What’s the deal, yo? This week we keepin it on the DL with Invisible Man by
Ralph Ellison.
Now when the narrator of dis book starts off sayin he invisible, it
ain’t cuz he got super powers. It’s cuz whenever people look at him, they only see
“their surroundings, themselves, and their imagination.”
So this cat start reminiscing about back in the day when his young self got “the honor”
of making speech in front of some white folk. But before he do,
The Invisible Man gotta throw down with some bruthas and make a damn fool of himself as
entertainment. When it’s all said and done, these crazy crackas throw him some change
for his education.
In college, the narrator gotta drive around a rich honkie named Norton. But
after showin him how black folk really live, the Invisible Man gets expelled and ends up
grindin at a factory in New York.
S’all good til one day sh** goes hyphy at work and the narrator blacks the
fu** out.
The Invisible Man hits the streets of Harlem where he shacks up with some soul-sistah
named Mary, who heals his wounds and learns him good on his black heritage.
After the Invisible Man heal up, some fools called the Brotherhood axe if he
wanna join an organization to help the oppressed. The price- he kiss his name and his past goodbye.
When Clifton, one of his brotherhood boys, disappears, our boy goes
looking for him but soon after see him get capped by the 5- O. Rodney King preach!
So the narrator pours one out for Clifton during his funeral, but the Brotherhood
start tweakin about him doin it without their say-so.
sh** gets real when some thug named Ras The Destroyer sparks a riot up in Harlem.
This fool throws a god damn spear at the invisible man,
how the fu** you got a spear in harlem?
but our boy ducks it, picks it back up,
and slangs it right in his grill. Then Inveezy fall in to a sewer hole where the po-lice
trap him. And he been chillin underground ever since.
Throughout this novel, Invisible Man’s main game is finding a true identity
in a world full of phonies tryin to tell him who he be. Whether it’s Emerson, Norton,
or Jack from the Brotherhood:
But only by defining himself can the invisible man really break dem chains
and be free.
So our boy try to find a gang of other playas who fightin the same power. But
even the Brotherhood schemin to use the narrator for they own purposes. They say they a gang
of liberators, but on the real, they really just a bunch of oppressors. The Invisible
Man trying to find out who he is, but these haters playin it raw and tell him to forget
his name and past.
But how’s a brotha gonna cope with all these haters rollin fake? Homie gotta
look at life with a new sense of awareness.
Even though Invisible Man dealing with some real street sh**, he learns to look
at life through through a COMIC FRAME. Like his grandpappi say: “laugh to keep from
crying.”
Every single time this thug try to change his life in order to stop being run,
it ends up so far from what he intended that it seems straight up absurd. For example,
his speech at the beginning don’t give him no respect, but it does give him a mouth full
of blood.
When its all said and done, the Invisible Man finally gets exactly what he
chasin. Wading through all dat absurd bullsh** helps him find out who he truly is. Like my
main man Albert Camus once said:
In the end, our boy throws all these fake haters to the wind, and say he
don’t need them to find his own identity. So he buries himself underground, picks up
a pen, and defines himself through spittin his story. That’s some heroic sh** right
thurr.
So define yo-self by pickin up some of my swag. Tune in next week and get you
ass educated. Later!