Section Two The Representatives of Black American Literature: Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison

I. Richard Wright:

1. Life and Works:
The major figure to appear in the l940s was Richard Wright (1908-1960) who became a powerful writer and a big influence though with a small productivity. Richard Wright experienced a bitter boyhood. Not happy at home with his stern mother and grandmother, he suffered the agony of segregation of the American south of the time. Eventually he fled to Chicago, where in contact with left--wing friends and finally with the Communist Party, he began to see the Negro situation as part of the general human situation of the oppressed and write and publish on thestrength of this growing social awareness. His first book, Uncle Tom's Children: Four Novellas came out in l938, which was followed two years 1ater by his masterwork, Native Son. For the first time in American history a book by a Black author about Black life made such an impact on the consciousness of the nation that Richard Wright became a national celebrity. In l944 he broke with the Communist Party, and the next year published his second powerful book, Black Boy, an autobiography relating the bitter experience of his youth. The racial discrimination of the country becoming increasingly intolerable to him, Wright left for Europe, where he settled down in France. Thus, cut off from the reality of Black experience, he was seriously unable to create his work. He was to write a good deal more, novels, stories, and essays, but none of these ever again touched his best work in power and critical acclaim.

Native Son is an extremely fascinating book. It simply exploded on the sensibi1ity of the American reading public. Dealing with one of the most thorny problems with which America had been involved--the racial question, the book pushed it into the reader's mind in a manner no one had ever done before. For the Blacks the message is clear, that they are human beings and should be treated as such, and that if nothing else can help to assert their dignity and identity, then it is legitimate to resort to violence. For the whites, the message is equally clear, that the moment has arrived when they have to come to terms with their Black fellowmen, and that, if they are not ready yet, they have got to be quick or they will have to take the consequences. Bigger Thomas, the hero of the book, embodies a new type of Black personality. Rebe1lious by nature, he is never able to feel at peace with the world in which he finds himself. The violence which breaks out of him and which eventually leads him to the electric chair has been brewing in the bosom of his race for over three centuries, ever since the first of his ancestors were brought to the land of their enslavement in the l620s. The bitterness has fermented, and the patience and humility of the Black Americans are not inexhaustible. If not given the recognition that is due to them, the Blacks are perfectly ready to take the law into their own hands. Thus Bigger Thomas, more than any other Black fictional figures, represents a higher level of Black racial awareness. In him and his actions, the Blacks saw their identity and the whites their folly and obligation. Richard Wright has been blamed for his unabashed portrayal of violence and of a violent man as hero. But he would not have been as effective as he was had he not written the way he did in Native Son. Richard Wright's influence over subsequent Black American writers has been great. To say that he began the contemporary Black literary tradition of violent self-assertion is not exaggeration.

II Native Son
1. the Plot Overview of Native Son

The plot is divided into three parts: 1.Fear   2.Flight   3.Fate.
Bigger Thomas, no father, lived with his mother, brother and sister in a kitchen net.
One morning, his sister found a big rat and Bigger was asked to beat it to death. The rat is facing death and had a death struggle. It ran up into Bigger’s trouser. He was so angry that he still beat it though it was already dead.

Bigger went to work in the white Doltons as a driver. Mrs. Doltons was blind and often encouraged him to finish his education. One day, Mary, Mrs. Doltons’ daughter, asked him to send her to her boyfriend who was a communist. Mary got overdrunk. Bigger carried her to her bedroom. Just then Mrs. Doltons appeared, he put a pillow on Mary’s mouth in order that his owner couldn’t misunderstand him.   As a result, Mary died after Mrs. Daltons left. He put Mary into a furnace to burn her body.

After that, Thomas escaped. Bigger’s girlfriend persuaded him to go to the police office. However, he killed his girlfriend in case she might betray him. Mary’s boyfriend sent a lawyer to defend Bigger. But no matter how hard, Bigger was still sentenced to electric chair. Ironically, he was more condemned for killing Mary incidentally rather than his purposely killing his black girlfriend.  

