Invisible Man Reading Questions 10-12

Chapter 10

1. Consider the racial connotations of Liberty Paints. Think about the company name, trademark, slogans, government contracts, and Optic White. What do you think the company symbolizes? Why has the company been hiring Blacks?

→ The company symbolizes the idea of having an all white America.

2. Think about how Optic White is manufactured. What do the 10 drops of “dead black liquid” symbolize?

→ The 10 drops of dead black liquid symbolizes the hard work that they make the African Americans do and slavery.

3. Note that Lucius Brockway works deep in the basement of the factory, hidden from view. Is this symbolic? How is Brockway like Bledsoe? How is he different?

→ Brockway is hidden because he is not important. They don’t put much importance to him because like Bledsoe, he is black and therefore has no power.

4. How is Brockway himself like the 10 drops?

→ The people don’t know he is there.

5. After the explosion on p. 230, the narrator is thrust “into a wet blast of black emptiness that is somehow a bath of whiteness". How does this immersion of a Black man into a world of whiteness continue the expressionism of the chapter?

→ It shows that whites were taking control of the black people and making them do whatever they want them to do. It’s a sense of emptiness because they have no will to do anything on their own.

Chapter 11

The expressionist images of chapter 10 are black and white. Here they are death and rebirth.

1. What images of this chapter echo the Battle Royal?

→ When the narrator realizes he is invisible.

2. The doctors at the factory hospital shock the narrator until he enters a warm watery world. Look for other images of the womb and birth.

→ The crowning of the baby and the contractions the mother has.

3. Afterwards, the narrator is a blank slate with no memory or identity. How do the doctor’s questions develop this image of rebirth?

→ They tell him about his past.

4. Why has the narrator been reborn? What aspects of his old identity have died?

→ The narrator has been reborn to fix the mistakes from the past and find out his own identity.

5. Buckeye the Rabbit is the same as Brer Rabbit. Remember the reference to the Tar Baby in chapter 10? In realizing that he is Buckeye the Rabbit, the narrator finds the wit and strength to escape from the machine. How is the machine like Trueblood’s clock? How does Buckeye the Rabbit embody the folk wisdom of the narrator’s childhood? How has he been reborn into the identity he at first denied upon arriving in New York?

→ The machine is like Trublodd’s clock because there is no way out meaning that time waits for no one.

6. What lesson has the narrator learned?

→ The lesson learned is that you should not be afraid of what will happen next.

Chapter 12

1. In what way is the narrator childlike?

→ The narrator is childlike because he no longer cares what he does right.

2. How does he permanently close off the link with his old aspirations and dreams?

→ He does this by leaving where he was at and thinking about going back to the South.