"What Did I Do To Be So Black and Blue"

With the seminars that are currently happening in AP Lit. there seems to be one topic that has not been discussed and that has been the many songs present in the novel. Ralph Ellison is known as a man with a connection to the African American culture and jazz music is a huge part of this culture. One of the songs I noticed in the prologue, a section that will be discussed in class tomorrow, is the song “What Did I Do to Be So Black and Blue.” This song was originally written by Thomas Waller and was later sung by the great Louis Armstrong. The reference to the song, as aforementioned, occurs in the introduction of the novel and the narrator discusses how he wishes to feel the vibrations of the recording of “What Did I Do to Be So Black and Blue.” Because Ellison spent a lot of time writing the novel, I figured that the song must have some significance in the scope of the novel and was not placed accidentally. For this reason, I decided to research the song, a song I likely should have researched for my Invisible Man Research project.
“(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue” was originally written by Thomas “Fats” Waller for the Broadway musical called Hot Chocolates. It was one of the first musicals to be performed by only African Americans and was written to show the sadness of a dark-skinned woman who had lost her man to a lighter-skinned girl. In 1955, Louis Armstrong took the song and transformed it into a nationally recognized song representing the powerful protest against racial discrimination. The song also has a historical significance in its message against racial discrimination and expresses the futility that some African Americans felt during the time period. The impassioned performance of Armstrong came eleven months after the U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, which declared segregation of schools to be unconstitutional. Before and after this controversial decision, there were a series of murders of African Americans in the Deep South in states of Mississippi and Alabama. In the same year, 1955, Rosa Parks sparked the civil rights movement by refusing to give up her bus seat thus starting the Montgomery Bus Boycott. A few years later, Louis Armstrong spoke out harshly against President Eisenhower when the president was reluctant to act when African American teenagers were banned from a high school in Arkansas for no other reason than their skin color. With the start of the civil rights movement and the much political and social turmoil present at the time of the release of the song, Louis Armstrong essentially recorded an ultimate articulation of the concerns of the African American population. The song became a symbol and anthem of African American complaint against the invisibility that the speaker in the novel justifiably claims is present.

Invisible Man = Frederick Douglass

Because we are on the topic of the novel Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, I figured I would discuss one of the many figures that the narrator is compared to in the novel. The list of people that the narrator, or the invisible man as some people like to call him, include Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey, but the person I would like to focus on is Frederick Douglass. Although Brother Jack states that he wishes to mold the narrator into a newer and better form of Booker T. Washington, and there is mention of him being like Washington in the Battle Royal, the one historical figure that I see most in the narrator is Douglass. Since I did not really do research on Frederick Douglass, I thought I would do a little digging on his history to see if there were more connections between the two people.
Frederick Douglass was born in a slave cabin and eventually became a slave. Although it was unlawful for slaves to learn to read and write, Douglass did by giving away food in exchange for lessons. By the time he escaped slavery, he became a staunch abolitionist and experienced a meteoric rise to fame and prominence. He eventually became a trusted advisor to Abraham Lincoln and participated in the Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention. The one point that I saw, which provided a distinct similarity was the fact that both the narrator and Douglass both experienced meteoric rises to prominence. The narrator rose to prominence in the Brotherhood in a relatively short period of time through his brilliant oratory skills similar to the way Douglass became a leading figure in the abolitionist movement because of his oratory skills. Another point of similarity is that Douglass lived his life by following three keys: take advantage of opportunities, believe in yourself, and use the power of the spoken language. These three things embodied Douglass as a person and I feel that they also are key characteristics of the narrator. The narrator uses his belief in himself to take advantage of the Brotherhood situation. By using his ability to move the audience emotionally through his pathos-driven speaking, he is able to translate his belief in himself to others believing in him. This also brings along the added benefit of making money and increasing his standing in society. Eventually his pathos-driven speaking adds the element of rationality and science to cause him to be the perfect fit to be the Brotherhood’s spokesperson. By knowing his abilities and his limits and by believing in himself, the narrator went from being nearly homeless looking for a job to being rather well-to-do. This is again exactly like Douglass as he used his ability to be eloquent to get close to the many prominent political figures of his day and eventually rise to unmatched prominence in the African American community. These are of course only come of the connections that exist between Douglass and the narrator as I only did some surface research to come up with the similarities. Deeper research would likely yield more common points as I do firmly believe that the narrator is more like Frederick Douglass than any other African American historical figure in the novel.

