December+16+Opening+Chapter+of+Invisible+Man+Lili+W

**Ignorance** Lili Welch. December 17th.

This part of the book is a flashback from present day from the narrator's high school life.

*The scene takes place in a **smoker** which is a diner party for the rich affluent white men of the town, who hold importance. They come to discuss current issue but mainly they come to drink, smoke, and get a kick out of their form of entertainment. It is almost like a Gentlemen's club

As we discussed they have 3 forms of entertainment:

1. They asked the young narrator to deliver a speech, the same one he gave at graduation in front of the town leaders. The narrator is a well educated boy and came because he thought he deserved it.

2. The fight. It was a battle royale, boxing match between the other high school aged back boys. They fought against each other in one ring and they were all blindfolded It was ruthless like animals fighting for survival.

3. As a "reward" the men told them that gold coins awaited them on a rug, however, this rug was electric and the gold coins were actually brass. It was almost like a game show.

From this one event, a lot of images come to mind pertaining to inequality and hatred. This one event symbolizes that fear from white men being put on just young boys, almost like a school bully.

We broke down the whole symbol of injustice and pulled out what each individual symbol meant, to make up this picture:

 **A Child** - the narrator was still just a child finishing high school, children in this case is a symbol for their innocence and their good nature to believe the best in anybody. It is ironic that the invisible man was such an educated guy and his very own super attendant of school was there to watch him get beaten up.

 **The Curse** - the curse is something that invisible man seems to think his grandfather put on him. The last words of his grandfather was that invisible man should not abided to the white people and play the role of obedient black man and regret that, as he did. That was his death bed confession. The "curse" which is actually a curse, it is the knowledge of ignorance that is present among white men. However, invisible man ignores the curse. Or rather the curse is inevitable to those who are less powered, and Invisible man learned the hard way like his grandfather about the cruelty in the world. The curse was more of a forewarning. But the curse is more of a general curse for all the black men and women who abide by the white men and women, and do not fight against it.

 **The brief case** - in the brief case is a similar envelop to the scholarship, the grandfather opens it up and keeps finding more empty envelops. Finally, there was one envelop with an embossed gold lettering saying "Keep this nigger boy running" this was a symbol for the grandfathers years being wasted for nothing. However, to boy the brief case and scholarship money seems like a future. He is still ignorant from the white people's manipulative plan to break down a person almost into an animal, like they did at the match. The invisible man uses the brief case as a reward for all he did that night. Almost like it is his justification to the white men laughing at him.

 **The eyes** - following eyes is the curse haunting him, visualization is a symbol for the view of himself and other and the world perspective.

 **Blindfold** - he is blind folded in the match which symbolizes his blindness to reality and accepting that white men are cruel. Before the flashback, invisible man says he lives in a very lighted house. The comparison is the amount of light, which in this case mean that light is a symbol for his view on others. The light eventually gets brighter as he grows older and realizes for himself the inequalities.

In 7th grade, I went to India and as I was driving down the roads or walking down the roads there would be many kids begging for food and money, They would berate us because we would look different. This youtube video shows the children begging for money. Kids are the best at begging for money because they are children, innocent. It reminded me of invisible man, he is very innocent and ignorant to reality in the begging of the book. These kids in India don't really get a future out of begging some beg their whole life, since they were exposed to begging as a way of life, they have never really made a future for themselves. Invisible man, however, is in this first stage of being exposed to reality and he needs to figure out a way that he is not sucked into the system like most kids in India are.

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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Lexie Sparrow is the next scribe post