Blindness

On his deathbed the invisible man’s grandfather tried to relay one last piece of advice to the family before passing. He admits to being a traitor and urges to his son to “keep up the good fight,” after he’s gone. “I want you to overcome ‘em with yeses,” he says, “undermine ‘em with grins, agree ‘em to death…”(16) He dies right after uttering a passionate final speech, but the boy never feels as if his grandfather’s presence has truly left him after being a witness to what occurred that night. As he grows older, he follows in his grandfather’s footsteps and is the epitome of what a “model black boy” should be like. His behavior is agreeable with whites: meek, polite, submissive, and respectful. He follows orders and instructions and even does so well in school that he is invited to recite a speech in front of the most respected white men in the town. However, when he arrives at the venue he is forced to partake in a gruesome and outrageous sort of ‘battle royale’ with other black boys for the entertainment of the white men. They are blindfolded which plunges them into a physical blindness, but also we see a symbolic blindness take place as the boy goes through the night. First of all the blindness represents the black man being physically incapable of standing against the white men, they are powerless. All throughout the fighting he is thinking about his speech he is supposed to give. “Would this not go against my speech?”(25) He wonders as he contemplates defying a white man’s voice, “Was this not a moment for humility, for nonresistance?”(25) He only wishes to impress the white men with his speech, and so he takes himself out of the barbaric situation he is placed in and fails to recognize the blasphemous humiliation and animalistic behavior he portrays as he scrambles for the fake coins or the naked woman is thrown before them. He is blind to the fact that he is acting and thinking exactly like they want him to. He is blind to the fact that he is merely a pawn in their game. He is giving a speech because they want him to. He is going to college because they want him to. The moment he made a mistake by saying, “social equality” it did not align with what the white men wanted to hear and he is immediately reprimanded for it. The invisible man is acting like the grandfather told him to on the outside, but he is failing to realize that he is making the mistake of doing so on the inside as well.