Noah

This past weekend I went with my brother and my father to see the movie "Noah", we sat apart from each other as seats were limited... this also gave me the opportunity to dissect the movie with my own free will rather than having my father comment every moment about what he thought. The movie contained a lot of symbolism that confused me and intrigued me, going through a year of AP Lit I had a lot of thinking to do and the obvious want to understand what I was seeing. Once we walked out of the theater my father and brother commented repeatedly on how much they disliked the movie, being Christians, they thought the movie distorted the bible way too much.

I then thought "Perhaps that is true but is the message of both not the same?"

and as I replayed the rather dark scenes in my head "Invisible Man" quickly was connected to various things. Noah alienated himself and his family from the majority of people because he believed they were sinners and stood for unlawful ideologies. This to me was very similar to what the narrator did, the narrator quickly became very cynical in his actions as he went into hiding as well. While this happened he tried to achieve as much knowledge as possible while almost waiting for an apocalypse to occur just as one did in Noah. The riots and anger and hate that was seen in the book was evident in the bible as well. My question was, "Did Ellison perchance connect these two together at all?" Now I don't know whether or not he did so but I can interpret for myself that he did. The narrator hides in a coal cell with a lot of lights over him... in fact the same number of light-bulb's as Ellison's age (squared) when he wrote the book. This can prove a connection between Noah as well, for Noah stemmed from the line of Seth and remained holy and obedient to God, this squaring of light bulbs almost emits this same ideology as if the narrator thrived and learned knowledge alone under a heavenly source. A lot of apocalyptic imagery was present in the chapters prior to the Epilogue... almost as if the narrator is inside his own ark and is remaining until the world is cleansed of all those hateful and sinners such as Mary and the Brotherhood. Lucius is also in both stories... tempting both people to act a certain and eventually leading to a rebirth of both people. But the main similarity is in the actions of both characters after this cleansing happens, both come into a sort of drunk sense... the narrator a little more abstractly with his obsession with knowledge while Noah actually becomes drunk and is seen by God and his sons naked. So these similarities may be a little far-fetched but they are just what I saw while I was watching the movie. There are of course many differences as well. 

Appraisal

I think one thing that I always forget to look at is the difficulty that must go with writing a book such as “Winesburg Ohio” or “Invisible Man”. I look at authors such as J.D Salinger and Ralph Ellison and I wonder how minds are capable of thinking and creating such complex works of art. I also wonder if it is an esoteric gift only given by God to the most unusual of individuals, or is someone who is rather insignificant (Such as I) able to conjure such interesting thoughts and ideas that challenge the traditional thinking of the Hoi Polloi? This also brings up the matter of whether or not writing literature in such a manner is a gift or is it a skill that is honed by countless hours of practice and thinking. Sometimes I would like to believe that it is a special skill because that makes it so much more wonderful, and I wish to have such a skill… I often believe I haven’t discovered it yet and I am on my way as I grow older and learn more about the world. But often I also wish it to be something that I can practice and master at my own accord, and that the creation of this wordily art is able to anyone that wants to change something or just write for the purpose of writing. I also wonder if these words will last forever, there are times when I get very sad and that is because there is a possibility that these famous works will not last, if we look at enormous revolutions such as the French Revolution or the Nazi occupation of Europe during the second world war… or Mao’s communist rule over China books are often engulfed in flame and destroyed just for the sake of destroying knowledge this is a very depressing thought as even though we may have the internet it is still destroy-able and some censorship or crazy natural anomaly can negate those beautiful and clairvoyant complex works of art. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradburry shows me the effects of a society without knowledge, not only is it extremely cold and lifeless but it is extremely harmful to those that live in the system. The small community that searched for the light was consistently hunted and killed because the books and words hidden from the population contained such valuable depth that it could spark a revolution. Words and books have always been a source of this, writings by Voltaire, Locke, or Rousseau were vital in editing and becoming the edited that helped formulate what modern philosophy today is. All I know is that reading is something that must remain key in the educational system, and if ever that reading is not required or taught to be loved then I must act as a spokesperson for a future filled with cantankerous ideology and hate. 

Invisible man-invisibility research

Invisibility by narrators definition- invisible by virtue of how others react to him. They do not accept his reality and thus live as though they do not see him. He gives a more direct example by explaining how he almost killed a white man whom he bumped into on the street. He continued to attack the white man as long as the man refused to apologize and kept insulting him. The narrator then realized that the man does not see him as an individual and the narrator walked away laughing at the thought that the man was almost killed by a "figment of his imagination".

The boys are blinded by a white blindfold which the narrator circumvents in order to approach the Battle Royal slightly less like an animal.  He had never truly experienced darkness before and it scared him. In this manner, his invisibility is again foreshadowed as the reader knows that he will fade as a character into more darkness as the novel progresses. During the speech men don’t even listen instead they laugh at him while he chokes on blood…. He then accidently says “social equality” instead of “social responsibility”. The audience becomes outraged and he swallows his blood and takes it back. He still doesn’t understand his grandfather because he can not spit out the blood and speak for himself. The boys’ literal blindfolding in the ring parallels the men’s metaphorical blindness as they watch the fight: the men view the boys not as individuals, but as inferior beings, as animals. The blindfolds also represent the boys’ own metaphorical blindness—their inability to see through the false masks of goodwill that barely conceal the men’s racist motives as they force the boys to conform to the racial stereotype of the black man as a violent, savage, oversexed beast. During the speech the narrator quotes Washington’s 1895 expo and realizes that being an upstanding citizen makes him even more invisible.