2. Characterization of Bigger Thomas
A. Bad nigger: blacks are always the victims, they are persecuted and lynched in other writings. However, bigger is a rebellious figure, because he is someone who kills and who is violent.
B. A victim of society, “rat’s” confrontation with Bigger is the metaphor of Bigger’s confrontation with society. In the latter part, Bigger is weaker. That’s why the last chapter is called Fate. He is so powerless compared to the white society. Violence is his self-affirmation. Here we can see the author’s theme.
C. Bigger is modern American. Bigger is a product of America, or the native son of the land. He is dispossessed and disinherited man. Modern world is a world of alienation not only to blacks but also to whites. Bigger’s experience can be everybody’s experience in a sense.

3. Selected Reading:
Native Son
BOOK I FEAR

Brrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinng !
An alarm clock clanged in the dark and silent room. A bed spring creaked. A woman's voice sang out impatient1y:"Bigger, shut that thing off !"
A surly grunt sounded above the tinny ring of meta1. Naked feet swished dryly across the planks in the wooden floor and the clang ceased abruptly.  
"Turn on the light, Bigger."
"Awright," came a sleepy mumble.
Light flooded the room and revealed a black boy standing in a narrow space between two iron beds, rubbing his eyes with the backs of his hands. From a bed to his right the woman spoke again:
"Buddy, get up from there ! I got a big washing on my hands today and I want you--all out of here."
Another black boy rolled from bed and stood up. The woman also rose and stood in her nightgown.
"Turn your heads so I can dress," she said.
The two boys averted their eyes and gazed into a far corner of the room. The woman rushed out of her nightgown and put on a pair of step--ins. She turned to the bed from which she had risen and called:
"Vera ! Get up from there !"
"What time is it, Ma?" asked a muffled, adolescent voice from beneath a quilt.
"Get up from there, I say !"
"O. K., Ma."

A brown--skinned girl in a cotton gown got up and stretched her arms above her head and yawned. Sleepily, she sat on a chair and fumbled with her stockings. The two boys kept their faces averted while their mother and sister put on enough clothes to keep them from feeling ashamed; and the mother and sister did the same while the boys dressed. Abruptly, they all paused, holding their clothes in their hands, their attention caught by a light tapping in the thinly plastered walls bf the room They forgot their conspiracy against shame and their eyes strayed apprehensively over the floor.
"There he is again, Bigger!"the woman screamed, and the tiny one-room apartment galvanized into violent action. A chair toppled as the woman, half-dressed and in her stocking feet, scrambled breathlessly upon the bed. Her two sons, barefoot, stood tense and motionless, their eyes searching anxiously under the bed and chairs. The girl ran into a corner, half stooped and gathered the hem of her slip into both of her hands and held it tightly over her knees.
"Oh! Oh!" she wailed.
"There he goes!"
The woman pointed a shaking finger. Her eyes were round with fascinated horror.
"Where?"
"I don't see ’im!"
"Bigger, he's behind the trunk !" the girl whimpered.
"Vera!" the woman screamed. "Get up here on the bed! Don't let that thing bite you!"
Frantically, Vera climbed upon the bed and the woman caught hold of her. With their arms entwined about each other, the black mother and the brown daughter gazed open-mouthed at the trunk in the corner.
Bigger looked round the room wildly, then darted to a curtain and swept it aside and grabbed two heavy iron skillets from a wall above a gas stove. He whirled and called softly to his brother, his eyes glued to the trunk.
Buddy!
“Yeah”
“Here; take this skillet.”
" O.K. "
"Now, get over by the door! "
"O.K. "
Buddy crouched by the door and held the iron skillet by its handle, his arm flexed and poised. Save for the quick, deep breathing of the four people, the room was quiet. Bigger crept on tiptoe toward the trunk with the skillet clutched stiffly in his hand, his eyes dancing and watching every inch of the wooden floor in front of him. He paused and, without moving an eye or muscle, called:
"Buddy!"
"Hunh?"
"Put that box in front of the hole so he can't get out!"
"O. K."
Buddy ran to a wooden box and shoved it quickly in front of a gaping hole in the molding and then backed again to the door, holding the skillet ready. Bigger eased to the trunk and peered behind it cautiously. He saw nothing. Carefully, he stuck out his bare foot and pushed the trunk a few inches.
"There he is!" the mother screamed again.
A huge black rat squealed and leaped at Bigger's trouserleg and. snagged it in his teeth, hanging on.
"Goddamn!" Bigger whispered fiercely, whirling and kicking out his leg with all the strength of his body. The force of his movement shook the rat loose and it sailed through the air and struck a wall. Instantly, it ro1Ied over and leaped again.