The Stranger and The Dog

This week marked the first week of our Lit Circle novels and I must say, I was quite interested in the book I chose. The Stranger actually held my interest throughout the sixty pages we had to read for this session and it went by relatively fast. One of the most surprising things about the actual novel was the relative simplicity involved with the writing, at least stylistically. Every sentence was very short and did not really have any real substance or descriptive factor. I later learned that this was to show the characteristic monotony of the main character, Meursault, but the fact that Camus, the author of the novel, chose to write like that is still surprising. This leads directly into another thing that was really interesting about the novel and that was the way that Meursault reacts to situations. He has absolutely no emotions. This was discussed in more depth in our actual literature circle discussions, but Meursault is an apathetic individual, and seems almost incapable of feelings. When his mother dies, he shrugs it off as if he has just witnessed the death of an ant. He does not cry or weep and eventually goes on to resume his daily activities as if nothing has happened. When his girlfriend Marie states that she loves him, he states that love does not mean anything and when she wants to marry him, he states that marriage too means nothing. Arguably the most important phenomena in life, that being love, and the biggest commitment one can make, that being marriage, are again shrugged off by Meursault. We only really see him reveal any emotion when he kills and Arab at the end of the first section, something that does not really show any promise for his future. His emotions come out when he kills, sounds rather foreboding, which coincides with the rather strange title of the novel, one that invokes an aura of mystery.
Another one of the characters that had me very confused was the presence of Salomano and his dog in the novel. Salomano is presented as the neighbor of Meursault and is an old man whose only companion is his dog. The two resemble each other in appearance as both have hunched necks and scabs all over their bodies, yet the man hates the dog and the dog is deathly afraid of the man. Originally, I wondered why in the world the man would be included in the novel, but it was clarified when the scene where the man lost his dog took place. The old man was actually weeping when the dog slipped its collar and ran away despite showing hate towards it. Salomano goes on to tell a story about how he bought the dog when his wife died to be his companion. The dog likely filled the void left behind by his wife’s death and now that the dog is gone, the void has reopened provoking tears. The situation with the old man and the dog also reveals one of the aspects of Camus’s philosophy, one that is present throughout the novel. The story goes along with the saying that you don’t appreciate things until they are gone. It also highlights the pettiness of man and the absurdity in the events that occur in one’s life.

