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  • Essay / Free Essays on The Invisible Man: In Search of Self - 1248

    In Search of Self in the Invisible ManInvisible Man is a story told through the eyes of the narrator, a black man struggling in a white culture . The story begins during his college years where he works hard and earns the respect of the administration. Dr. Bledsoe, the prominent black administrator at his school, becomes his mentor. Dr. Bledsoe has achieved success in white culture, which is the goal the narrator seeks to achieve. The narrator's hard work culminates with the privilege of taking Mr. Norton, a white benefactor of the school, on a driving tour of the college grounds. After much persuasion and against his better judgment, the narrator takes Mr. Norton to a rundown black neighborhood. When Dr. Bledsoe found out about the trip, the narrator was kicked out of school because he had shown Mr. Norton anything other than the ideal black man. The narrator is upset that the person he idealizes is turning against him. Immediately, he went to New York where he started his life again. He joins the Brotherhood, a group fighting for the betterment of the black race, an ideal he reveres. Upon his arrival in the Brotherhood, he meets Brother Tarp and Brother Tod Clifton who give him a chain link and a paper doll respectively. I chose to write about these objects because they symbolize his struggle within his community for black people and his inner struggle in search of identity. The narrator works hard for the Brotherhood and his efforts are rewarded by being distinguished as a representative. from the Harlem neighborhood. One of the first people he meets is Brother Tarp, a former laborer from the Harlem neighborhood, who gives the narrator the chain link he broke nineteen years earlier, while freeing himself from imprisonment . Brother Tarp's imprisonment was because he stood up to a white man. He was punished for his defiance and his attempt to assert his individuality. Imprisonment robbed him of his identity, which he regained by escaping and establishing himself in the Brotherhood. The chain becomes a symbol between the narrator and Brother Tarp because it also symbolizes the narrator's experience at college, where he was not physically chained, but he was limited to living by Dr. Bledsoe's rules. He feels that he too has escaped, to reestablish himself (386).