Bigger dodged and the rat landed against a table 1eg. With clenched teeth, Bigger held the skillet; he was afraid to hurl it, fearing that he might miss. The rat squeaked and turned and ran in a narrow circle, 1ooking for a place to hide; it leaped again past Bigger and scurried on dry rasping feet to one side of the box and then to the other, searching for the hole. Then it turned and reared upon its hind legs.
"Hit 'im, Bigger!" Buddy shouted.
"Kill 'im !" the woman screamed.
The rat's belly pulsed with fear. Bigger advanced a step and the rat emitted a long thin song of defiance, its black beady eyes glittering, its tiny forefeet pawing the air restlessly. Bigger swung the skillet; it skid-ded over the floor, missing the rat, and clattered to a stop against a wall.
"Goddamn !"
The rat leaped. Bigger sprang to one side. The rat stopped under a chair and let out a furious screak. Bigger moved slow1y backward toward the door.
"Gimme that skillet, Buddy, '',he asked quietly, not taking his eyes from the rat. Buddy extended his hand. Bigger caught the skillet and lifted it high in the air. The rat scuttled across the floor and stopped again at the box and searched quick1y for the hole; then it reared once more and bared long yellow fangs, piping shrilly, belly quivering.
Bigger aimed and let the skillet fly with a heavy grunt. There was a shattering of wood as the box caved in. The woman screamed and hid her face in her hands. Bigger tiptoed forward and peered.
"I got 'im," he muttered, his clenched teeth bared in a smi1e."By God, I got 'im." He kicked the splintered box out of the way and the flat black body of the rat lay exposed, its two long yellow tusks showing distinctly. Bigger took a shoe and pounded the rat's head, crushing it, cursing hysterically:
"You son of a bitch !"
The woman on the bed sank to her knees and buried her face in the quilts and sobbed:
"Lord, Lord, have mercy...."
" Aw, Mama," Vera whimpered, bending to her. "Don't cry. It's dead now."
The two brothers stood over the dead rat and spoke in tones of awed admiration.
"Gee, but he's a big bastard."
"That son of a bitch could cut your throat."
"He's over a foot long."
"How in hell do they get so big?"
"Eating garbage and anything else they can get."
"Look, Bigger, there's a three--inch rip in your pant--leg. "
"Yeah; he was after me, al1 right."
"Please, Bigger, take 'im out," Vera begged.
"Aw, don't be so scary," Buddy said.
The woman on the bed continued to sob. Bigger took a piece of newspaper and gingerly lifted the rat by its tail and held it out at arm's length.
"Bigger, take 'im out," Vera begged again.
Bigger laughed and approached the bed with the dangling rat, swinging it to and fro like a pendulum, enjoying his sister's fear.
"Bigger !" Vera gasped convulsively; she screamed and swayed and closed her eyes and fell headlong across her mother and rolled limply from the bed to the floor.
"Bigger, for God's sake !" the mother sobbed, rising and bending over Vera. "Don't do that !  Throw that rat out !"
He laid the rat down and started to dress.
"Bigger, help me lift Vera to the bed," the mother said.
He paused and turned round.
"What's the matter?" he asked, feigning ignorance.
"Do what I asked you, Will you, boy?"
He went to the bed and helped his mother lift Vera. Vera's eyes were closed. He turned away and finished dressing. He wrapped the rat in a newspaper and went out of the door and down the stairs and put it into a garbage can at the corner of an alley.