The Invisible Man is Running

I must say that I am quite thankful that we are finally done reading the Invisible Man, a book, despite whatever my test grade will indicate, that I did finish late Sunday night. Despite the pain in the … that the novel was, at least in trying to finish all of the never ending assignments that remain to go on, I did actually enjoy the novel as surprising as that may seem. In my research of Ralph Ellison, I found that he explored race relations in the times after the Civil War in a way different than those before him in that he depicted the African American culture as vibrant and full rather than diminished and nearly dead. This different way of writing about race relations and the invisibility of African Americans was very interesting and caught my interest throughout the novel.
When looking back over the novel in a futile attempt to study for the test, I noticed many things that connected the beginning of the novel to the end of the novel that I had not initially picked up on. One of these things was the “running” theme and diction used. In the moments after the Battle Royal took place as the narrator watched the naked lady do her mesmerizing dance and was forced to fight, the narrator was able to give a speech. This speech contained a certain eloquence that would be reciprocated during his times in the Brotherhood but the white men listening did not truly appreciate it. The school superintendent merely gave the narrator the scholarship and an official looking document and sent him on his way after the white men had been entertained by the black men. The night he received the document, the narrator had a dream where he read the letter and it said “Keep This [expletive for African American]-Boy Running” (Ellison 33). After explaining the dream, he stated that he did not get the meaning at the time, but it is apparent that he eventually did glean the meaning. The funny thing about the letter and the dream is that it came true. Usually when one says that his dreams came true, it is a god thing but in this case, it was the opposite as the narrator was forced to run through various locations. He ran from his home to college and while at college ran around following instructions. He was eventually kicked out for running an errand incorrectly and was ran out of the college and forced to go to New York. When in New York, he ran around the city giving his “letter” of recommendation from Dr. Bledsoe to the employers only to never get a call-back. After this, he went to the paint factory and eventually gave his speech about dispossession after which he again ran away from Brother Jack. This running continued as he followed other people’s wishes and did what they expected of him, something that he eventually realizes and rebels against. In the very end of the novel, on page 534, he states that “I ran through the night, ran within myself. Ran.” In stating that he is running within himself, he is essentially stating that he is running away from himself and his personal identity. His identity has been dictated by other for so long and now that he has decided to harness it as his own, he has been rendered invisible as people can no longer see him in the way that they want, but now must realize that he is finally his own man. This at least was my interpretation of the word running and the invisibility presented in the novel as the two go hand in hand.

Similar Sonnet

I must say that I have had quite an interesting week. I am both glad and sad to say that I had a two and a half day week because I was sick on Monday and Tuesday, glad because I got to miss school, but sad because I missed so much in Ms. Clinch’s wonderful class. One such thing was the introduction to the sonnets we have recently discussed in class. I didn’t really have a background going into the seminar, but just sitting and listening was enlightening as I was able to learn that sonnets are about unrequited love and cruel/fair women. I also learned that a sonnet always has a shift or a turning point that is somewhere within the 14 lines of the poem. The one thing that really caught my eye in terms of the sonnets we discussed in class was the similarities that existed between them, the sonnet by Sir Thomas Wyatt and Sonnet 67 by Edmund Spenser in particular.
Aside from the extended metaphors present in both sonnets regarding a man being on a hunt to obtain a woman, there were many other similarities that existed within the metaphor that really struck me. The first was the fact that both sonnets referred to the woman as a deer or doe. I mean sure, deer are beautiful creatures, but the fact that they are being hunted as prey is rather interesting. The women are clearly seen as objects, as I am sure many were in the time period the sonnets were written, and the capture of a woman’s interest seems to be almost like a game for the men. Another similarity that caught my eye is that although the chase is somewhat of a game in capturing one’s prey, it also seems that the men are both exhausted from their journey. The men see it as a game, but a necessary game, that has led them along a long and wearied path leading to a tired mind and body. Another point of comparison is that the men in both poems wish to either tame the deer or to tie it up in some way, shape, or manner. This again points to the view that women are objects meant to be tamed and owned, almost like animals. But, it also seemed like the women had a lot of power in the situation, especially in the sonnet by Spenser. The woman in both almost led the men on the chase because of their cruelly fair looks and in the end either tricked them into “taming” them or walked away. Although the outcomes of the poem, one being that the man “got”, for we don’t know if the woman planned on being with the man all along or not, the woman and the other being that woman was already “owned”, for we do not know if she really is owned or merely acts like it, by another man, there are many similarities present as aforementioned. These similarities, above all else, seem to characterize sonnets as many have similar aspects, but almost always have some type of deeper meaning that is extremely confusing.

Hamlet is a Coward???

