Invisible Man

by Ralph Ellison

The train seemed to plunge downhill now, only to lunge to a stop that shot me out upon a platform feeling like something regurgitated from the belly of a frantic whale.

I had never seen so many black people against a background of brick buildings, neon signs, plate glass and roaring traffic—not even on trips I had made with the debating team to New Orleans, Dallas or Birmingham. They were everywhere. So many, and moving along with so much tension and noise that I wasn’t sure whether they were about to celebrate a holiday or join in a street fight.

Sure I had heard of it, but this was real. My courage returned. This really was Harlem, and now all the stories which I had heard of the city-within-a-city leaped alive in my mind. The vet had been right: For me this was not a city of realities, but of dreams; perhaps because I had always thought of my life as being confined to the South.

The speaker had become more violent than before and his remarks were about the government. The clash between the calm of the rest of the street and the passion of the voice gave the scene a strange out-of-joint quality, and I was careful not to look back lest I see a riot flare.

The chair and dresser were maple and there was a Gideon Bible lying upon a small table.

Ooh, almost a rhyme! :)

I’d have to move fast. With important men like that you had to be on time. If you made an appointment with one of them, you couldn’t bring them any slow c.p. (colored people’s) time. Yes, and I would have to get a watch.

Of course you couldn’t speak that way in the South, the white folks wouldn’t like it, and the Negroes would say that you were “putting on.” But here in the North I would slough off my southern ways of speech. Indeed, I would have one way of speaking in the North and another in the South. Give them what they wanted down South, that was the way.

They reminded me fleetingly of prisoners carrying their leg irons as they escaped from a chain gang. Yet they seemed aware of some self-importance, and I wished to stop one and ask him why he was chained to his pouch. Maybe they got paid well for this, maybe they were chained to money. Perhaps the man with rundown heels ahead of me was chained to a million dollars!

Perhaps even now an eye had picked me up and watched my every movement.

taking the elevator and being pushed to the back of the car. It rose like a rocket, creating a sensation in my crotch as though an important part of myself had been left below in the lobby.

with an assurance and arrogance that I had never seen in any except white men and a few bad, razor-scarred Negroes.

the letter brought no reply. Nor, any more than a prayer unanswered by God, was it returned.

I grew conscious that I was afraid; more afraid here in my room than I had ever been in the South. And all the more, because here there was nothing concrete to lay it to.

there was no one like me taking part in the adventures)

But that night I dreamed of my grandfather and awoke depressed. I walked out of the building with a queer feeling that I was playing a part in some scheme which I did not understand.

Only a few flecks of snowy cloud hung high in the morning-blue sky, and already a woman was hanging wash on a roof.

here some memories slipped around my life at the campus and went far back to things I had long ago shut out of my mind. There was no escaping such reminders.

“Man, this Harlem ain’t nothing but a bear’s den. But I tell you one thing,” he said with swiftly sobering face, “it’s the best place in the world for you and me, and if times don’t get better soon I’m going to grab that bear and turn him every way but loose!”

“Oh, I’ll do that. All it takes to get along in this here man’s town is a little shit, grit and mother-wit. And man, I was bawn with all three.

I’ll verse you but I won’t curse you— My name is Peter Wheatstraw, I’m the Devil’s only son-in-law, so roll ’em! You a southern boy, ain’t you?” he said, his head to one side like a bear’s. “Yes,” I said. “Well, git with it! My name’s Blue and I’m coming at you with a pitchfork. Fe Fi Fo Fum. Who wants to shoot the Devil one, Lord God Stingeroy!”

I’ll teach you some good bad habits. You’ll need ’em.

hearing the cartman’s song become a lonesome, broad-toned whistle now that flowered at the end of each phrase into a tremulous, blue-toned chord. And in its flutter and swoop I heard the sound of a railroad train highballing it, lonely across the lonely night. He was the Devil’s son-in-law, all right, and he was a man who could whistle a three-toned chord … God damn, I thought, they’re a hell of a people! And I didn’t know whether it was pride or disgust that suddenly flashed over me.

Perhaps it was all to the best that I had been sent away. I had learned more.

Whether we liked him or not, he was never out of our minds. That was a secret of leadership.

Here it came to hand just as easily as the coin which I now placed on the counter for my breakfast.

I slapped the dime on the counter and left, annoyed that the dime did not ring as loud as a fifty-cent piece.