When he returned to the room his mother was still bent over Vera, placing a wet towel upon her head. She straightened and faced him, her cheeks and eyes wet with tears and her lips tight with anger.
"Boy, sometimes I wonder what makes you act like you do."
"What I do now?" he demanded belligerent1y.
"Sometimes you act the biggest fool I ever saw."
"What you talking about? "
"You scared your sister with that rat and she fainted ! Ain't you got no sense at all?"
"Aw, I didn't know she was that scary."
"Buddy!" the mother cal1ed.
"Yessum."
"Take a newspaper and spread it over that spot."
"Yessum."
Buddy opened out a newspaper and covered the smear of blood on the floor where the rat had been crushed. Bigger went to the window and stood looking out abstractedly into the street. His mother g1ared at his back.
"Bigger, sometimes I wonder why I birthed you, "she said bitterly.
Bigger looked at her and turned away.
"Maybe you oughtn't've. Maybe you ought to left me where I was."
"You shut your sassy mouth !"
"Aw, for chrissakes!" Bigger said, lighting a cigarette.
"Buddy, pick up them skillets and put 'em in the sink, "the mother said.
"Yessum."
Bigger walked across the floor and sat on the bed. His mother's eyes fol1owed him.
"We wouldn't have to live in this garbage dump if you had any manhood in you," she said.
"Aw, don't start that again."
"How you feel, Vera?" the mother asked.
Vera raised her head and looked about the room as though expecting to see another rat.
"Oh, Mama !"
"You poor thing !"
"I couldn't help it. Bigger scared me."
"Did you hurt yourself?"
"I bumped my head."
"Here; take it easy. You'll be all right."
"How come Bigger acts that way?" Vera asked, crying again.
"He's just crazy, "the mother said. "Just plain dumb black crazy."
"I'll be late for my sewing class at the Y. W. C. A., "Vera said.
"Here; stretch out on the bed. You'll feel better in a little while,"the mother said.
She left Vera on the bed and turned a pair of cold eyes upon Bigger.
"Suppose you wake up some morning and find your sister dead? What would you think then?" she asked. "Suppose those rats cut our veins at night when we sleep? Naw ! Nothing like that ever bothers you !All you care about is your own pleasure! Even when the relief offers you a job you won't take it till they threaten to cut off your food and starve you ! Bigger, honest,
you the most no--countest man I ever seen in all my 1ife !"
"You done told me that a thousand times," he said, not looking round.
"Well, I'm telling you agin ! And mark my word, some of these days you going to set down and cry. Some of these days you going to wish you had made something out of yourself, instead of just a tramp. But it'll be too late then."
"Stop prophesying about me," he said.
"I prophesy much as I please ! And if you don't 1ike it, you can get out. We can get along without you. We can live in one room just like we living now, even with you gone," she said.
"Aw, for chrissakes !" he said, his voice filled with nervous irritation.
"You'll regret how you living some day, " she went on. "If you don't stop running with that gang of yours and do right you'll end up where you never thought you would. You think I don't know what you boys is doing, but I do. And the gallows is at the end of the road you traveling, boy. Just remember that. " She turned and looked at Buddy.
"Throw that box outside , Buddy."
"Yessum.”
There was silence. Buddy took the box out. The mother went behind the curtain to the gas stove. Vera sat up in bed and swung her feet to the floor.
"Lay back down, Vera," the mother said.
"I feel all right now, Ma. I got to go to my sewing class"
"Well, if you feel like it, set the table, M the mother said, going behind the curtain again. "Lord, I get so tired of this I don't know what to do, "her voice f1oated plaintively from behind the curtain. "All I ever do is try to make a home for you children and you don't care. "
"Aw, Ma," Vera protested. "Don't say that."
"Vera sometimes I just want to lay down and quit."
"Ma, please don't Say that."
"I can't last many more years, living like this."
"I'll be old enough to work soon, Ma."
"I reckon I'll be dead then. I reckon God'll call me home."
Vera went behind the curtain and Bigger heard her trying to comfort his mother. He shut their voices out of his mind. He hated his family because he knew that they were suffering and that he was powerless to help them. He knew that the moment he allowed himself to feel to its fullness how they lived, the shame and misery of their lives, he would be swept out of himself with fear and despair. So he held toward them an attitude of iron reserve; he lived with them, but behind a wall, a curtain. And toward himself he was even more exacting. He knew that the moment he allowed what his life meant to enter fully into his consciousness, he would either kill himself or someone else. So he denied himself and acted tough. He got up and crushed his cigarette upon the window sill. Vera came into the room and placed knives and forks upon the table.
"Get ready to eat, you--all," the mother called.
He sat at the table. The odor of frying bacon and boiling coffee drifted to him from behind the curtain. His mother's voice floated to him in song.Life is like a mountain railroad. With an engineer that's brave We must make the run successful From the cradle to the grave....
The song irked him and he was glad when she stopped and came into the room with a pot of coffee and a plate of crinkled bacon. Vera brought the bread in and they sat down. His mother closed her eyes and lowered her head and mumbled,
"Lord, we thank Thee for the food You done placed before us for the nourishment of our bodies. Amen." She lifted her eyes and without changing her tone of voice, said, "You going to have to learn to get up earlier than this, Bigger, to hold a job."
He did not answer or 1ook up.
"You want me to pour you some coffee?" Vera asked.
"Yeah."
"You going to take the job, ain't you, Bigger?"his mother asked.
He laid down his fork and stared at her.
"I told you last night I was going to take it. How many times you want to ask me?"
"Well, don't bite her head off," Vera said. "She only asked you a question. "
"Pass the bread and stop being smart. "
"You know you have to see Mr. Dalton at five--thirty, "his mother said.
"You done said that ten times."
"I don't want you to forget, son. "
"And you know how you can forget," Vera said.

