Black v. White 5

The invisible man reaches a point of coming full circle with his journey in the epilogue of the novel. Throughout the book he has struggled with different perceptions and interpretations of black and white as his wisdom and knowledge progressed, culminating into a few final phrases. He states, "Where all this passion toward conformity anyway? ... Why, if they follow this conformity business they'll end up by forcing me, an invisible man, to become white, which is not a color but the lack of one. Must I strive toward colorlessness?"(577) In this he is not negating the color white of being true nor is he negating white people of being themselves, rather, he states that white ceases to become a color when someone who is not white longs after its characteristics. Both black and white can only be owned and represented in their true forms. He denounces striving towards colorlessness because he now recognizes the essence of his invisibility is rooted in his full acceptance of who he is, including all of the heritage associated with him being black. He also says, "Thus one of the greatest jokes in the world is the spectacle of the whites busy escaping blackness and becoming blacker every day, and the blacks striving towards whiteness, becoming quite dull and gray. None of us seems to know who he is or where he's going."(577) He plays on the dull meanings of the colors here in order to emphasize his realization that in order for harmony to exist in human, not even exist but have just a chance of existing, people must accept one another's versions of invisibility. This in turn is also rooted in their acceptance of themselves. When whites try to escape the idea of blackness and refuse the existence of this difference, as in what the brotherhood originally claimed to be for, then their virtue grows darker, or blacker, with each refusal. When blacks try to refute the skin they were born into in order to praise the so-called superiority of the whites then they are not truly embracing their blackness as a blessing of uniqueness, making it lose its individuality for that person and its ability to connect said person to the larger community who shares that such trait. This dulls out the purity of the color in their persona. The invisible man directly relates the concept of color with identity in the novel but is able to conclude that it is not a mark of conformity to a predetermined prejudice, but rather a characteristic of individual experience that allows a person to continue on with their journey once he/she accepts theirs and all others as being such.