Ralph Ellison’s Cadillac Flambé, part of his larger, unfinished second novel Juneteenth, is a story about race in America. It is a story told through the eyes of a white man about a black jazz bassist watching a white (or white-passing) senator and their meeting with only a car ablaze to separate them. The aforementioned car is a white Cadillac, a car long associated with upward mobility and success with cultural references to the car appearing in songs such as Movin’ Out by Billy Joel and Hey Ya by Outkast. It is inextricably linked to the black community, serving as a kind of status symbol, a sign of conspicuous consumption. Talk a little more about that. The Cadillac at the very center of the story is attacked by Senator Sunraider as not fit for black people. …show more content…
The takedown of LeeWillie Minifees at the end of the story seems to highlight that race will always supersede class, while he is spared prison and instead sent to a mental hospital (whether that is better or worse is left for the reader to decide) he is tackled and straight-jacketed to be taken off the scene of the flambéd car Returning to the pop cultural significance of Cadillacs their appearance in films, tv, and music is prolific in the song Moving Out by Billy Joel he famously sings “He's ack)’’ This lyric about a police officer, Sergeant O’ Leary can be viewed as a comment on the middle class and white mobility, Joel goes on to suggest that while the car might be nicer that it would get no use because the sergeant is constantly working to pay for the car. This lyric neatly parallels the end of Cadillac Flambé, when the protagonist of the story is tackled and arrested by cops, removing him from his burning