Throughout invisible man, there are sections that seem surreal and dreamlike. In fact, a majority of the time it feels like the narrator is dreaming. However there is one scene in particular that stood out to me as feeling very real, almost too real. This would be the scene that Clifton gets shot. This scene feels so real because it feels like it could have happened just yesterday.
When I first read this scene it was very easy for me to imagine this vendor on the street, maybe not selling racist dolls, but Clifton’s calls and catch phrases sound like something you could still hear in New York today. The paragraph that stood out to me the most reads, “I could see the cop push Clifton again, stepping solidly forward in his black shirt, his arm shooting out stiffly, sending him in a head-snapping forward stumble until he caught himself, saying something over his shoulder again, the two moving in a kind of march that I’d seen many times, but never with anyone like Clifton.” It continues discussing in detail describing the movements of Clifton and the cop that sound just like motions in cases like Eric Garner, who was killed in 2014, and so many other recent cases. It is so typical in our society that it’s not usually publicized. Clifton’s arrest was for vending without a permit, and he was on his knees when he was shot. Today, black people still are shot by policemen regularly for trivial offenses. Unfortunately, this kind of abuse happens all time, which makes this scene feel eerily familiar and realistic.
Police brutality is all over the media right now, which makes Clifton’s death hit closer to home for the modern reader than more surreal scenes. This scene and the few that follow that handle the aftermath of his death are unsettling to the narrator, as well as the reader, because of how easily the Brotherhood and the police brush off Clifton’s death. When the narrator attempts to approach the cop who shot Clifton, he gets shooed away.
Possibly the most epitomizing line of the narrator’s speech at Clifton’s funeral is “His name was Clifton and he was black and they shot him.” The narrator attributes Clifton’s death to racism, specifically. The narrator repeats Clifton’s name, saying things like “His name was Clifton, Tod Clifton,” several times, his name which the Brotherhood tries to strip him of. Clifton’s name can be seen as a direct representation of his identity, that is struggling to stay visible. This reminded me of the protests after Trayvon Martin’s death, and several other Black Lives Matter protests particularly directly after shootings. From what I have seen, the victims’ names are a prominent part of these protests on signs, in pictures, and vocally. I was reminded of these protests while reading these chapters because both seemed to be trying to get rid of a certain anonymity or invisibility for victims of police brutality that would typically be brushed aside and forgotten immediately by drawing attention to them.
I too am reminded of the Black Lives Matter strategy of "say his name," trying to make the victims of police violence personal, *visible*, beyond statistics. And perhaps in part because of this contemporary resonance (which social media makes all the more effective), the Brotherhood's rejection of the narrator's efforts to "write Clifton into history" (which is partly what saying his name is all about--it becomes a *story* people know) all the more galling.
ReplyDeleteThis scene also stood out to me a lot. I found it so relevant to today's world and it made me so sad and angry to realize that this racism and ignorance is still so pertinent in our society. Seeing how the brotherhood stripped Clifton of his identity and pushed his death aside really stood out to me and showed the ignorance and passive racism of the brotherhood. What i found interesting is how though this novel was written many years ago, the idea of visibility and police brutality are still ideas that our society today struggles with. Also as Mr. Mitchell said, using the victims name is another way that people are trying to get rid of invisibility. Great post!
ReplyDeleteI really liked your point about how the Clifton scene is unusually out of the "dream-like" narrative the narrator normally uses. The whole scene unfolds in a "cinematic" fashion with unusually keen interest in the small details (like the birds in the sky) and almost seems to be in "slow-mo replay" going over and over in the narrator's head as he is writing it down. He says he would try to "forget" during the scene, but clearly this is impossible (like the repetition of Clifton's name during the funeral speech you mentioned)
ReplyDeleteWhat an eye opening post! I really hadn't thought about how Invisible man pertains the the real world, and I feel like I (and probably others) just wrote it off as something only relevent towards 1952. I think you did a very good job with relating this to real life, with the chosen quote compared to the real life situations.
ReplyDeleteYour post really gives insight into how much racism in the world has changed in the last 64 years, and what we find out from this passage and recent cases is that racism has not changed very much in area where human lives are involved. Also the idea of identity or rather lack of it tells us more about how the violence is viewed from either side and the victim needs to be seen as more than just a statistic but rather a person/life, which the narrator does with Clifton successfully.
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