Quote 41
You my brother, mahn. Brothers are the same color; how the hell you call these white men brother? S***, mahn. That's s***! Brothers the same color. We sons of Mama Africa, you done forgot? You black, BLACK! You – Godahm, mahn! …Leave that s***, mahn. They sell you out. That s*** is old-fashioned. They enslave us – you forget that? (17.130)
Ras the Exhorter hates the fact that Clifton and the narrator are calling white men their brothers. His philosophy is black/white oriented, and he believes that black people should not even associate with white people, especially when it comes to social change.
Quote 42
Brother, This is advice from a friend who has been watching you closely. Do not go too fast. Keep working for the people but remember that you are one of us and do not forget if you get too big they will cut you down. You are from the South and you know that this is a white man's world. So take a friendly advice and go easy so that you can keep on helping the colored people. They do not want you to go too fast and will cut you down if you do. Be smart…(18.2 – 18.3)
This anonymous message generates new significance when we learn at the very end of the novel that it's from Brother Jack who is, by the way, white. Just another example of the ways that race is used as a manipulative tool in this novel.
Quote 43
Shake him, shake him, you cannot break him For he's Sambo, the dancing, Sambo, the prancing, Sambo, the entrancing, Sambo Boogie Woogie paper doll. And all for twenty-five cents, the quarter part of a dollar… Ladies and gentlemen, he'll bring you joy, step up and meet him, Sambo the – (20.71-5)
There is a lot to unpack in this brief ditty. First, it suggests resilience on the part of black people, who, "shake them" as you might, you cannot break. Second, it suggests a role of black people as entertainers – but as entertainers whose strings you can pull and control. Third, this can also be viewed as not having anything to do with race and everything to do with the narrator as Sambo, being cruelly played by others. Lastly, the ditty suggests that black people can be bought.
Quote 44
That invisibility to which I refer occurs because of a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those with whom I come in contact. A matter of the construction of their inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality. (Prologue.2)
The narrator sets up the importance of a physical eye in this passage, which later comes in handy when analyzing Reverend Barbee and Brother Jack.
Quote 45
For instance, I have been carrying on a fight with Monopolated Light and Power for some time now. I use their service and pay them nothing at all, and they don't know it. Oh, they suspect that power is being drained off, but they don't know where. All they know is that according to the master meter back there in their power station a hell of a lot of free current is disappearing somewhere into the jungle of Harlem. The joke, of course, is that I don't live in Harlem but in a border area. (Prologue.7)
Ripping off the power company is the narrator's form of social protest while maintaining his invisibility.
Quote 46
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…Learn it to the younguns," he whispered fiercely; then he died. (1.2)
The narrator's grandfather advises compliance as the route to eventually overcoming white-dominated society. His words are a refrain throughout the book; each time it reappears, it is given new meaning.
Quote 47
On my graduation day I delivered an oration in which I showed that humility was the secret, indeed, the very essence of progress. (Not that I believed this – how could I, remember my grandfather? – I only believed that it worked.) It was a great success…It was a triumph for our whole community. (1.3)
At this point in time, the narrator believes that the road to progress is through deception – saying one thing to the white community while secretly believing another.
Quote 48
Damn what he wants…We take these white folks where we want them to go, we show them what we want them to see. Don't you know that? I thought you had some sense. (4.33)
Dr. Bledsoe reprimands the narrator for not manipulating Mr. Norton. It turns out that black people have been deceiving the rich white guys in order to make them feel as though "racial uplift' is occurring.
Quote 49
You right, but everything that looks good ain't necessarily good. (13.23)
We like interpreting this platitude from the yam vendor as presaging what happens with the Brotherhood.
Quote 50
Brother, This is advice from a friend who has been watching you closely. Do not go too fast. Keep working for the people but remember that you are one of us and do not forget if you get too big they will cut you down. You are from the South and you know that this is a white man's world. So take a friendly advice and go easy so that you can keep on helping the colored people. They do not want you to go too fast and will cut you down if you do. Be smart…(18.2 – 18.3)
This anonymous message generates new significance when we learn at the very end of the novel that it's from Brother Jack, who is white. This is just another example of the ways that race is used as a manipulative tool in this novel.
