Invisible Criticism: Ralph Ellison and the American Canon

Conclusion

Conclusion lthough Invisible Man, as we have seen, presents a perfect example of a novel which, through the use of allusions, can contain a literarycritical subtext-and although our understanding of both Ellison's ideas and the literary climate in which he came of age leads us to see such a subtext as intentional-the implications of this study go beyond Ellison or Invisible Man. That subtext always already critiques and alters the tradition in which it functions; and this study deals, finally, with the way we think about literature. Invisible Man because it is an extreme example accentuates the way new works and old stimulate one another in a constant process of critique and refinement. This stimulation, furthermore, is not a rebellion against tradition but the process of embracing it, and hence not an attempt to undermine meaning but rather an attempt to stabilize it. If allusions, therefore , make us slightly more aware of the instability that thought and language require, they also make us slightly more aware of the ways we cope with these instabilities. Recognizing this may be, furthermore, a means not of inviting chaos but of opening literature to the vitality of other voices, a means that may permit us to hear the voices of otherness. One last consideration of Invisible Man may make this clearer. First we must take a brief look at Melville's The Confidence Man, in which the unidentified title character assumes a number of disguises which enable him to act as foil for the passengers on the riverboat Fidele as it moves deeper and deeper into slave territory. One of the first roles the Confidence Man assumes is that of Black Guinea, the crippled black beggar who catches coins in his mouth. 11e is accused of being an impostor and a debate ensues, during which three passengers come to his defense. But "all three of Black Guinea's benefactors give him some reason to suspect his charity," Karcher points out, "and to test their motives in befriending him. All three, as we shall see, will ultimately negate their seeming benevolence toward the Negro by betraying a racism as thoroughgoing as that of the passengers who have spurned Guinea" (Shadow over the Promised Land, 205). Karcher goes on to examine the significance of Black Guinea and "what 148 Conclusion his 'game of charity' as a crippled black beggar tells us about the part Melville perceived the Negro to be playing on America's historical stage": First of all, on the level of individual behavior, Black Guinea acts out the dual role assumed by every slave, as a victim of oppression who in turn victimizes his white oppressors by dissimulating his vengefulness under the grinning mask they want him to wear. ... Second, on the collective level, Black Guinea represents the apocalyptic retribution that Melville expected America 's four million slave victims to wreak upon her. ... Third, on the level of Melville's racial discourse, Black Guinea, who may after all be only a white masquerading as a black, incarnates the Confidence Man's joke on America: that the phantasm of race, in whose name Americans had refused to extricate themselves from the slave system that was destroying them, may not exist except in the white mind. Even more subversively, Guinea's masquerade indicates that there is no way of ascertaining whether he is black or white-hence no way of being sure that the treatment American society has reserved for him as a black may not have been "mistakenly" inflicted on a white. (206) In her analysis of The Confidence Man, Karcher convincingly argues slavery is central to the book's meaning: Reappearing as "a man in mourning" with "a long weed on his hat," "Guinea" accosts the merchant "with the familiarity of an old acquaintance" (CM, 27). Having appropriated the merchant's business card, he knows the merchant by name. He also recognizes the merchant's face, of course, and seeks to ascertain whether the merchant will recognize his underneath the superficial difference in skin color. . . . Three times he appeals to the merchant to acknowledge his identity with his black predecessor, and by extension their common humanity. Three times the merchant demurs, despite having heard Guinea accused of being a white man masquerading as a black: "Don't you know me?" "No, certainly." . . . "Don't you recall me, now? Look harder." "In my conscience-truly-I protest. . . bless my soul, sir, I don't know you-really, really." ... "Still you don't...