In Invisible man, chapter one, we see the narrator put into
this extremely demeaning and dehumanizing experience which he seems totally ok
with. He is kind of forced into the barbaric battle royal where he and the
others are blindfolded and put into the ring to fight each other.
As we discussed in class, this specific part of the text is
filled with symbolism and things that could be interpreted in many different
ways, like how for instance, the blindfolds are made of while cloth. The blindfolding
itself is also symbolic. The white men themselves are metaphorically blinded,
as they can’t see these boys as actual human beings, with feelings and
emotions, to them they are just beasts who are fighting for their
entertainment. The boys themselves are not only physically blinded, but this
also represents how much they in reality can’t see; that all of this ‘good will’
actually keeps them below the white men, as they have to rely on the white men
for charity. Also, the boys know there is a cash prize at the end, but what
they don’t know is that to get said prize, they must conform to the stereotype
that black men are primitive, fighting beasts. Within this fight, we can see
symbolism of how many black people had to struggle to reach a prize of ‘goodwill’
that was so often out of reach for them. However, the fact that our narrator
could see through this mask, and avoid punches and swings, could also be symbolism for looking through the metaphorical mask,
though in the end, it didn’t help him that much.
Like, how we discussed in Native Son, even though Bigger knew that racism was holding him back, even
though he could sort of (or at least thought he could) ‘see’ through his
blindfold, or, sometimes, when Wright pulled the blindfold for us, in the end
it did him no good. The same thing happens to our narrator, he plays the game,
but in the end he is taken out by another, who himself had the metaphorical mask still on, and didn't see that by fighting so hard he was actually enforcing stereotypes. And even
though this other guy won, he too had to suffer through the coin grab, which
meant that his ‘elevated status’ was knocked back down again as all the boys
were re-humiliated for the pleasure of the white men.
I guess, sort of, this also kinda ties into the poem we read today, "A poem for players", where it says, yes you can do this, you can do that, but not as yourself. The boys could box, but it wasnt normal boxing, they had to play by the white mens' rules, or not be able to play/be humiliated even more.
As a conclusion, the blindfolding and battle royal were very important within this chapter. The fact that the narrator could sort of 'see through' it may be a theme that might come up later?
