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英语论文范文-The Symbolism of Identity in the Novel(5)

2013-07-02 01:11
e) While confronting with the Harlem riot, he wears dark glasses and a hat, only to find that people on the streets regard him as the man Rinehart, the runner, the gambler, the briber, the lover and the preacher. He is all things to all people but not himself.
f) Finally, he discovers his invisibility in the underground. He burns the paper in the briefcase and admits that he is nobody but an invisible man. The various identities enlighten him that one’s true Identity is the sum of one’s experiences. To deny one’s past is to deny himself,

“It was as though I’d learned suddenly to look around corners: images of past humiliations flickered through my head and I saw that they were more than separate experiences. They were me; they defined me. I was my experiences and my experience was me, and no blind men, no matter how powerful they became, even if they conquered the world, could take that, or change one single itch, taunt, laugh, cry, scar, ache, rage or pain of it.” (Ellison 2002: 508)

The symbolical meaning for those various identities is very obvious. All these symbolize the invisibility of a common black man in this indifferent, alienated world. In order to find the true self, the first step is to find and realize one’s invisibility.
2) Other Symbols of Identity
Symbols are the most valuable components in the expression of themes in the novel. Ellison incorporates numerous symbols and archetypes into his novel, each providing a unique perspective on the narrative and supporting the dominant themes of invisibility and identity.
    a) Boomerang
In prologue, the protagonist mentions the boomerang:

“But that is taking advantage of you, those two spots are among the darkest of whole civilization—pardon me, our whole culture (an important distinction, I’ve heard)—which might sound like a hoax, or a contradiction, but that is how the world moves” not like an arrow but a boomerang. I know; I have been boomeranged across my head so much that I now can see the darkness of lightness.” (Ellison 2002: 6)

Boomerang is a curved flat wooden missile which can be thrown and it returns to the thrower if it fails to hit anything. In the novel, Boomerang symbolizes the curved tendency of the protagonist’s fate: he is in other’s hands including Dr. Bledsoe, Brother Jack and so on. No matter how big efforts he has made, he has no chance to be himself under their control. He has been destined to suffer the agony through all life’s ups and downs.

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b) Brother Tarp’s chain links
Brother Tarp, a man has been imprisoned for 19 years because he dared to say” No” to a white man. He gives protagonist a batter chain links he was forced to wear as an inmate. The chain links to Brother Tarp symbolizes his freedom from physical as well as mental slavery. To the protagonist, he draws the strength from the links and gradually changes his attitude towards the history of his forefather. In the university, he is unwilling to look back at the past slavery history, “I recalled only a few cracked relics from slavery times….they had not been pleasant and whenever I had visited the room I avoided the glass case in which they rested…and I had not looked even at these too often” ( Ellison 2002: 181). However, he realizes that what is essential in his life.
c) Tod Clifton’s dancing doll
The mambo doll represents degrading black stereotype and the damaging power of prejudice.

“a grinning doll of orange-and-black tissue paper with thin flat cardboard disks forming its head and feet and which some mysterious mechanism was causing to move up and down in a loose-jointed, shoulder-shaking, infuriatingly sensuous motion, a dance that was completely detached from the black, mask-like face. It ‘s no jumping –jack, but what I thought, seeing the doll throwing itself about with the fierce defiance of someone performing a degrading act in public…” (Ellison 2002: 431)

The black dolls can dance because they are controlled by an invisible thread. It’s a metaphor which implies that the Black members of the Brotherhood are manipulated unwittingly by the white superiors, and it also implies that African-Americans continue to live like marionettes, whose motions determined by white puppeteers. The stereotypes and expectation of a racist society compel them to behave only in certain ways, to move according to certain patterns, never allowing them to act according to their own wills. The sambo doll represents an invisible deterioration of African-Americans in American society.