Ian's African American Literature Blog

     In Chapter 23 of Invisible Man , we learn that Rinehart is a lot of different things to a lot of different people. He’s “Rine the runner” and “Rinehart the number man” to one woman, he’s a pimp to another, and a reverend to several other people. Evidently, people have varied ideas about who he is, and I think that the narrator’s involuntary assumption of Rinehart’s identity (or identities, rather) helps him realize how similar he is to Rinehart.      The narrator is presented with the idea of being several different people at once when all these different identities are thrown at him in such a short period of time. I think this experience makes him realize that he, too, has adopted several different identities in his own life. The narrator is a different person to Mr. Norton than he is to Dr. Bledsoe. He’s a different person to the man offering him “the special” at the diner than he is to the man who sold him yams on the street. He’s a different person...

          One of my favorite scenes in Invisible Man so far is the scene in which the narrator enjoys a baked yam from a street vendor. It represents him becoming comfortable with his true self, and no longer being embarrassed of the part of his identity that developed during his childhood in the South. He laughs at the older version of himself who was too ashamed of his Southern roots to enjoy pork chops, grits, eggs, and biscuits at the diner. I felt that this was a big step for the narrator and it showed that he had grown a lot. However, his new attitude was short-lived, and everything started going downhill when he joined the Brotherhood. Immediately, the Brotherhood aims to completely leave the narrator’s identity behind and replace it with an identity that they created to fill a role. They give him a whole new name, and tell him that he’s going to be the new Booker T. Washington. When he starts speaking in a way that doesn’t align with the Brotherho...