Essay On Invisibility

1. S “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.” (3)
The narrator utilizes invisibility to convey the idea of being unseen by other parts of the society. The story opens up with the narrator wanting to make a change of his situation.

2. C “All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction or even self-contradictory. I was naïve.”(15)
When telling this story of his, the narrator realizes how naïve he was when he first started off this journey. He asked other people things that he should be able to answer it himself, and he accepted their opinion without thinking much about it. Opinions

C “For three years I had thought of myself as a man and here with a few words he’d made me as helpless as an infant.”(144)
Masculinity the narrator had in him was crashed by the college president’s few remarks. His faith in himself appears to be weaker than he expects, it also implies that there are a lot of insecurities in him.

4. M “Perhaps, I thought, the two things are involved with one another. When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.”(243)
The narrator came to a realization that discovering of one’s identity is the key to obtain freedom. He also notes that freedom is a key aspect that keeps him on a constant search in his life, and ultimately, freedom will be in his possession.

5. C “Already he’s learned to repress not only his emotions but his humanity. He’s invisible, a walking personification of the Negative, the most perfect achievement of your dream, sir!”(94)
The narrator is categorized as a typical black men, Mr. Norton tells him that his basic humanity has been repressed in society. Just like the narrator, Black people are often invisible in society not only because other people decides to ignore them, but also due to their own repression of

S “Slowly, I measured the glistening black drops, seeing them settle upon the surface and become blacker still, spreading suddenly out to the edges.”(200)
By performing this artistic move without understanding the actual meaning of it, the narrator falls into a “trap” of people who wants to use him as a means to achieve an alternate purpose. Black drops of the liquid also symbolize Black people in the society, who are eventually pushed out of the white paper, with white representing the White.

8. M “Maybe I was just this blackness and bewilderment and pain, but that seemed like a suitable answer than something I’d read somewhere.”(240)
When the narrator failed to recognize his own name, he doomed himself in that his blackness and the pain that he is experiencing is something that is part of him. Furthermore, the emotions he’s experiencing is commonly seen in society.

9. S “I took it in my hand, a thick dark, oily piece of filed steel that had been twisted open and forced partly back into place.”(389)
Brother Jack passed on the object to the narrator, which seems to him irresistible. A sense of solemnity and seriousness is also included during the passing, representing the passing of the responsibility to pursue freedom for the their