The Briefcase

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 he was invisible.

After the Battle Royale Scene he has a dream where his grandfather tells him to open the briefcase, inside which are envelope after envelope and finally the paper that says to keep him running. This is once again pretty directly related to his invisibility - people not taking anything he wants into account when directing him to do something. Continuing to pretend to help him fulfill his goals while truly ignoring him.

At Mary's he puts the pieces of the broken coin bank into his briefcase. This is a piece of racist imagery, which he 'broke' yet which afterwards seems to follow him around and refuse to be thrown away. He's forced to carry it around, and even though he physically broke it it's hard to see this any other way than not being able to shed the stereotype in the way people see and interact with him. 

Later he also puts his Brotherhood name - also related to his invisibility, this time in literally erasing his true identity and labeling him with some other name. 

Ellison take  a lot of metaphors literally - could the briefcase be the embodiment of all the metaphorical baggage he's accumulated over the course of the story? Most of the contents also have a lot to do with invisibility. It could have something to do with over time noticing aspects of his invisibility - and physically collecting artifacts of it in his briefcase, which eventually leads him to fully discover his invisibility and all the other revelations that came with it at the end of the story.

The events at the end of the book are interesting. Not only does the narrator risk his life to save yje briefcase, signifying that it does mean something to him - which makes considering all the 'important' papers in it. Soon after he burns these for a little bit of light. This probably has to do with all the thinking he did down in the manhole. He sheds these physical reminders of his invisibility - yet these are also reminders of his accomplishments and past. Ellison could be trying to say something along the lines of that the past must be reckoned with before moving forward and even being able to discover the things he did underground..

It seems like the things in the briefcase have a lot to do with the narrator's invisibility and how he discovers it over time. It could also be the case that almost everything in the book is in some way related to his invisibility, and I'm reaching for connections where there are none. Are there other connections between all the objects in the briefcase? Or is it simply a record of all he experienced? Any other potentially significant symbolism related to the briefcase? What do you all think?

Comments

  1. Stefania October 26, 2021 at 10:38 PM

    Yes, I also found the burning building scene, and the subsequent paper burning, very interesting. The narrator hadn't come through his full arc of understanding yet when he ran deeper into the burning building to rescue his things - and it's almost like he knew that, since he fully acknowledged that he had no practical reason for rescuing the things. I suppose once he comes to understand the Brotherhood's plans and everything else that had been going on, and decides not to "yes" people anymore, Wright meant for the burning of the physical trail of his life to signify a more permanent moving on.

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  2. SallyNovember 2, 2021 at 7:55 AM

    I love the way you fleshed out this idea, and I'd never really thought about the briefcase in such detail until now. There definitely is a running theme throughout the novel. In the way that the briefcase holds so much (including an entire coin bank and all that money), the narrator holds onto a lot of his trauma and past experiences. It doesn't matter how big or small, he has to carry that "baggage" with him and it's shown being carries in his briefcase.

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