Quote 21
No, I thought, shifting my body, they're the same legs on which I've come so far from home. And yet they were somehow new. The new suit imparted a newness to me. It was the clothes and the new name and the circumstances. It was a newness too subtle to put into thought, but there it was. I was becoming someone else. (16.6)
Ellison really dramatizes the idea that joining the Brotherhood means the narrator is becoming a whole new person.
Quote 22
Perhaps the part of me that observed listlessly but saw all, missing nothing, was still the malicious, arguing part; the dissenting voice, my grandfather part; the cynical, disbelieving part – the traitor self that always threatened internal discord. Whatever it was, I knew I'd have to keep it pressed down. I had to. For if I were successful tonight, I'd be on the road to something big. (16.7)
The narrator is willing to suppress central parts of his identity in order to fulfill his ambition.
Quote 23
And it went so fast and smoothly that it seemed not to happen to me but to someone who actually bore my new name. I almost laughed into the phone when I heard the director of Men's House address me with profound respect. My new name was getting around. It's very strange, I thought, but things are so unreal for them normally that they believe that to call a thing by name is to make it so. And yet I am what they think I am. (17.195)
By joining the Brotherhood, the narrator has been reborn. Here we see the faint glimmers of his understanding that identity is a fluid construct.
Quote 24
And the Brotherhood was going out of its way to make my name prominent. Articles, telegrams and many mailings went out over my signature – some of which I'd written, but more not. I was publicized, identified with the organization both by word and image in the press. On the way to work one late spring morning I counted fifty greetings from people I didn't know, becoming aware that there were two of me: the old self that slept a few hours a night and dreamed sometimes of my grandfather and Bledsoe and Brockway and Mary; the self that flew without wings and plunged from great heights; and the new public self that spoke for the Brotherhood and was becoming so much more important than the other that I seemed to run a foot race against myself. (17.198)
As the narrator's self is being sundered or cut in two, we can see the faintest hints of Brotherhood manipulation as the narrator is pushed to embody the Brotherhood to Harlem.
Quote 25
I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time been ashamed. About eighty-five years ago they were told that they were free, united with others of our country in everything pertaining to the common good, and, in everything social, separate from the fingers of the hand. And they believed it. They exulted in it. They stayed in their place, worked hard, and brought up my father to do the same. (1.2)
The narrator recounts that freed slaves were told they were free in all ways, although this clearly was not true. Socially, after freedom from slavery, black people were still kept very separate from the rest of society. Sadly, the narrator's grandparents bought into the promise of true freedom wholesale.
Quote 26
On his deathbed he called my father to him and said, "Son, after I'm gone I want you to keep up the good fight. I never told you, but our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy's country ever since I give up my gun back in the Reconstruction. Live with your head in the lion's mouth. I want you to overcome 'em with yeses, undermine 'em with grins, agree 'em to death and destruction, let 'em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open." (1.2)
…or did they? The narrator's grandfather, at least, portrays race relations as war, and advocates "overcoming the whites with yeses" – essentially, that black people should play the white system and take them for everything they can.
Quote 27
"To Whom It May Concern," I intoned. "Keep This N*****-Boy Running." (1.105)
The narrator dreams that the scholarship to the college is really another way for white people to keep him running in place, that a college education won't actually change his lot in life.
Quote 28
Then in my mind's eye I see the bronze statue of the college Founder, the cold Father symbol, his hands outstretched in the breathtaking gesture of lifting a veil that flutters in hard, metallic folds above the face of a kneeling slave; and I am standing puzzled, unable to decide whether the veil is really being lifted, or lowered more firmly in place; whether I am witnessing a revelation or a more efficient blinding. (2.3)
The narrator uses a powerful metaphor that questions the supposed intentions behind the college education, which is supposed to provide racial uplift, but which may simply be another means to keep black people more firmly enslaved.
Quote 29
Why do I recall, instead of the odor of seed bursting in springtime, only the yellow contents of the cistern spread over the lawn's dead grass? Why? And how? How and why? (2.4)
The college falls short of the narrator's fantasies. In fact, the institution is only beautified for Founders' Day, or the day on which the rich white men would come with empty checks in their hands, suggesting that the school put its efforts into impressing white donors instead of enriching the students' experiences.
Quote 30
Of course I knew he was a founder, but I knew also that it was advantageous to flatter rich white folks. Perhaps he'd give me a large tip, or a suit, or a scholarship next year. (2.18)
The narrator feels he must play dumb in order to flatter Mr. Norton and benefit from his wealth.
