The Brotherhood in Invisible Man is a very strange organization. The leaders are hypocritical, corrupt, and blindsided by their beliefs, which is made increasingly obvious to the narrator and the reader throughout the book. The Committee is made up of ideologues, who, if you remember from Mr. Butler's class, are historically extremely disconnected from the realities of society. Clifton's death really brings this key flaw into the narrator's mental spotlight, and this creates more distance and tensions between the narrator and the committee.
The narrator really starts to realize the flaws in the Brotherhood's overarching generalizations after Clifton is shot. Because the narrator saw Clifton's death as very individual, he starts to see Harlem as a collection of individuals instead of a generalized mass. He really sees the men in the zoot suits for the first time, even though he has seen people like them many times before. He notes that the Brotherhood overlooks people like that, and this plants a small seed of doubt about the Brotherhood in the narrator's head.
The narrator's lack of faith in the Brotherhood intensifies when he meets with the Committee and he realizes that they don't really see him, or know who he is. He's just a pawn in their scheme, and he has been willingly playing his part. Just as quickly as the narrator once latched on to the Brotherhood, he begins to detach himself. At the end of the most recent reading, the narrator is actively countering the Brotherhood. Is the narrator's separation from the Brotherhood directly a result of Clifton's death, or would the narrator have eventually left anyway?
The narrator's lack of faith in the Brotherhood intensifies when he meets with the Committee and he realizes that they don't really see him, or know who he is. He's just a pawn in their scheme, and he has been willingly playing his part. Just as quickly as the narrator once latched on to the Brotherhood, he begins to detach himself. At the end of the most recent reading, the narrator is actively countering the Brotherhood. Is the narrator's separation from the Brotherhood directly a result of Clifton's death, or would the narrator have eventually left anyway?
I agree with your comparison of the Brotherhood members to idealogues. Rather than focus on the personal aspects of the people they are supposedly helping, they are driven by their own obsessive political agendas. From when the narrator was first approached by the Brotehherhood, there were red flags that jumped out to only us readers. These red flags always made me ponder the narrator's fate with the Brotherhood and even what led up to Tod Clifton's disappearance.
ReplyDeleteI think the narrator would've eventually left the Brother even if Clifton hadn't died, but Clifton's death definitely sped up the process. Even before Clifton died, the narrator was already becoming a bit detached from the Brotherhood, and I'm sure there would've been various other events that would've caused division between the narrator and the Brotherhood.
ReplyDeleteI think Clifton's death was a pivotal turning point in the narrator's character development and detachment from the Brotherhood. Not only does he see the real consequences of ideology over action with the brutality of the police over something relatively unthreatening, but he also starts to put individual faces to the casualties of the movement. Because someone he knew well was a casualty, it forced him to confront the issue from two sides: from that of a grieving and mad individual and a collective movement. He eventually decides that the individual that died and the personal responsibility he has to remember Clifton matter more than the ideology of the Brotherhood. He has to take something personally and he has to feel for Clifton as an individual.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that the narrator starts to see past the mask of the brotherhood after Clifton is shot. He realizes that people mean more than what they show externally, and begins to truly understand the concept of invisibility. He really sees the zoot suiters for the first time only after Clifton dies because now he understands that they as individuals could be anyone. They're more than just the facade of young men in funky suits.
ReplyDeleteI think that the death of Tod Clifton is such a crucial turning point during the novel. The narrator finally begins to start seeing the truth about the brotherhood. You might call this the beginning of the sequence of events which end with his retreat underground. Previously the narrator had let the brotherhood do his thinking for him, but now he is beginning to approach ideas from his own perspective.
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