Light vs. Darkness Week 4

            In literature, darkness usually represents confusion, uncertainty, bad intentions, mistakes, evil…etc. This is exactly how it is portrayed in chapter 19 of the Invisible Man. The chapter starts off with the narrator meeting a white woman who is wanting to discuss the Brotherhood ideology with him after the speech on women is given. She ends up inviting the invisible man back to her apartment where the narrator finds out that she happens to be a neglected wife who is just wanting to seduce him. After waking up, the invisible man notices the woman’s husband but doesn’t quite know whether he is dreaming or if it’s reality. Everything was a blur as he “lay there in the dark for a while, breathing rapidly. It was strange” (417). The dark here represents obscurity and lack of morals as he slept with a married woman.  In the all of this chaos though, there was a “part of the darkness from where the light had come” (417). This “dim light” (417) displays the tiny glimpse of power attained by the invisible man for having an affair with a white woman in a society where blacks were considered inferior. This situation renders the position of the invisible man as something great and full of might and power.