Quote 51
I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. (Prologue.1)
This suggests that people are capable of seeing the narrator, but that they choose not to.
Quote 52
I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time been ashamed. (1.2)
Speaking from the novel's present (i.e., in the manhole), the narrator acknowledges that he is no longer ashamed of his grandparents' slave background, indicating a desire to fully accept his past.
Quote 53
They were all such a part of that other life that's dead that I can't remember them all. (Time was as I was, but neither that time nor that "I" are any more.) (2.7)
The story the narrator is about to tell is a story regarding a (metaphorical) previous incarnation of himself – it concerns someone the narrator used to be.
Quote 54
I took a bite, finding it as sweet and hot as any I'd ever had, and was overcome with such a surge of homesickness that I turned away to keep my control. 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. What a group of people we were, I thought. Why, you could cause us the greatest humiliation simply by confronting us with something we liked. Not all of us, but so many. (13.24)
For the narrator, eating yams in the street is not just eating yams in the street, but an embrace of his past and his heritage. While formerly he never would have eaten yams in public the way other black people did, the narrator experiences a newfound freedom to openly appreciate traditionally black food. (Contrast this to his angry refusal of the pork chops and grits special in the diner.) This passage is a throwback to a famous scene in Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past where the author bites into a Madeleine and is transported to his childhood.
Quote 55
You must realize immediately that much of our work is opposed. Our discipline demands therefore that we talk to no one and that we avoid situations in which information might be given away unwittingly. So you must put aside your past. (14.120)
This demand reflects the Brotherhood's insistence on the sacrifice of individuality.
Quote 56
That was all I needed, I'd made a contact, and it was as though his voice was that of them all. I was wound up, nervous. I might have been anyone, might have been trying to speak in a foreign language. For I couldn't remember the correct words and phrases from the pamphlets. I had to fall back upon tradition and since it was a political meeting, I selected one of the political techniques that I'd heard so often at home: The old down-to-earth, I'm-sick-and-tired-of-the-way-they've-been-treating-us-approach. I couldn't see them so I addressed the microphone and the co-operative voice before me. (16.36)
This further illustrates the difference in political philosophy between the narrator and the Brotherhood. He rejects the Brotherhood's approach to speech-making and is a huge hit when he chooses to use the political traditions with which he grew up. When push comes to shove, when the narrator stands in front of a giant spotlight and a huge crowd, he resorts to lessons from his past.
Quote 57
I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. (Prologue.1)
Other people have the power to render the narrator visible or invisible.
Quote 58
That is why I fight my battle with Monopolated Light & Power. The deeper reason, I mean: It allows me to feel my vital aliveness. I also fight them for taking so much of my money before I learned to protect myself (Prologue.7)
By sticking it to the powers-that-be, the narrator is able to feel alive. This is his form of protest.
Quote 59
I looked at the red imprint left by the straps of her bra, thinking, Who's taking revenge on whom? But why be surprised, when that's what they hear all their lives. When it's made into a great power and they're taught to worship all types of power? With all the warnings against it, some are bound to want to try it out for themselves. The conquerors conquered. Maybe a great number secretly want it; maybe that's why they scream when it's farthest from possibility – (24.54)
Here the narrator speculates that women are socialized into certain types of desires – for instance, that power is erotic. As a white woman, Sybil has been taught to fear the power of the black man, but at the same time she occupies a "greater" position because of her race. This dynamic creates a space where she feels free to ask for rape – not realizing, of course, that not all black men are or want to be rapists. This passage is an example of how white male power can influence interactions between individuals who are neither white nor male.
Quote 60
But more than that, he was the example of everything I hoped to be: Influential with wealthy men all over the country; consulted in matters concerning the race; a leader of his people; the possessor of not one, but two Cadillacs, a good salary and a soft, good-looking and creamy-complexioned wife. What was more, while black and bald and everything white folks poked fun at, he had achieved power and authority; had, while black and wrinkle-headed, made himself of more importance in the world than most Southern white men. They could laugh at him but they couldn't ignore him… (4.14)
This passage reflects the narrator's youthful naiveté prior to learning the sacrifices that Dr. Bledsoe has made and is willing to make on behalf of his position.