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英语论文范文-The Symbolism of Identity in the Novel(3)

2013-07-02 01:11
 
“I walked along, munching the yam, just as suddenly overcome by an intense feeling of freedom—simply because I was eating while walking along the street. It was exhilarating, I no longer had to worry about who saw me or about what was proper. To hell with all that, and as sweet as the yam actually was, it became like nectar with the thought. If only someone who had known me at school or at home would come along and see me now. How shocked they’d be! I’d push them into a side street and smear their faces with the peel.” (Ellison 2002: 264)

His acceptance of Blues helps him keep his identity in the fast and maddening North. Blues is an autobiographical chronicle of personal catastrophe expressed lyrically. Blues expresses both the agony of life and the possibility of overcoming it through sheer toughness of spirit. All the Black writers have agreed that the Blues has been a survival mechanism for the Africans and also that it has been the greatest contribution to American art. For Ellison, the Blues is an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one’s aching consciousness, to finger its jagged grain, and to transcend it, not by the consolation of philosophy, but by squeezing it from a near-tragic, near-comic lyricism.
On his way to see Mr. Emerson, the invisible man meets a man pushing a cart piles roll of blue paper and singing a blues. He at first rejects hearing the Blues, however, when the invisible man goes out of Emerson’s office and on a bus, a man sitting in front of him is constantly whistling a tune. Getting off the bus, he finds himself humming the same tune “well they picked poor robin clean”, now, he is accepting his black birth.
At the end of the novel the invisible man is speaking an idiom infused by the Blues, which symbolizes that he has learned to cherish the black folk tradition and begins to understand that his identity is deeply rooted in black American history. Also, the preservation of Brother Tarp’s chain link, the coin bank, all embody the enlightenment the invisible man gets in his quest for identity. （科教范文网 fw.nseac.com编辑发布）
3) From the Submission to the Protest
The protagonist in his own town is viewed as an obedient and humble boy. The oration he deliverers on his graduation—Humility was the Secret, indeed the Very Essence of Progress is the best example of his submission. The protagonist holds the respect and envy for administers and trustees. He virtually worships them, and he is proud of his submissiveness to the white, which won him a scholarship and a briefcase. He tries to please the trustee by being a good and servile student. He respects the trustee Norton for the latter’s generosity and apparently kindness to him. He prides himself on being a driver for Norton, he thinks that he must seize this opportunity to please the trustee “perhaps he’d give me a large tip, or a suit, or a scholarship next year” (Ellison 2002: 38).
Though at first he is angry with his expulsion from the school ordered by the Dr. Bledsoe, and he confronts it with the Dr. Bledsoe but later he tries to convince himself to accept the decision for the “wrong deed”,

“Somehow, I convinced myself, I had violated the code and thus would have to submit to punishment. Dr. Bledsoe is right, I told myself, he is right; the school and what it stands for have to be protected. There was no other way, and no matter how much I suffered I would pay my debt as quickly as possible and return to building my career.” (Ellison 2002: 147)

Again, he submits himself to the Brotherhood, when Brotherhood gives him the house, the money, and a name, which promise a new beginning for him to achieve his goal. By doing this, he chooses to disarm himself, give up his voice, forget his past and accept the organization’s offer—a chance to define himself. Similarly, when he receives an anonymous letter to give him a warning to watch his words or deeds, which is, actually, a threatening letter to restrict him, but he convinces himself to trust the Brotherhood and convinces that the reproach indicating their belief in him, not their discontent with him,

“And, after all, I told myself, the assignment was also proof of the committee’s good will. For by selecting me to speak with its authority on a subject which elsewhere in our society I’d have found taboo, weren’t they reaffirming their belief both in me and in the principles of Brotherhood, proving that they drew no lines even when it came to women? They had to investigate the charges against me, but the assignment was their unsentimental affirmation that their belief in me was unbroken.” (Ellison 2002: 408) （科教范文网 Lw.nsEAc.com编辑整理）
 
As the unveiling of the truth to him, he gradually approaches the reality, and he gets rid of his submissiveness and humbleness and takes some actions to voice his protest.
The death of Clifton shocks the narrator greatly, he begins to doubt about the principle of Brotherhood and discern the true purpose, and then he feels sympathy and respect for Clifton, thus he hold a funeral for him to express his support and reverence for him, which violates Brotherhood of course.