Light Week 2

In Chapter 5 of the Invisible Man, after Barbee gives his speech, the Invisible Man walks out despite the “disapproving eyes of teachers and matrons” (134) because he is so overwhelmed with Barbee’s speech. Once outside, he describes “the mockingbird trilled a note from where it perched upon the hand of the moonlit Founder, flipping its moon-mad tail…, heard it trill behind me” (134). After this, he describes the lighting in a particularly interesting way: “The street lamps glowed brilliant in the moonlit dream of the campus, each light serene in its cage of shadows” (134). Normally, light usually takes over darkness and hides it, but in this quote, the narrator shows that the darkness (shadows) is covering (“caging”) the light, or in other words, society covering up the truth. However, the narrator switches around what is represented by light and what is represented by the dark: the black race is represented by light, and the darkness is represented by the white race (society in general), showing that the white society is covering up and trying to hide the black race’s true identity (making them hold true to the stereotypical black community). This quote also implies the potential that the black race has, or in this case the black students have, and that this potential is confined by the schools ideals, and how the black race is held like a caged animal in a white society.