African American Lit

We discussed a lot in class about whether or not their Eyes Were Watching God could be considered a feminist novel. I wanted to talk about and continue some of that discussion in this blog post. It's initially hard to believe the book could be a Feminist novel while almost exclusively focusing on Janie's relationships with men. Does this not dull down the primary female character in the book to her interactions with men, therefore disqualifying itself from a category all about women being on equal grounds with men? Does spending so much time on the men in her life instead of everything else mean the book is suggesting this is all there is / the most important thing there is to Janie? There's a few things the book does have going for it however. It's not a love story between Janie and one man - although it is one man that takes up a significant portion of the book - It's about her relationships with three different men and their differences. What's important is t

The briefcase is with the narrator for a good portion of the story. All the metaphors and connections Ellison weaves in throughout the story makes it likely it has some deeper significance. The narrator's briefcase is introduced in the very first chapter; he gets it after giving a speech in front of a bunch of white people he had just been forced to fight in front of for their entertainment. The speech promotes ideas like Booker T's - lifting oneself up through hardwork etc. It's a reward for obediently following the people in control, for swallowing any blood and doing what they want and telling them what they want to her. He gets told to put important papers in the briefcase - does he follow this directive throughout the story? Do all the things he puts in the briefcase have some special significance to him or the story?  The first piece of paper put into the briefcase is his scholarship to the university, one of the locations the Narrator later describes as a place where

Invisible Man is written entirely from the perspective of someone we know neither the credibility nor even the name of. First I want to address the fact that we don't have any sources to corroborate any part of his story. In class some people brought up that it's hard to believe some of the later crazier and fantastical events actually happened. It's implied that the story is some kind of memoir, or at least written in the future, which brings up the question whether the narrator is remembering everything correctly. What about when the doctors at the factory did something to his memory -  it feels like that should have had some effect on the way he remembers his past? Even aside from the unrealistic moments, is he twisting events to match how he felt during them? Or are the ideas he develops later about his life and experiences affecting them? During the narrative he often includes omniscient from the future remarks about his blindness in that moment. This makes me think th

     Power is key theme throughout Invisible Man. Even in the very beginning - the prologue where the narrator descibes his life as an invisible man, he talks about draining power from the city and pouring it into 1369 lightbulbs in his little secret apartment. In this situation he's stealing power, from presumably white people.     The balance of power between the white people in charge and the narrator is made obvious in almost every interaction in the book. The scene where he has to box people for entertainment then gives a speech to this crowd which they barely pay attention to and laugh at, for example. Driving Mr.Norton around, interacting with the factory owners and other workers, etc.      Barbee and especially Dr.Bledsoe also have power. They're important figures in their community who people look up to. They're rich, etc... Yet this is not the same type of power that the white men the narrator interacts with have. This power is subservient to white people; althoug

     In this blog post I wanted to talk about the title Native Son. When first hearing about the book I thought this was a strangely vague name, and looking it up on any library catalog resulted in an abundance of books with titles in some way relating to sons or nativism. Even while starting the book I didn't really make the connection - I mean Bigger was a son, I guess, but that couldn't possibly be the reasoning behind the title.       After finishing the book, the most obvious reason I could find is that Wright is trying to express Bigger's actions being predetermined and this whole situation arosing because of his environment and how he grew up. If this is true then the title is directed at American society; Bigger is a native son of the country - a black man born and raised in America, and a product of all the different forces and systems explored throughout the book. We discussed a lot of these in class - the police system, judicial system, inequitable housing &