooses to act individually in regard to Clifton’s funeral because the committee has excluded the narrator from its decision-making progress. During his eulogy, the narrator attributes Clifton’s death specifically to racism; he doesn’t speak in vague te rms of general oppression, as is the tendency of Brother Jack. Moreover, he attempts to give Clifton’s identity by repeating his name again and again for the purpose that the name will last forever for the people.

From this we can see that from the funeral the narrator begins for the first time to evaluate his past, his stay at college and his life in the south. Therefore, he is no longer a mechanical doll performing for the Brotherhood; he is a pursuer in quest of identity.

2.2 Acceptance of o ne’s culture & tradition

In a sense, Invisible Man is based on folk foundations. Furthermore, the narrator’s gradual move from innocence to experience and from repression to expression is spurred by folk forms. His acceptance of folklore and blues helps him keep his identity in the fast world of North. In time he sees that without folk tradition, without the “mother wit” inherited from the past struggles of black Americans, he is truly an Invisible Man.

2.2.1 Black folklore

Black folklore seems, as Ellison describes it, basic to the portrayal of the essential spirit of Black people. As for Ellison himself, Black folklore became important to literary discovery.

Several critics, following Ellison’s hi nts, have singled out folklore as the cornerstone of

the narrator. Running in the novel is the important metaphor. It is first appeared in the protagonist’s dream in which he dreamed of his grandfather telling him to read a letter on which was “To Whom It May Concern: Keep This Nigger-Boy Running”.4 The grandfather, who stands for the past that the protagonist does not understand or accept, speaks several sets of magic words that start him on his odyssey, set him running. Running in the manner of various folk figures, one step ahead of destruction, the narrator scampers like a rabbit from scene to scene. Probably one source of this running motif is the black folk rhyme as “Run, Nigger, Run.” Thus in this slavery-born folk rhyme blacks could laugh both at themselves and at the dread patrollers.

In chapter11, the highly symbolic section which portrays the tendency of industrialism to reduce men to a programmed hero, when the doctor of the Paint Factory Hospital asks questions like “WHAT IS YOUR NAME?” “WHAT IS YOUR MOTHER’S NAME?” “WHERE WERE YOU BORN?”5 He cannot answer them. Then the doctor changes to other question: WHO WAS BUCKEYE RABBIT?” he immediately “was filled with turmoil”.6 He remembers a folk song that children like to sing barefoot in the dust street:

Buckeye the Rabbit,

Shake it, shake it

Buckeye the Rabbit,

Brea k it, break it (7)

Then another question is posed, “BOY, WHO WAS BRER RABBIT?” This question makes the protagonist wonder at his own identity. “I could no more escape than I could think of my identity. Perhaps, I thought, the two things are involved with each other. When I discovered who I am, I will be free.”8Clearly, this scene reveals that he is rescued by his memory of folklores.

The narrator believes that the Negro identity of the future will be shaped out of the unique Negro folk tradition. He believes this can be preserved--- though he is not sure now.

2.2.2 Blues

Blues language and rhymes resound through Invisible Man. The novel begins and ends with references to Louis Armstrong’s Blues. As a musical form, the Blues is an autobiographical chronicle of person catastrophe expressed lyrically. All black writers have agreed that the Blues has been a survival mechanism for the African Americans and also that it has been the most important cultural contribution to American art. “For Ellison, the Blues is th e impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one’s