So we can understand Ellison's comment on invisibility mirrors that of characters such as Cauffield or Huck Finn who are unable to exist in the society so eventually they actually embody the one thing they are trying to escape... so the narrator shuts himself off from the modern world to make the final step to escape invisibility, he does this by letting no reaction happen to his actions and letting no influence take place in his life. He escapes the grid and figures out who he is for himself. Yet we notice that this is not heeding the grandfathers advice either... so he is directly obeying warnings given to him by someone who seems to understand the depth and scale of being invisible. He is then shown as an extremely sinister sort of being who rejects other beings and ends physically invisible.

Poem

Kiss of my love.

Your beauty overwhelms me
As I wrap my arms around you
I press your softness tight
Great passion fills my inner being
I'm captured in your embrace
Your eyes control my very soul
The touch of your lips, heaven
Forever frozen in time
All else fades into nothing

This is one of my favorite poems of all time, although it is short and has an extremely literal meaning anyone can identify with it. Whether it be an 80 year old couple or little children meeting in their neighbors garden, love is all around us... and it transforms the way we think about a person, for we can look at what the world may perceive to be a worn and sea ridden oyster and see it as the potential to uncover a pearl. And not only does it change the mindset of the observer, but the observed as well. For once people understand that others do find them beautiful it unlocks a sort of mentality of power and possibility, and anyone can be considered beautiful. Although my generation focuses a lot on looks and we often become distracted by it we truly do value quality of feeling, and passion. My favorite lines of the poem have to be "Forever frozen in time/ All else fades into nothing", because often the search for this beauty is a crazy complex chase in where we can be burnt, bruised and almost buried as a result of the difficulty of finding that person. Yet once we do, the sum total of all our bruising's, burning s and metaphysical burials can be destroyed in an instant. For once we find that moment, be it a heavenly kiss or a smooth embrace, nothing else truly matters in the world... there is no past or future, there is no history or literature. Science means nothing and religion is absent, its a marriage of a sort... a joining of two actions in a single movement that dispel anything else in the brain, it creates a focus on a single thing to achieve a certain result so strong that we are unable to focus on anything else. Suddenly our soul is blended into two and you are quickly becoming a force that can control and destroy but also a delicate, frail balance of emotion that can, with one offset, whirl into a dangerous and equally destructive being of pain and hurt. This is why it is so vital to balance love with other things, since it can completely consume someones world it can potentially create a lot harm.
I guess what i'm trying to say is that from personal experience with people, love is both the most beautiful, altruistic, and powerful emotion known to man.... but it is equally the creator of pain and anger. And sometimes after we go through these amazing moments such as melting away into a kiss we become addicted to the feeling and once that feeling is lost... we cannot find love again, until we find that moment.

Individual man

Out of all the themes in Invisible Man, whether it be the radical ideas of communism and their abstracted use of the black community or whether it be the mindset of White's regarding that black community, I have always found the struggling of individuality and invisibility to be the most interesting. 

The narrator throughout the book consistently struggles to understand who he his, what purpose he serves, and how to achieve that identity. Yet, he never reveals his true name... and for the majority of the book he goes by an alter-ego which we still don't know the name of. This struggle of identity might have served a different purpose then what I perceived, but literature is extremely interpretative. I think Ellison meant for this individuality to be looked at as a historical lens, because the brotherhood acts in a way as if the narrator were an abstract idea instead of an actual person. Brother Jack seems to be wonderful and magnificent paying copious amounts of money to the Narrator and giving him lodging, but he turns out to only want the narrator for what he can do... and then Brother Jack attempts to control what he says by saying things such as "So it isn't a matter of whether you wish to be the new Booker T. Washington, my friend. Booker Washington was resurrected today... He came out from the anonymity of the crowd and spoke to the people". So essentially, the narrator isn't speaking for himself he is acting as a mouthpiece for Booker Washington, he has to take up an identity and change his manner of being to suit the needs of the mass. The purpose of the brotherhood itself was just that "We do not shape our policies to the mistaken and infantile notions of the man in the street. Our job is not to ask them what they think but to tell them". This is showing that the Brotherhood is trying its hardest to restrict people's freedom of thought and expression, and this leads into the restriction of history... on one side of the face of Brotherhood we can see that they are powerful unit attempting to express the will and want of the community, but the underlying truth is simple and obvious covered merely by its own optic white... that the Brothers just want to exert domination over the community. This in totality shows the stagnation of history as a result of these powerful organizations that are just as evil as its oppressors, as long as there is someone to control the people's will to such an extent were they feel subjugated and mislead there will be no revolution or progress of history