journey week 4

The narrator is in a constant and mysterious journey now that he has joined the brotherhood. He doesn't know exactly what it entails and he just anxiously awaits the next assignment. The brotherhood is not only teaching him about different social groups but they were using him to be the model figure of their group. For example, they did not tell him about being the chief spokesperson until the day before he had to speak in front of the Harlem district. (359) The IM is beginning to unreel the truth of the Brotherhood but still in the unknown when he notices that he is two different people. There is "the old self that slept a few hours a night and dreamed sometimes of my grandfather and Bledsoe and Brockway and Mary, the self that flew without wings and plunged from great heights; and the new public self that spoke for the brotherhood and was becoming so much more important than the other one that I seemed to run a footrace against myself." (380) He feels this because he is in search of his identity. He believes that the brotherhood is a different world, one without limits. But what he doesn't see is that his old world also didn't have limits. The curse that his grandfather said gave him many possibilities, possibilities to be different and stand out and speak his mind, and keep pursuing his dreams. He encouraged him in a way to run this race he believes his is running against himself by writing in the letter on page 33, "to whom it may concern: keep this nigger boy running." I think that what his grandfather said correlates to the situation of the brotherhood because the IM is going to keep on running and pursuing, searching for himself. The brotherhood is a path along the way that will either help him or hinder him.