Rinehart's Connection to the Narrator
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 to the doctors at the factory hospital than he is to the Brotherhood.
In this way, the narrator and Rinehart are the same--neither us nor the narrator knows who Rinehart actually is, we just know that people see the hat and glasses and think, “pimp,” or “reverend,” based on how he has chosen to present himself to them in the past. Similarly, people have seen the narrator and have thought anything from “guy who riled up a crowd during an eviction,” to “leader of the Brotherhood”--based on how he has presented himself to these people.
I think this part of the book is important because it teaches the narrator that his identity is more about how people see him than who he really is. I also think Rinehart could be viewed as an alternate version of the narrator--they both have adopted so many different identities to present to different people that their true identities are unknown to us. Our perception of Rinehart is solely based on who he is to other people, so who is he to himself? Who's the real Rinehart? We’ll never be able to see him--he’s invisible. This invisibility is the commonality that so strongly connects Rineheart to the narrator, and I think the narrator realizing this was a true breakthrough for him.
These ideas are really interesting! There definitely are a lot of parallels between Rinehart and the narrator, and the narrator's "encounter" with Rinehart allows him to analyze a version of himself from a different perspective. One of the biggest differences between Rinehart and the narrator is that it seems like Rinehart intentionally crafted his identity to be invisible while the narrator wasn't even conscious of his invisibility until encountering Rinehart, and realizing this difference helps the narrator further develop his consciousness regarding his identity.
ReplyDeleteI like the point you bring up here, that this is a possible turning point in the narrator's idea of invisibility. Until then, he was always trying so hard to appear a certain "proper" way, thinking that that would earn him respect and a place inside of history. He would judge others for how they presented themselves, and was often extremely touchy about people assuming things about him. Putting on those glasses and hat is the first time we see the narrator really trying to consciously disguise himself, although in a much more literal sense, and like you said, it reveals the truth of how much his "visibility" can't really be controlled by himself. I think the main difference between Rinehart and the narrator is that Rinehart appears to be fine with his multiple roles, or at least embrace and make the most of it, while the narrator still just wants to be seen. Instead of deciding to fool the world upon his realization, like Bledsoe, Rinehart, Brockway - he removes himself from society.
ReplyDelete"Rinehart appears to be fine with his multiple roles, or at least embrace and make the most of it, while the narrator still just wants to be seen."
DeleteAt some point I do think that the narrator finds some comfort in his invisibility, or at least comfort in having assigned his condition a name. It's possibly also revealing that the premise of the narrator's writing is to answer the question, "But what did *I* do to be so blue?", rather than a plea for the reader to see him by reading his account.
This was a really well-written breakdown of why this strange experience of inhabiting Rinehart's identity is such an important revelation for the narrator. I think that this sequence of events is particularly eye-opening to him because he understands for the first time that his invisibility to others is something empowering that he can take control of. This is especially important because seeing intimately the ways that Rinehart treats his "invisibility" not as a burden, but as a tool, changes the narrator's perspective not only on his position is society, but on his role in the Brotherhood as well.
ReplyDeleteThis is so cool! Props for bringing up all those specific interactions - the yam scene, the "special," the factory hospital, the Brotherhood. By this point I'd forgotten about those, because there really are so many different ways the narrator must have come across, but those examples are especially eye-opening. That reminds me of the period of time where the narrator is alternately thought of as a Southerner and a New Yorker, both aspects of his identity that were true and false to different extents. His origin is ultimately just one among many attributes that people "see through," in a sense.
ReplyDeleteTowards the end of the post you mention that we'll never be able to see Rinehart, as he's invisible. This is going to sound nit-picky, but what does that mean for our perception of the narrator? The narrator is our first example of an invisible person, and we experience the world through his perspective throughout the book, but if invisible people can never be seen, does that mean we never see the narrator either? And if that is true, how could we see any other character in the novel, since we only learn and understand them through the narrator's words? Does that mean every character is invisible to us? All of this is not to suggest that your original sentence was wrong - I think it's just another paradox of invisibility.
ReplyDeleteI think this idea of multiple identities is crucial to identifying what invisibility is in the story. Invisibility seems to be the state where everyone associates an identity with you based off your surroundings, but they don't see the full picture. They don't know who you are, just the identity they associate your name with. That's where the connection with the narrator comes in, as we see him taking new identities throughout the story. He even changes his name at some point, which makes the metaphorical identity change a little more grounded. Only when he is "disguised" as Rinehart does he see the truth behind his situation. Overall, great post!
ReplyDeleteI agree, the narrator's discovery of Rinehart was an interesting turning point. It seems that seeing his own situation brought to an extreme (of happening all at the same time, rather than in stages of his life, as well as such vastly different identities) enabled him to see his own situation. I think the addition of Rinehart was an interesting and effective addition by Wright, and he isn't out of place among the rest of the symbolism-heavy details in the books.
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