Quote 31
But now I felt that I was sharing in a great work and, with a car leaping leisurely beneath the pressure of my foot, I identified myself with the rich man reminiscing on the rear seat…(2.30)
The narrator delights in associating with the founders of the college, wanting to be part of its prestige.
Quote 32
I didn't understand in those pre-invisible days that their hate, and mine too, was charged with fear. How all of us at the college hated the black-belt people, the "peasants," during those days! We were trying to lift them up and they, like Trueblood, did everything it seemed to pull us down. (2.98)
The narrator suggests that the school's black population resent people like Jim Trueblood because their lifestyle supports the black stereotypes the students were trying to abolish.
Quote 33
How can he tell this to white men, I thought, when he knows they'll say that all Negroes do such things? I looked at the floor, a red mist of anguish before my eyes. (2.192)
The narrator is upset with Trueblood for not recognizing his responsibility as a black man to defend the black reputation. Really, really upset. He thinks in very collectivist terms, when in reality Trueblood's behavior should have no bearing on how the narrator is perceived. The narrator does not reach this individualist conclusion until much later.
Quote 34
I went to see the white folks then and they gave me help. That's what I don't understand. I done the worse thing a man could ever do in his family and instead of chasin' me out of the county, they gimme more help than they ever give any other colored man, no matter how good a nigguh he was…The nigguhs up at the school don't like me, but the white folks treat me fine. (2.254)
In Trueblood's experience, being "good" doesn't get one rewarded, but being bad does. His behavior is celebrated by the white people as justification of their bad opinion, and resented by the black people for giving their race a bad name.
Quote 35
But seriously, because you fail to understand what is happening to you. You cannot see or hear or smell the truth of what you see – and you, looking for destiny! It's classic! And the boy, this automaton, he was made of the very mud of the region and he sees far less than you. Poor stumblers, neither of you can see the other. To you he is a mark on the score-card of your achievement, a thing and not a man; a child, or even less – a black amorphous thing. And you, for all your power are not a man to him, but a God, a force – (3.314)
In the Golden Day, the vet accuses both Mr. Norton and the narrator for feeding the system of racism without thinking of the other race as real people. For all he is as a patient in an insane asylum, the vet has the most insightful commentary on race relations than anyone else in the novel thus far.
Quote 36
N*****, this isn't the time to lie. I'm no white man. Tell me the truth! (6.34)
Dr. Bledsoe employs a double standard when it comes to lying – lying to white men is fine, but not to him.
Quote 37
You're nobody, son. You don't exist – can't you see that? The white folk tell everybody what to think – except men like me. I tell them; that's my life, telling white folk how to think about the things I know about…But you listen to me: I didn't make it, and I know that I can't change it. But I've made my place in it and I'll have every N***o in the country hanging on tree limbs by morning if it means staying where I am. (6.76)
This is the first time we see the narrator being told of his invisibility. Dr. Bledsoe has achieved a position of power incredibly rare among men of his race, but he feels no obligation to aid other black people, saying that he has no qualms with hanging every black man in the country if it means maintaining his power.
Quote 38
A black statue of a nude Nubian slave grinned out at me from beneath a turban of gold. I passed on to a window decorated with switches of wiry false hair, ointments guaranteed to produce the miracle of whitening black skin. "You too can be truly beautiful," a sign proclaimed. "Win greater happiness with whiter complexion. Be outstanding in your social set." (13.3)
In this society, whiteness is prized, celebrated, and sought after.
Quote 39
I felt that somehow they expected me to perform even those tasks for which nothing in my experience – except perhaps my imagination – had prepared me. Still it was nothing new, white folks seemed always to expect you to know those things which they'd done everything they could think of to prevent you from knowing. The thing to do was to be prepared (14.185)
The narrator says there is a double standard between white people's expectations and restrictions of black people.
Quote 40
They've tried to dispossess us of our manhood and womanhood! Of our childhood and adolescence – You heard the sister's statistics on our infant mortality rate. Don't you know you're lucky to be uncommonly born? Why, they even tried to dispossess us of our dislike of being dispossessed! And I'll tell you something else – if we don't resist, pretty soon they'll succeed! (15.49)
The narrator accuses white supremacists of taking away what rightfully belongs to the black community, yet he fails to realize the Brotherhood's part in this.