Invisble Man

Invisible Man – Part II by Ralph Ellison

Before being expelled Dr. Beldsoe tries to make a deal with the narrator. He says “if you can get a well paying job in New York, you can come back to the college”(pg. 101). The narrator agrees to this, and Dr. Bledsoe gives him several letters of recommendation and sends him on his way. When the narrator gets to New York, the son of Mr. Emerson, one of the people Dr. Bledsoe wrote a letter to, tries to tell the narrator about the tyranny that he is being exploited by. But the narrator refuses to listen until he is shown the letter that Dr. Bledsoe wrote. He discovers that all the letters of recommendation are phony and that Dr. Bledsoe never actually intended for him to be able to re-enroll in the college. This realization finally causes the narrator to become at least partially disillusioned. Because of this, he decides to forget about the college and takes a job at a paint factory.

At the paint factory he begins working as an assistant to Lucius Brockway, an old black man that works the machines in the basement. Brockway explains to the narrator that it is the people who work the machines, and not the machines themselves that are responsible for the success of the company. He tells him, "We the machines inside the machine." The narrator, however, fails to grasp the broader meaning of this quote. Afterwards, Brockway tells the narrator that a union has been trying to get the employee’s higher wages and that if that happened the paint factory could go under. When Brockway discovers that the narrator went to a union meeting, he attacks the narrator. While they are fighting, the machinery goes haywire and when the narrator tries to fix it, it explodes, knocking him unconscious. The narrator wakes up in the factory hospital. At first he thinks they are going to help him-that they are going to try and relieve his pain and suffering. But again, this is only a naive illusion. Instead, he becomes a guinea pig for experimental electroshock therapy.

The electroshock therapy causes him to forget who he is. This is symbolic of how his continual exploitation has been robbing him of identity. After he recovers from the amnesia and leaves the hospital, he realizes that he is no longer afraid of important men since he no longer expects anything from them.