Sex :-) Week 3

After accepting Brother Jack's offer of a job, the invisible man and he arrive at an elegant building titled Chthonian where they encounter a young woman named Emma, "'Excuse me,' I said, but she held her ground, and I was pressing tensely against her perfumed softness, seeing her smile as though there were only she and I. Then I was past, disturbed not so much by the close contact, as by the sense that I had somehow been through it all before." (300) In this case, Ellison describes the invisible man's second uncomfortable rendezvous with a woman, the first occurring at the battle royal with the blonde prostitute. He compares the two experiences by the characteristics of each woman, the first being "magnificent", "stark naked", and "sensuous" (19), Emma being "smartly dressed", "handsome", and dignified. (300) These women illuminate the differences in the invisible man's surrounding communities, originally barbaric and uncivilized and now shifting to intelligent and well mannered. Ellison's contrast of these two completely opposite societies illustrates the positive pathway the invisible man is traveling. Although he is being tested with awkward and troublesome situations, the invisible man is growing into a self-thinking, well experienced human being.