Emerson to try to find a job. Emerson, however, only sends him out of pity. The narrator arrives and immediately notices the huge …show more content… The black formula is what makes the white paint into "Optic White", a much better, whiter, white. The formula, perhaps, represents the behind the scenes blacks that worked for the whites so that society persisted as it did in that time period.
This idea will be touched upon once again later on in this series of scenes. The invisible man then falls victim to a bad set of circumstances. He runs out of formula, and since Kimbro is not around, he tries to get himself some more. However, there are two containers with what appear to be the same kind of formulas, just with different markings. Naturally, the narrator uses his intuition and discovers that the two liquids in the tanks smell differently, and one smells like the formula he was using.
He gets more of that solution, and continues his work, only to be scolded later by Kimbro that he chose the wrong one. Once again, Kimbro states that he does not want any thinkers working for him. He wants a submissive black that will just follow the "rules" established in his "society". After fixing his mistake, the narrator is sent back to the office to find another position: Kimbro does not want the invisible man working for him.
In the scene that follows, the invisible man meets Mr. Ellison uses color to convey the novel's themes and motifs throughout the book, consistently weaving references to the following colors into the text:. Gold symbolizes power, elusive wealth, or the illusion of prosperity. References to gold and variations thereof include: the Golden Day, an ironic commentary on the lives of the veterans who, instead of looking forward to their golden years of retirement, escape only once a week on a golden day from the mental hospital; the brass tokens, which the boys mistake for gold coins; and the naked blonde's hair, described as "yellow like a Kewpie doll's.
Red, often associated with love and passion as in red roses, generally symbolizes blood, rage, or danger in the novel. Brother Jack's red hair which, along with his blue eyes and white skin, underscore his all-American identity , the red-faced men at the battle royal, the vet's red wheelchair underscoring his courage , and the frequent references to Santa Claus as a symbol of evil are part of a red motif that accents unpleasant personalities and symbolizes the narrator's uneasiness evoked by these characters.
Numerous references to red, white, and blue — the white men at the battle royal with their blue eyes and red faces — mock the principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness symbolized by the Stars and Stripes. Black is generally portrayed as good and positive black skin, Ras's "magnificent black horse," and the "black powerhouse". White is associated with negative images of coldness, death, and artifice: snow, the white blindfolds, the white fog, the images of a mysterious "white death," the "cold, white rigid chair" at the factory hospital, the optic white paint produced at the Liberty Paint Factory, and Brother Jack's "buttermilk white" glass eye.
However, in keeping with Ellison's tendency to reject polar opposites, this symbolism is sometimes reversed: the fragrant white magnolias and the narrator's favorite dessert, vanilla ice cream with sloe gin. Blue alludes to the blues, a form of African American folk music characterized by lyrics that lament the hardships of life and the pain of lost love. The blues motif is also emphasized through frequent references to musical instruments, blues language exemplified in the excerpts from black folk songs such as "Poor Robin" and references to blues singers such as Bessie Smith and to characters in the novel who sing the blues, such as Jim Trueblood and Mary Rambo.
Focusing on the harsh realities of life that black men and women such as Jim and Mary overcome through their strong religious beliefs and unwavering faith that tomorrow will be a better day, Ellison's novel provides a literary counterpart to the blues. The blues provides a musical counterpart to Ellison's novel.
References to the color blue also include the blues-singing cart-man's discarded blueprints, the white men's blue eyes, and the naked blonde's eyes, "as blue as a baboon's butt. Like white, gray a slang term used by blacks to refer to whites is generally associated with negative images. Examples include gray smoke, the dull gray weathered cabins in the former slave quarters, and the gray tinge in the white paint at the paint factory, which symbolizes the bland and homogenous result of mixing black and white cultures without respecting the unique qualities of each.
Gray is also alluded to in the fog that greets the narrator upon his arrival at the paint factory, which casts a gloomy and dismal shadow over the landscape and foreshadows the narrator's horrific experiences at the factory and factory hospital.
Although generally associated with nature, in the novel, green is the color of the lush campus verdure and money, the narrator's main motivator. While Ellison's images of the South are alive with colors of nature — green grass, red clay roads, white magnolias, purple and silver thistle — his images of the North are painted primarily in shades of gray and white.
Thus, color contrasts the rural South with its farms and plantations, providing people a means of living off the land, against the urban North, depicted as cold, sterile, and inhospitable. But the existence of that pattern should not lead you to view North and South simply as symbols for restriction and freedom. In Ellison's popular short story, "King of the Bingo Game," the anonymous narrator finds himself in the cold, unfriendly North missing the warmth and easygoing quality of southern life.
Do you find, as you read Invisible Man , that North and South are mixed symbols, representing a variety of things? Is the South both restrictive and friendly, the North freer yet more impersonal? There are several significant settings within each geographic area.
The settings in Chapters 1 to 6 include the hotel ballroom where the battle royal takes place Chapter 1 , Jim Trueblood's farm Chapter 2 , the Golden Day Chapter 3 and the college Chapters 4 to 6.
Each of these settings allows you to see black life in the South from a different perspective. Chapter 1 represents blacks in their most demeaning situation-on public display in the white world. Chapters 2 and 3 show blacks acting more freely in more natural settings, but these are settings outlawed for the college boys. The college boys are being educated on a tree-lined campus with brick buildings.
It is a neat and orderly world, a world in which blacks are restricted to the kind of behavior that suits those black leaders who would please wealthy whites. The campus is an Uncle Tom world, a world of blacks trying to act like whites.
To grow, the narrator must stop idealizing this world and its leaders. He must accept the freer and yet more dangerous world symbolized by New York. New York is a microcosm of the North.
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