Dreams

The Invisible Man has just received a scholarship to the state college for Negroes by some wealthy white men after delivering a speech that “will help shape the destiny of [his] people.” That night, the narrator has a dream in which his deceased grandfather and he attend a circus and the grandfather “refused to laugh at the clowns no matter what they did.” The grandfather told him to open a brief case that contained the official envelope of his believed scholarship. The invisible man sat there going through multiple inception envelopes until he was directed to open a particular one that enclosed an “engraved document” containing the short message-“To Whom It May Concern, Keep This Nigger-Boy Running.” Finally, the old man laughed. The expression in itself refers to the fact that no matter how convincing the whites may be on promising him a one day successful future, that they are the puppeteers to his life and that he will never reach what he wants if he continues to let them hold him by the strings. The narrator believes that obedience and a humble attitude will get him far, but in reality, he needs to break that stereotype and create his own path to follow—on in which, leads to somewhere other than the beginning. His grandfather not laughing at the clowns symbolizes that he will not be “entertained” with the idea that they can provide him happiness, he finds true humor in the truth and in the insanity that his people have been tricked for so long and have yet to figure it out.