Summary: Chapter 7
On the bus to New York, the narrator encounters the veteran
who mocked Mr. Norton and the college. Dr. Bledsoe has arranged
to have the man transferred to a psychiatric facility in Washington, D.C.
The narrator cannot believe that Bledsoe could have anything to
do with the transfer, but the veteran winks and tells him to learn to
see under the surface of things. He tells the narrator to hide himself
from white people, from authority, from the invisible man who is
pulling his strings. Crenshaw, the veteran’s attendant, tells him that
he talks too much. The veteran replies that he verbalizes things that
most men only feel. Before switching to another bus, the veteran
advises the narrator to serve as his own father. The narrator arrives
in New York and gazes with astonishment at a black officer directing
white drivers in the street. He sees a gathering on a sidewalk in
Harlem, in which a man with a West Indian accent (whom he later
learns is Ras the Exhorter) gives a speech about “chasing them [the
whites] out.” The narrator feels as though a riot might erupt at
any minute. He quickly finds a place called the Men’s House and
takes a room.
Summary: Chapter 8
Over the next few days, the narrator delivers
all of the letters of recommendation that Bledsoe gave him except
for one, which is addressed to a Mr. Emerson. A week passes, but
he receives no response. He tries to telephone the addressees, all
trustees of the college, only to receive polite refusals from their
secretaries. His money is running out, and he begins to entertain
vague doubts about Bledsoe’s motives.
Summary: Chapter 9
The narrator sets out to deliver his last letter
and meets a man named Peter Wheatstraw, who speaks in a black dialectical
banter and recognizes the narrator’s Southern roots. Wheatstraw describes
Harlem as a bear’s den, which reminds the narrator of the folk stories
of Jack the Rabbit and Jack the Bear. The narrator stops for breakfast
at a deli. The waiter says he looks like he would enjoy the special:
pork chops, grits, eggs, hot biscuits, and coffee. Insulted by the
waiter’s stereotyping, the narrator orders orange juice, toast,
and coffee.
The narrator arrives at Mr. Emerson’s office. He meets
Emerson’s son, a nervous little man. The son takes the letter and
goes off to read it, only to return with a vaguely disturbed expression,
chattering about his analyst and about injustice. Finally, the son
allows the narrator to read the letter: Bledsoe has told each of
the addressees that the narrator has earned permanent expulsion
and that Bledsoe had to send him away under false pretenses in order
to protect the college; Bledsoe requests that the narrator be allowed
to “continue undisturbed in [his] vain hopes [of returning to college]
while remaining as far as possible from our midst.” Emerson says
that his father is a strict, unforgiving man and that he will not
help the narrator, but he offers to secure the narrator a job at
the Liberty Paints plant. The narrator leaves the office full of
anger and a desire for revenge. He imagines Bledsoe requesting that
Emerson “hope the bearer of this letter to death and keep him running.”
He calls the plant and is told to report to work the next morning.
Analysis: Chapters 7–9
During the time in which the novel is set,
Booker T. Washington’s philosophy that blacks should put their energy
toward achieving economic success rather than agitate for social
equality reigned in the South as the predominant ideology for the
advancement of black Americans. Both white and black Southerners
embraced this approach at the time. At the Golden Day in Chapter 3, the veteran succinctly points out the blindness and enslavement that
this philosophy entails, and Bledsoe expels him from the South just
as he expels the narrator. Unlike the narrator, however, the veteran
has desired such a relocation for years. He has used free speech
to defy the masquerade and, accordingly, has won the freedom that
he desired. The veteran’s success, however, is merely a Pyrrhic
victory—his trip north leads only to further confinement in another
asylum.
In his attempt to clarify the American power system for
the narrator, the veteran revisits the doll or marionette motif
with the image of important men pulling strings. Those controlling
the narrator’s life remain invisible, hidden behind masks; pulling
his strings, they treat him like an object rather than an individual
human being. In his belief that these puppet masters are white,
however, the veteran fails to recognize the manner in which black
men like Bledsoe wield the same sort of control over other blacks.
But while Bledsoe manipulates the self-understanding of his students,
he himself seems blind to his own role as a tool of the white hierarchy.
He believes that he achieves power for himself as a black man; rather
than dismantle the white-dominated power structure, however, he
only reinforces and reproduces it.