Questions:

What’s the characterization of Bigger Thomas like?

What’s the characteristics in writing as can be seen from this part?

II. Ralph Ellison

< p > 1．Life and works:

Ralph Ellison was born in Oklahoma; his father is a construction worker. However his life is much better than Richard Wrights’. In 1917, his father died and his mother worked as a housemaid where she could bring some thrown away books for her son. He attended school regularly. In 1933, he won a state scholarship and went to Tuskegee institute, a famous Negro university, majoring in music. Later he met Hughes and Wrights who introduced him to other masters and encouraged him to
write about himself. In 1952, Invisible Man came out, which he took seven years to write. This novel marked a higher level of maturity for American black literature. In 1953, Ellison won National Book Award. Book weeks(1965) considered Invisible Man as the best book after the Second World War.

2．The Plot Overview of Invisible Man:

The hero has no name. He is an obedient black boy in the South. He got a scholarship because of his obedience and went to a university. One day, a white benefactor visits the school, and he is asked to show the white benefactor around. Later he is expelled because he has shown the black ghettos and something unpleasant to the white. He goes to the North to find a job but
he can only do lower jobs because the recommendation letter written by the president of the university if very bad. First, he works in a paint factory and gets wounded. When he comes out of the hospital he sees an old black couple are driven out of a flat and immediately he makes a radical speech and is appreciated by the leader of brotherhood association. Later he joins
the brotherhood and is driven out of it because of different opinion. After that he stays in the underground for twenty years with 1369 lights on to show his visibility.

His dual experience as a black and as modern man:
As a black in America, black people are invisible to the white. As a modern man, we can see modern man’s alienation and lost of self in modern society.  

3. Selected Reading
  
Invisible Man

PROLOGUE
I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood--movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids--and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisib1e, understand, simply because People refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my
surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination--indeed, everything and anything except me.

Nor is my invisibility exactly a matter of a bio--chemical accident to my epidermis. That invisibility to which I refer occurs because of apecu1iar disposition of the eyes of those with whom I come in contact. A matter of the construction of their inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality. I am not complaining, nor am I protesting either. It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves. Then too, you're constantly being bumped against by those of poor vision. Or again, you often doubt if you rea1ly exist. You wonder whether you aren't simply a phantom in other people's minds. Say, a figure in a nightmare which the sleeper tries with all his strength to destroy. It's when you feel like this that, out of resentment, you begin to bump people back. And, let me
confess, you feel that way most of the time. You ache with the need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world, that you're a part of all the sound and anguish, and you strike out with your fists, you curse and you swear to make them recognize you. And, alas, it's se1dom successful.