The room was quiet as a tomb—until suddenly there was a savage beating of wings and I looked toward the window to see an eruption of color, as though a gale had whipped up a bundle of brightly colored rags. It was an aviary of tropical birds set near one of the broad windows, through which, as the clapping of wings settled down, I could see two ships plying far out upon the greenish bay below. A large bird began a song, drawing my eyes to the throbbing of its bright blue, red and yellow throat. It was startling and I watched the surge and flutter of the birds as their colors flared for an instant like an unfurled oriental fan.

once more I saw a mad flashing as though the birds had burst into spontaneous flame, fluttering and beating their wings maliciously against the bamboo bars, only to settle down just as suddenly when the door opened

“Some things are just too unjust for words,” he said, expelling a plume of smoke, “and too ambiguous for either speech or ideas.

I’m afraid my father considers me one of the unspeakables … I’m Huckleberry, you see …”

This case represents, my dear Mr. Emerson, one of the rare, delicate instances in which one for whom we held great expectations has gone grievously astray, and who in his fall threatens to upset certain delicate relationships between certain interested individuals and the school. Thus, while the bearer is no longer a member of our scholastic family, it is highly important that his severance with the college be executed as painlessly as possible.

Twenty-five years seemed to have lapsed between his handing me the letter and my grasping its message. I could not believe it, tried to read it again. I could not believe it, yet I had a feeling that it all had happened before.

Forget it; though that’s advice which I’ve been unable to accept myself, it’s still good advice. There is no point in blinding yourself to the truth.

the birds flamed in the cage, their squawks like screams in a nightmare.

You’re free of him now. I’m still his prisoner. You have been freed, don’t you understand? I’ve still my battle.” He seemed near tears.

I stood trembling at the curb, watching and half expecting to see the man leap from the door to follow me, whistling the old forgotten jingle about a bare-rumped robin.

Please hope him to death, and keep him running.

This time I had made the move.

Ahead of me a huge electric sign announced its message through the drifting strands of fog: KEEP AMERICA PURE WITH LIBERTY PAINTS Flags were fluttering in the breeze from each of a maze of buildings below the sign, and for a moment it was like watching some vast patriotic ceremony from a distance. But no shots were fired and no bugles sounded. I hurried ahead with the others through the fog.

There was a note of insinuation in his voice, and I looked up from tying my shoe, breathing with conscious evenness. “What kind of racket?” I said. “Oh, you know. The wise guys firing the regular guys and putting on you colored college boys. Pretty smart,” he said. “That way they don’t have to pay union wages.” “How did you know I went to college?” I said. “Oh, there’re about six of you guys out here already. Some up in the testing lab. Everybody knows about that.” “But I had no idea that was why I was hired,” I said.

starting into one of the offices, the boy stopped short and grinned. “Listen to that!” Someone inside the office was swearing violently over a telephone. “Who’s that?” I asked. He grinned.

“get the hell out of here before I give you a chance to earn some of the money wasted on you every payday!”

“Damn those laboratory blubberheads to hell! There’s got to be dope put in every single sonofabitching bucket. And that’s what you’re going to do, and it’s got to be put in so it can be trucked out of here before 11:30.”

Perhaps it was of a better quality, a special mix. And in my mind I could see the brightly trimmed and freshly decorated campus buildings as they appeared on spring mornings—after the fall painting and the light winter snows, with a cloud riding over and a darting bird above—framed by the trees and encircling vines. The buildings had always seemed more impressive because they were the only buildings to receive regular paintings; usually, the nearby houses and cabins were left untouched to become the dull grained gray of weathered wood.

now its paint was flaking away with the years, the scratch of a finger being enough to send it showering down.

If, I thought, one could slow down his heartbeats and memory to the tempo of the black drops falling so slowly into the bucket yet reacting so swiftly, it would seem like a sequence in a feverish dream

“That’s it, as white as George Washington’s Sunday-go-to-meetin’ wig and as sound as the all-mighty dollar! That’s paint!” he said proudly. “That’s paint that’ll cover just about anything!” He looked as though I had expressed a doubt and I hurried to say, “It’s certainly white all right.” “White! It’s the purest white that can be found. Nobody makes a paint any whiter. This batch right here is heading for a national monument!”

trustees

yes, correct spelling this time!:)

his overalls looking now as though he had been dipped in pitch.

Usually they sends down some young white fellow who thinks he’s going to watch me a few days and ask me a heap of questions and then take over. Some folks is too damn simple to even talk about,”