Symbolism

While recalling the time he spent at the college, the Invisible Man imagines walking down its familiar paths, and begins to recount the beauty of the campus. He then describes how he found the bronze statue of the college’s Founder, Booker T. Washington, especially peculiar. What seems to intrigue the Invisible Man in particular is the “hands outstretched in the breathtaking gesture of lifting a veil…above the face of a kneeling slave” (36). The importance of the veil is to demonstrate a more efficient blinding; a metaphor for what the college represents for black people. The college, meant as an opportunity for blacks to succeed, really only limits them in their abilities and further demonstrates the fact that they will fail to exert any real power on society. Furthermore, after observing a bird soil the statue, he finds it ironic that it is now much more “commanding than one that is clean” (36). The soiled statue leads him to question the supposed intentions behind the college. The institution, which is supposed to provide racial uplift, may simply only serve as another way to keep blacks further enslaved and aware of the fact that they will never reach equality with the whites.