Welcome to zamgist where we answer the question: How does the advice of the narrator’s grandfather influence his actions?
How does the advice of the narrator’s grandfather influence his actions?
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The narrator who speaks in the voice of a man in his 40s remembers his youth as the novel opens. He remembers when he has not yet discovered his identity or realized that he was an invisible man. The narrator relates an anecdote concerning his grandfather, who on his death bed shocks his family, revealing himself a spy and a traitor to his race. The narrator then dreams that he’s in the mists of his grandfather that night, who refuses to laugh at the clowns. His grandfather orders him to open the briefcase and read the message contained in an official envelope, the narrator finds that each envelope contains yet, another envelope. In the envelope, instead of scholarship, he finds an engraved document, with the message “To Whom It May Concern, keep This Nigger-Boy Running”. The grandfather’s deathbed scene and advice represent ancestor or ghost of slavery and the need to get rid of the past.
The advice influenced the narrator who the protagonist and principal character in the novel. His name and true identity is never mentioned. The narrator begins and ends the novel as a type of embodied voice. He addresses his story through the use of the first person narration. At the beginning of the novel, he explains the meaning of this invisibility simply because people refuse to see me…
The narrator is gullible; for he’s easily deceived by the white and other people around him. He should have known that Dr. Bledsoe does not have any good intention for him. When Bledsoe gives the narrator the recommended letters, knowing fully well that Bledsoe initially yells and criticizes the narrator for showing the unpleasant side of the black community to Mr. Norton. The narrator refuses to believe that Dr. Bledsoe is trying to get rid of him through expulsion, little did he know that the letters were not of recommendation, but of rejection.
Before the narrator joins the Brotherhood, he remains extremely innocent and inexperienced. He is prone to think the best of people even when he has reason not to, and he remains constantly respectful of authority. The narrator’s innocence sometimes causes him to misunderstand important events in the novel. For instance, the narrator accepts his scholarship from the brutish white men with gladness. Although, he passes no judgment on the white man’s behavior. The narrator remains vulnerable to the identity that society thrusts upon him as an African- American. He plays the role of the service black man to the white man. He also plays the industrious, uncomplaining disciple of Booker T. Washington during his college year, he agrees to act as the Brotherhood’s black spokesman, which allows the Brotherhood use him.
But the narrator also proves very intelligent and introspective.
Finally, the narrator has retreated to underground, yet in the act of telling a story, the narrator comes to realize the danger of invisibility. He concludes his story determined to honor his own complexity rather than subdue it in the interest of a group of ideology. Though most of the narrator’s difficulties arise from the fact that he’s black. The novelist sees the narrator’s as a universal character- a direct representation of the struggle just like the father.