This whole world is a carnival imbibed by the circumvention conventions of contemporary society. We are all engulfed by the introvert aptitude in the world’s carnival and take recourse to bring the invisibility within at the focus of everyone. This is what Ralph Ellison did in his so profound exemplary book “Invisible Man”. Carnivalesque as a term formed by the Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin refers to the literary mode that challenges and unshackle the assumption of the atmosphere of authoritarian style or atmosphere through the use of humor or chaos. The world of Ralph Ellison is a carnivalesque approach to the taboo and fears following the interaction between the black women and the white men.
Many critics have generalized the version of the “Invisible Man” as the most influential novel of the Post World War II and the greatest literary work highlighting the extraordinary way the invisible black man strives and struggles for his place in the white dominated society. But the most crucial aspect is to analyze this invisible man in the light of the political context and through new literary critical strategies and lenses to bring at the man’s conscious level the most important historical movements of the American society. Christopher A. Shinn has most adequately looked into the issues and life of black men in Ralph’s Ellison, “Invisible Man”. This new lens is through the carnivalesque approach propounded by Mikhail Bakhtin and many others like Julia Kristeva, Robert Da Matta, and Richard D. E. Burton, among others (Shinn, Shinn, Masquerade…. Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man).
The “Invisible Man” should be looked at in the political context through the carnivalesque approach overlooked by the earlier critics. Many critics have criticised “Invisible Man” as politically conservative because it appears to give an unconcealed account of political guidance to its readers which ends in a definite call for action and certain good political reasons for the vagueness. The political approach in the novel lies in its structure by which it asks various questions towards the liberation of the blacks and putting into the dialogue form. The “Invisible Man” has attained the double vision forcibly imposed on them as they make them politically aware of their position in the racist society. This double vision is their struggle between the images they hold for themselves and political schemes, their desire and the way they express themselves and their ardent desire to resist. But if we look at the deeper level, double vision is an attack on their dualistic personality, and weakening the very position they are standing. Through double vision at one hand they want to show their presence and identity at personal as well as the cultural level and they get success in making their presence felt while on the other hand it is yet again deferred and their political stand is also one hand accepted while on the other hand challenged. (Reed, 59-60) This is the position blacks were finding themselves. This double vision is revealed in the statement “I am an invisible man. No I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Ellen Poe”(Harris & Bundy, p. 109).
Ralph Ellison elaborated on the struggle of the man in a quest of his own identity in the white world and he found that his efforts had been made complex due to the fact that he is a black man in the racist white society where every task of his is viewed through the white man’s lens. Christopher you had also brought into focus seemingly in the light of the struggle of self-identification of the man in the blind world and in the mythic carnival. This world is like a carnival appearing to be magical, and everyone performing ritual sacrifice and hiding and enjoying behind the masks. In the “Invisible Man” too, every human being has blinded himself to reality and plays a dubious role in the midst of the ritual sacrifice and magic. Throughout the novel, the narrator finds himself passing across the various departments and communities. For e.g. He enters the plant of the Liberty Paints to the Brotherhood as a worker but at every step he has to endorse himself with the notion of different ideas and the way he should behave in society. As the protagonist attempts to define himself, as he passes through various values and expectations imposed on him, in each case the prescribed role poses a limitation on his thoughts and conduces him to perform the most inauthentic role. While working at Liberty Paints, he finds himself involved in the process whereby white is dependent on the black for the work like mixing of the paint tones and the racial makeup of the workforce. Yet the factory does not acknowledge his contributions when the final product is presented and the narrator as the black man ends up hushed.
The narrator realizes the fact that he has to see the world as others would like to see him and the limitation posed on him on his vision in turn places limitations on the way of his actions. He comes to the conclusion that he is invisible in this worldly carnival, where the whole world is a mere stage acting and masquerading as the other deems them to do. He is not able to act as his personality demands him to and adopts invisibility in an attempt to cast off the stereotypes, but in the end he finds himself too passive and decides to make an active contribution towards the society as most complex human being. He would try to exert his power over the world and social system and would force others to acknowledge his contributions, beliefs and practices beyond their prejudiced expectations.