When looking deeply into the soliloquy present in the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare, I noticed many things that I had previously skimmed over. I understood the events better and got a firmer grasp on some of the hidden elements of the play. Unfortunately this came too late as I wasn’t able to use it on the impossible quote test we just took, but there isn’t much I can do about it now. Recognizing an element of Hamlet’s persona on the other hand can never come too late. One element that really struck me, and was an element that I briefly broached in my essay, but did not really talk about in depth was the presence of Hamlet’s cowardice, or at least what I saw as cowardice. I may be completely off here, but hey, you got to take some risks in life.
Throughout the entire play, Hamlet constantly has thoughts about getting revenge on Claudius for killing his father. Hamlet sees the ghost in Act I and the ghost tells him that Claudius purposefully killed him to get the throne and start an incestuous relationship with King Hamlet’s ex-wife Gertrude. The thing about these thoughts is that they are just that, thoughts for he does nothing to ever act upon the thoughts. Every now and then, he undergoes periods of renewed conviction when he sees something in others that he admires, but after reinforcing his convictions, he goes back to doing nothing about them. A prime example of this is in his soliloquy in Act II when he talks about him being a rogue and a peasant slave. He states that he has ample motive to exact revenge, but does nothing calling himself a coward. He compares himself to a player that can act sad and speak words of grief when a death occurs, while he can do nothing but act sad. This again occurs in his soliloquy in Act IV when he admires the Norwegians for marching to their deaths for nothing more than honor and a patch of land not even big enough to bury all of their bodies. Here again, he complains about himself being a coward and states that he will change because he has a great argument to act as his father was killed and his mother stained. In both instances, Hamlet states that he will change and act, and in Act III, he does put on the play as promised, but once confirming Claudius’s role in his father’s murder he again does nothing. In Act IV, he makes a key distinction that essentially personifies Hamlet throughout the play. He states that his “thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth” (4.4.66). The key word here is again “thought” as he wishes for his thoughts to be bloody while he does nothing to act upon his thoughts. Even when he does actually do something, it is a disastrous occasion as most of the royal family dies leaving only Horatio alive. Hamlet always requires an outside source to renew convictions that never actually come into fruition. He is afraid of the outcomes of his actions as he states in the soliloquy in Act IV, and this fear and cowardice causes him to only renew his thoughts and never act upon them.

Invisible Oppression

The title The Invisible Man always causes thoughts of some science fiction thriller to rush through my head because the concept of invisibility is somewhat unknown to man. Sure, things can be camouflaged to appear invisible and they can hide from appearance by using things as cover, but true invisibility, and here I am talking about a condition when any seeing creature can look at you an see through you, has never been accomplished. Also, man is always afraid and extremely interested in the unknown, so I figured Ralph Ellison would take some weird approach on explaining invisibility through some obscure scientific concepts to satisfy his own interests. I was actually quite excited to read about something that could probably really spark my interest. The only problem was that I was completely wrong in my assumptions of the possible subject matter.
After reading through the first couple of pages in the novel, I realized that Ellison is going to explore a more figurative invisibility, but one that is just as interesting a topic, the inability of people to see the state of race relations. This topic is really only introduced a good ways into the novel when a fight breaks out between the people at the Golden Day saloon as one of the black veterans comments about a white man named Norton being blind to race relations. Despite the real discussion taking place in the meat of the novel, the introduction really struck me because of the fact that it is true, not the part about a man stealing electricity to light his home under a building but the part about how many are blind to the problems around them. In the case of civil rights, it took a man like Martin Luther King to come out and shed light upon an issue that many had chosen to turn a blind eye. In the case of the independence of many countries, such as India, it took a man like Gandhi to band the people together to strive for a goal that people had previously thought impossible or invisible. In the case of women’s rights, it took people like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony to band women under one banner to get the privileges they deserved. In all of these cases, the problems were apparent but remained invisible to the public until there was light shed upon the issue, light that could be taken as synonymous to the large amount of light present in the mans home. It is as if he is trying to fight his invisibility with an abundance of light so he becomes relevant again. This same light is shed upon Norton when he comes into the Golden Day saloon and witnesses the fight and hears the “doctor” talk to him about race relations. I will admit that I am a bit behind on my reading, but I can only guess how the rest of the novel will go as we learn more about the narrator’s invisibility and how he came to see himself in that way.