Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors
used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
The Sambo Doll and the Coin Bank
The coin bank in the shape of the grinning black man (Chapter 15)
and Tod Clifton’s dancing Sambo doll (Chapter 20) serve similar
purposes in the novel, each representing degrading black stereotypes
and the damaging power of prejudice. The coin bank, which portrays
a grinning slave who eats coins, embodies the idea of the good
slave who fawns over white men for trivial rewards. This stereotype
literally follows the narrator, for even after he has smashed the
bank and attempted to discard the pieces, various characters return
to him the paper in which the pieces are wrapped. Additionally,
the statue’s hasty swallowing of coins mirrors the behavior of the
black youths in the “battle royal” of Chapter 1, as they scramble
to collect the coins on the electrified carpet, reinforcing the
white stereotype of blacks as servile and humble.
The Sambo doll is made in the image of the
Sambo slave, who, according to white stereotype, acts lazy yet obsequious.
Moreover, as a dancing doll, it represents the negative stereotype
of the black entertainer who laughs and sings for whites. While
the coin bank illustrates the power of stereotype to follow a person
in his or her every movement, the Sambo doll illustrates stereotype’s power
to control a person’s movements altogether. Stereotype and prejudice,
like the invisible strings by which the doll is made to move, often
determine and manipulate the range of action of which a person is
capable.
The Liberty Paints Plant
The Liberty Paints plant serves as a complex metaphor
for American society with regard to race. Like America, it defines
itself with notions of liberty and freedom but incorporates a deeply
ingrained racism in its most central operations. By portraying a
factory that produces paint, Ellison is able to make his statements
about color literal. Thus, when the factory authorities boast of
the superiority of their white paint, their statements appear as
parodies of arguments about white supremacy. With the plant’s claim
that its trademark “Optic White” can cover up any tint or stain,
Ellison makes a pointed observation about American society’s intentions
to cover up black identity with white culture, to ignore difference,
and to treat darker-skinned individuals as “stains” upon white “purity.”
Optic White is made through a process that involves
the mixture of a number of dark-colored chemicals, one of which
appears “dead black.” Yet the dark colors disappear into the swirling
mixture, and the paint emerges a gleaming white, showing no trace
of its true components. The labor relations within the plant manifest
a similar pattern: black workers perform all of the crucial labor,
but white people sell the paint and make the highest wages, never
acknowledging their reliance upon their darker-skinned counterparts.
This dynamic, too, seems to mirror a larger one at work within America
as a whole.