One night I accidentally bumped into a man, and perhaps because of the near darkness he saw me and called me an insu1ting name. I sprang at him, seized his coat lapels and demanded that he apologize. He was a tall blond man, and as my face came close to his he looked insolently out of his blue eyes and cursed me, his breath hot in my face as he struggled. I pulled his chin down sharp upon the crown of my head butting him as I had seen the West Indians do, and I felt his f1esh tear and the blood gush out and I yelled, "Apologize ! Apologize !" But he continued to curse and struggle, and I butted him again and again until he went down heavily, on his knees, profusely bleeding. I kicked him repeated1y, in a frenzy because he still uttered insults though his lips were frothy with blood. Oh yes, I kicked him ! And in my outrage I got out my knife and prepared to slit his throat, right there beneath the lamplight in the deserted street, holding him by the collar with one hand, and opening the knife with my teeth--when it occurred to me that the man had not seen me, actually; that he, as far as he knew, was in the midst of a walking nightmare ! And I stopped the blade, slicing the air as I pushed him away, letting him fall back to the street. I stared at him hard as the lights of a car stubbed through the darkness. He lay there, moaning on
the asphalt; a man almost killed by a phantom. It unnerved me. I was both disgusted ashamed. I was like a drunken man myself, wavering about on weakened legs. Then I was amused. Something in this man’s thick head had sprung out and beaten him within and inch if his life. I began to laugh at this crazy discovery. Would he have awakened at the point of death? I ran away into the dark, laughing so hard I feared I might rupture myself. The next day I saw his picture in the Daily News, beneath a caption stating that he had been “ mugged.” Poor fool, poor blind fool, I thought with sincere compassion, mugged by and invisible man!

Most of the time (although I do not choose as I once did to deny the violence of my days by ignoring it) I am not so overtly violent. I remember that I am invisible and walk softly so as not to awaken the sleeping ones. Sometimes it is best not to awaken them; there are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers. I learned in time though that it is possible to carry on a fight against them without their realizing it. For instance, I have been carrying on a fight with
Monopolated Light and Power for some time now, I use their serice and pay them nothing at all, and they don’t know it. Oh, they suspect that power is being drained off, but they don’t know where. All they know is that according to the master meter back there in their power station a hell of a lot of free current is disappearing somewhere into the jungle of Harlem. The joke, of course, is that I don’t live in Harlem but in a border area. Several years ago (before I discovered the advantage of being invisible)I went through the routine process of buying service and paying their outrageous rates. But no more. I gave up all that, along with my apartment, and my old way of life: That way based upon the fallacious assumption that I, like other men, was visible. Now, aware of my invisibility, I live rent-free in a building rent strictly to whites, in s section of the basement that was shut off and forgotten during the nineteenth century, which I discovered when I was trying to escape in the night from Ras the Destroyer. But that’s getting too far ahead of the story, almost to the end, although the end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.

The point now is that I found a home—or a hole in the ground, as you will. Now don’t jump to the conclusion that because I call my home a “hole” it is damp and cold like a grave; there are cold holes and warm holes. Mine is a warm hole. And remember, a bear retires to his hole for the winter and lives until spring; then he comes strolling out like the Easter chick breaking from its shell. I say all this to assure you that it is incorrect to assume that, because I'm invisible and live in a hole, I am dead. I am neither dead nor in a state of suspended animation. Call me Jack--the--Bear, for I am in a state of hibernation.

