Invisible Man's prologue introduces us to a markedly different style of writing than the naturalism seen in Native Son. It's a first person narrative that makes the writing feel a bit more intimate than an omnipresent third person narrator, and has more of an "unreal" tone with all the metaphors and peculiar descriptions. Class on Tuesday helped me to elucidate my thoughts on how to describe the tone of the novel although now I feel like I'm just repeating what was said there. Anyways, I felt that the tone was dreamlike in the sense that what's being established doesn't seem concrete. We know this person lives in a basement and has many lightbulbs but the complete picture of this guy's current situation is fuzzy around the edges. The narrator is telling the reader about himself but also isn't revealing that much at the same time.
So I thought that the style of the prologue would continue throughout the book but it changes in Chapter 1 and gets more focused. Yet the allusions to dreams still continue, and in a book that is founded on symbolism it makes sense it has a dream-like atmosphere, since people tend to look for the deeper meaning of dreams. Also something subjective I want to note is that the feeling of a dream lingers after one wakes up but trying to translate what you remember of the experience into words isn't always possible. Usually depictions of dreams in writing kind of annoy me because they're too cohesive and straightforward rather than being fragmented. I think the dreams (and hallucination?) that have been described in this novel so far have been an okay mix of relevance and randomness, most notably the one Jim Trueblood had with details like birds coming out of the bed and a tunnel inside a grandfather clock. The white woman in the dream is trying to prevent Trueblood from getting into the clock by grabbing and holding onto him, which scares him because he's afraid of touching a white woman. The taboo nature of this scene is the only thing I can connect to what's happening outside of the dream but there's probably more symbolism that can be gleaned...
The contrast between the prologue and first chapter to me is especially striking, as the narrator speaks in very different ways, and the two chapters are the farthest apart with respect to time, with the prologue being essentially the present and chapter one being as far back as the book goes. As opposed to the obscure descriptions and references which Wright uses in the prologue of the book, chapter one appears very fresh and hopeful, in stark contrast with the prologue. This is in part due to the narrator in chapter one, and the extensive, undying hope he possesses in the face of any adversity, even race.
ReplyDeleteI definitely understand where you're coming from on dreams in writing sometimes very much not capturing the sort of "liquid" and surreal quality of actual dreams lol
ReplyDeleteInvisible Man definitely has the dreamlike quality of hyper-illogical, unquestioned scenarios stemming from unspoken, but apparent subconscious fears, etc. Although Invisible Man is powered by this surreal symbolism, I think, I admit I'm constantly disoriented while reading this novel, and as crazy as dreams are I've always felt they're intimate and oddly familiar. I still feel distance from Invisible Man and I wonder why. I think I need some stability and clear-headedness to ground myself on; I don't navigate this start-to-finish ambiguity and outlandishness well
Also, I think the dream I've liked the most described in this book was that dream the woman had in the prologue where her face melted out and flooded her entire room, or something like that. It's kinda kooky how much that visual hit a chord with me despite being something I'd never imagined before
A "mix of randomness and relevance" is not a bad way of characterizing Ellison's style throughout this novel, not just in his treatment of dreams (although it applies nicely to that context as well). It's often hard to tell if a certain detail has been dropped into the narrative for some significant reason, or if it's a "red herring" designed to keep us running after some elusive significance, with the author as a "trickster" hovering somewhere over his work, giggling at us as we unpack the symbolism. I certainly do think a lot of the symbolism and metaphor in this novel is important (which is why we spend so much class time on it), but I also keep suspecting that Ellison may be messing with us--or, somewhat less diabolically, reflecting how elusive meaning is to the narrator, as he keeps being teased by stuff that seems meaningful but isn't.
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