Wilson Harris rhetorically commented that “Invisible Man is a repetitively dying (yet cyclically reawakening) god who is metaphorically consumed first in the boxing ring phase of the novel, then in the Bledsoe phase, then in the paint factory explosion phase, and in other succeeding Harlem phases in which he is symbolically castrated yet bleakly ‘potentialized’, rendered metaphysically potent, within the womb of space.” (Harris & Bundy, p. 109) At each phase of the cannibalized figure as you envisage, an invisible man takes on in his life through the awakening of the self or rebirth in the swath in the so-called civilization.
During the course of his life journey in the world of whites, he finds the complexity with which he is engulfed in his inner self is not limited only to the racism of the people but also the ideological perspective. He came to visualize that ideologies presented by the institutions are far simpler and one sided so as to fulfill what is required for the complex as an individual’s identity. The novel presents several kinds of ideologies; one from the tamer, sycophantic ideology as presented by Booker T. Washington at the narrator’s college to the more violent, and other separatist thoughts raised by Ras the Exhorter. But the biggest ideological point he found is from the Brotherhood. He was taught to save other people and free them from the bondage of slavery but they instead were betraying the whole concept of freedom and individuality. The novel focuses on the point that life is very rich, compounded in unpredictability but it also reaches its beauty when it gives surprises. This is nothing else than the carnivalesque of the Christopher and what you found reflecting in the Butler-Evans version of carnivalesque where he mixes vernacular Black voice to the “‘literariness’ of the protagonist’s voice”. (Shinn, Masquerade…. Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man) and conveys “carnivalesque” as a “spirit” that would displace hierarchies and destabilizes the dominant order. (Shinn, Masquerade…. Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man).
Not only the protagonist falls into the stereotyping image of racism but also tries to escape from the clutches of prejudice, he comes face into the face with the other blacks that try to adopt a defense strategy for all the African Americans. They themselves try to focus on the point that how blacks should act to make their place in the white society. They brought about the theoretical presumption that if they themselves don’t act according to what is prescribed they would likely be betraying their own race. Yet the narrator finds in it one stereotype being replaced with the other stereotype and one role exchanged with the other role. Hereby what you said implies the same, while giving the example of the invisible man’s encounter with the naked blonde woman in the Battle Royal Scene. With this example, he could better learn to live with his predicament and become psychically aware of his own myopic Homeric-Cyclopean vision. In other words, he feels helpless on the one hand to change the standards while on the other hand change his own vision and what he himself wants to see. As Patrice D Rankin too said that Invisible Man’s adoration of blond woman is symbolic of the Cyclops’ uncontrolled desire. (Rankine, p. 137) With the body sporting an American Flag, she is a social projection of a white male audience.
Just like in carnival there is a beauty and the beast and rituals and magic and all enjoy these shows and extravagance, but we are blind to the fact what is going behind these extravagancies, our life is also a carnival covered with the blind thoughts and ideologies taught to us without getting into the reality. People avoid looking at the truth and face the inability to see what they like to see and what they don’t like to see. They are incapable to see what their prejudice does not want them to see forcing them into the life of invisibility. They also refuse to acknowledge what is the truth about their own life and their community. For e.g. boys who are fighting at the battle royal are blindfolded, which is a symbolic representation of their exploitive nature at the hands of the white men. Another symbol is that of the Founders’ statute which is within eyes symbolizing the neglect of reality facing racism. Like this, there are several instances of blindness in the novel repeating again and again the notion of the virtually blind man amidst the show of worldly affairs.
This whole world is a carnival where we often find ourselves in the struggle of what we want to achieve and what we get, what we want to gain from life and what we lose and what are our ideals and expectations and what we are forced to believe. This was prevalent in the world when racism was at its peak but its relevance is very well prevalent now also when we are still bounded by our blindness and cannot see age-old conventions of blindness.
References
- Ellison, Ralph. “Invisible Man” New York: Vintage, 1980.
- Harris, Wilson & Bundy, A.J.M. “Selected Essays of Wilson Harris: The Unfinished Genesis of the Imagination”. New York, NY: Routledge, 1999.
- Reed, T.V. “Fifteen Jugglers, Five Believers: Literary Politics and the Poetics of American Social Movements”. Los Angeles: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS, 1992.
- Shinn, Christopher A. “Masquerade, Magic, and Carnival in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man”. African American Review (AAR) 2002; 36 (2): 243-61.
- Rankie, Patrice D. “Ulysses in Black: Ralph Ellison, Classicism, and African American Literature.” Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006