My hole is warm and full of light. Yes, full of light. I doubt if there is a brighter spot in all New York than this hole of mine, and I do not exclude Broadway. Or the Empire State Building on a photographer's dream night. But that is taking advantage of you. Those two spots are among the darkest of our whole eivilization--pardon me, our whole culture (an important distinction, I've heard) --which might sound like a hoax, or a contradiction, but that (by contradiction, I mean) is how the world moves: Not like an arrow, but a boomerang. (Beware of those who speak of the spiral of history; they are preparing a boomerang. Keep a stee1 helmet handy. ) I know; I have been boomeranged across my head so much that I now can see the darkness of lightness. And I love light. Perhaps you'll think it strange that an invisible man should need light, desire light, love light. But maybe it is exactly because I am invisible. Light confirms my reality, gives birth to my form. A beautiful girl once told me of a recurring nightmare in which she lay in the center of a large dark room and felt her face expand until it filled the whole room, becoming a formless mass while her eyes ran in bilious jelly up the chimney. And so it is with me. Without light I am not on1y invisible, but formless as well; and to be unaware of one's form is to live a death. I myself, after existing some twenty years, did not become alive until I discovered my invisibility.

That is why I fight my batt1e with Monopolated Light & Power. The deeper reason, I mean: It allows me to feel my vital aliveness. I also fight them for taking so much of my money before I learned to protect myself. In my hole in the basement there are exactly 1, 369 lights. I've wired the entire ceiling, every inch of it. And not with fluorescent bulbs, but with the older, more -- expensive -- to-- operate kind, the filament type. An act of Sabotage, you know. I've already begun to wire the wall. A junk man I know, a man of vision, has supplied me with wire and sockets. Nothing, storm of flood, must get in the way of our need for light and ever more and brighter light. The truth is the light and light is The truth. When I finish all four walls, then I’ll start on the floor. Just how that will go, I don’t know. Yet when you have lived invisible
as long as I have you develop a certain ingenuity. I’ll solve the problem. And maybe I’ll invent a gadget to place my coffeepot on the fire while I lie in bed, and even invent a gadget to warm my bed—like the fellow I saw in one of the picture magazines who made himself a gadget to warm his shoes! Though invisible, I am in the great American tradition of thinkers. That makes me kin to Ford, Edison and Franklin. Call me, since I have a theory and a concept, a “thinker-tinker.” Yes, I’ll warm my shoes; they need it, they’re usually full of holes. I’ll do that and more.

Now I have one radio-phonograph; I plan to have five. There is a certain acoustical deadness in my hole, and when I have music I want to feel its vibration, not only with my ear but with my whole body. I’d like to hear five recordings of Louis Armstrong playing and singing “what Did I Do to Be so Black and Blue”-all at the same time. Sometimes now I Listen to Louis while I have my favorite dessert of vanilla ice cream and sloe gin. I pour the red liquid over the white mound,
watching it glisten and the vapor rising as Louis bends that military instrument into a beam of lyrical sound. Perhaps I like Louis Armstrong because he’s made poetry out of being invisible. I think it must be because he’s unaware that he is invisible. And my own grasp of invisibility aids me to understand his music. Once when I asked for a cigarette, some jokers gave me a reefer, which I lighted when I got home and sat listening to my phonograph. It was a strange evening. Invisibility, let me explain, gives one a slightly different sense of time. You’re never quite on the beat. Sometimes you’re ahead and sometimes behind. Instead of the swift and imperceptible flowing of time, you are aware of its nodes, those points where time stands still or from which it leaps ahead. And you slip into the breaks and look around. That’s what you hear vaguely in
Louis’ music.

Once I saw a prizefighter boxing a yokel. The fighter was swift and amazingly scientific. His body was one violent flow of rapid rhythmic action. He hit the yokel a hundred times while the yokel held up his arms in stunned surprise. But suddenly the yokel, rolling about in the gale of boxing gloves, struck one blow and knocked science, speed and footwork as cold as a well-digger’s posterior. The smart money hit the canvas. The long shot got the nod. The yokel had sirnply stepped inside of his opponent's sense of time. So under the spell of the reefer I discovered a new analytical way of listening to music. The unheard sounds came through, and each melodic line existed of itself, stood out c1early from all the rest, said its piece, and waited patiently for the other voices to speak. That night I found myself hearing not only in time, but in space as well. I not on1y entered the music but descended, like Dante into its depths.

Questions:

What are conditions of the black through the hero in the Invisible Man?