Diving Into African American Literature

            In one of the very first chapters of Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, our narrator attends a strange event and then receives a briefcase as a gift. He is taken to an event called the Battle Royal for the entertainment of white people where he is forced into violent fights with other Black boys and then he gives a speech at the end. Everyone laughs at him and thinks his speech is funny, but nevertheless, at the end of it, he is given a fancy new briefcase as a gift for giving his speech. He may not know it at the time, but this briefcase starts a new era and story for him.             After the narrator is sent to the North, he begins his adventures and new life in NYC with his briefcase, carrying only the letters from Bledsoe. He says, “many of the men carried dispatch cases and briefcases and I gripped mine with a sense of importance,” (164). As he walks around the new city speaking with ...

"You could cause us the greatest humiliation simply by confronting us with something we liked" One morning while walking the streets of Harlem, the narrator, still pretty new to the city, encounters a street vendor selling sweet yams, reminiscent of ones he used to eat at home in the south. While this scene does not immediately seem to have much direct significance to the plot, it’s really quite a beautiful scene that gives insight into our character and poses some interesting philosophical ideas. The narrator still feels very out of place in New York. He remains hyper-aware of the differences from his home in the south, and, whether he explicitly recognizes it or not, longs for the southern identity he has been repressing to fit in. So when he is confronted with this symbol of his past life, it comes as a shock and sort of awakening for him. He says, “I took a bite […] and was overcome with such a surge of homesickness that I turned away to keep my control,” (Ellison 264)....