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thomas Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night 237
twentieth- century poetry. He plays not only with the conventions of form but with
language as well. Although “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” does not
fracture syntax or use words in the unusual ways that characterize many of his
more ambiguous poems, he uses rich imagery and highly metaphoric language
to express his deep emotion as he exhorts his dying father to resist death.
Repetition is extremely important to the effect of the poem. It is like an
incantation or perhaps like one of the Welsh sermons the poet heard in child-
hood. In a villanelle, specific lines must be repeated according to a set pattern.
But Thomas employs parallelism in numerous other ways. He repeats the word
rage at the beginning of the repeating imperative sentence. It is difficult to read
the line aloud without clenching one’s fists and speaking from the gut. He paral-
lels different sorts of men in a sermonic fashion: “wise men,” “good men,” “wild
men,” “grave men,” and finally the particularized “you, my father.” The sermon
builds rhetorically to its strongest point. Implied comparisons and puns give the
poem complex layers of meaning. The word grave speaks of both seriousness and
mortality, and the sight of dying men is “blinding,” implying both enhanced
light and the loss of it at the same time. Students might enjoy tracing the con-
trasting images of light and dark in the poem.
The meanings of various images may become less clear the more closely they
are examined. Some metaphors have an odd negativity. For example, “wise men”
resist the dark because of the absence of “lightning” in their words, and “good
men” resist for the equally empty reason that their “frail deeds might have danced.”
For the speaker of Thomas’s poem, blessing and cursing are ironically linked as
expressions of his father’s life- force; either or both are desired as representations of
the rage that resists death. Each line of the poem is suffused with paradox.
People who are freezing to death tell of a seductive impulse to curl up and go
to sleep. Others tell of near- death experiences in which they have a great desire to
remain in the peaceful passivity of the moment rather than return to the voice of
the people calling them back to consciousness. In Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone
(p.923), the heroine reaches out to her dead family in the underworld, finally free
from the suffering and shame brought about by curses on her father, Oedipus.
Although it is doubtful that Dylan Thomas envisions a loving reunion between his
father and his father’s loved ones, he concedes the desire that human beings feel
for death, even as we dread or fight it, by calling it “good.” The frightening opposi-
tion to the “dying of the light” mentioned in the most significant refrain would be
an awakening into darkness. Light symbolizes a power in the human being, and
Thomas refers to other images of light or something like it in all but the last stanza.
But it has been pointed out that these references have a strange negativity. Thomas
says in the first stanza that “Old age should burn,” but the word should leaves open
the possibility that his father’s old age will not catch fire. In the second stanza, the
“wise men” apparently could have “forked lightning” but didn’t. The “good men”
of the third stanza might have seen “bright” deeds dance, but they do not. The
“wild men” of the next stanza did something with the sun, but it seems to have
been the wrong thing. The “grave men” of the penultimate stanza “see with blind-
ing sight” a potential conflagration that is compared to “meteors,” but this has not
yet happened. Consequently, all of them resist death.
Thomas goes through the list of different types of men and their failings before
revealing that the poem is a dramatic monologue to the speaker’s father. Most of
238 Journeys
us cannot remember the first time we heard or read this poem, and its familiarity
makes it difficult to imagine the effect of leaving this information to the end. It will
be interesting to look at student responses to the question if some are reading it for
the first time. We might intuit that the impact is greater because of this technique
of seeming to address the audience in the abstract at first and then particularizing
the message. Both the tantalizing ambiguity of the poem and the technical diffi-
culty of writing a villanelle make this an impressive text. Attempting to write in
structured forms may be a good exercise, but a better strategy for writers may be to
keep forms such as the villanelle and the sonnet in mind for use when content
seems suited for them. For most of us, putting the form first limits creativity.
also gives a hint about time period. Both poems use imperative sentences, but
Donne’s word order — “Death be not proud” where we would say, “Death, don’t
be proud” — separates current readers from the speaker. Although Thomas’s
sentences are difficult, they are fairly straightforward in their word order. Finally,
the worldviews of the speakers help us date them. Attitudes toward death change
in literary circles, and the foregrounding of religion would be less likely in a
twentieth- century poem than in one written three hundred years earlier.
Mary Oliver’s poem clearly affirms life, and Donne’s poem defiantly resists
the power of death. “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” is more ambigu-
ous. Thomas’s speaker pleads with his father to resist death, but he does not
actually do so himself in the same way that Donne does. And although he wants
his father to choose life, he does not provide the sort of affirmation of life that
Oliver does. Oliver’s attitude seems consistently positive and inclusive. Thomas
presents life as an individual struggle. Oliver seems much more at peace with
death than does Thomas.
EMILY DICKINSON
Because I could not stop for Death (p.1119)
Unlike the fearsome taker of lives Death is often imagined to be, in this well-
known poem, Death is described as a gentlemanlike figure leisurely driving a
carriage toward Eternity. The narrator, Death, and Immortality are the carriage’s
baa So Mexicans Are Taking Jobs from Americans 239
only occupants, and readers might be struck by how civilized the process seems
to be. In contrast to Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good
Night,” Dickinson’s poem constructs death as something to be accepted rather
than avoided. Indeed, her first line suggests the futility of such resistance; she was
too busy to “stop for Death,” so He came and got her. Rather than something to
be feared, dying is imagined here as a civilized, even courteous, progression
through which the trappings of everyday life are slowly shed in favor of an eternal
life. “Labor” and “leisure,” the narrator explains, are put away. Death drives the
carriage slowly, for Eternity is their only destination. Images such as the school,
the fields, and the setting sun reflect some common aspects of human exis-
tence — natural and human- made — that exist apart from the narrator or the
carriage. Gossamer, tippet, and tulle refer to the narrator’s lightweight clothing,
and, when coupled with the dew and “chill” in stanza 4, they imply she is no
longer well suited for human existence.
Dickinson’s phrasing about how the carriage is “passing” these scenes of life is
rather ambiguous. The carriage seems almost to occupy another plane. In stanza
4, for example, she writes, “He passed us,” perhaps emphasizing that “He,” Death,
is facilitating their movement or passage. But “He” might also refer to the “Setting
Sun” from stanza 3, which would emphasize the otherworldliness of the carriage
ride. If the sun were passing them, they would indeed be traveling slowly. The fifth
stanza describes them pausing at a “House,” which some have read as a description
of the narrator’s grave. This reference suggests that the narrator is already dead but
is not confined to the grave; her journey only briefly touches on rituals such as
burial, with the more significant part being her eternal carriage ride.
LITERATURE AND CURRENT ISSUES: DO IMMIGRANTS
TAKE JOBS FROM NATIVE- BORN WORKERS? (p.1122)
JIMMY SANTIAGO BACA
So Mexicans Are Taking Jobs from Americans (p.1123)
The title of a poem usually gives some indication of what the piece is about, and
that is certainly true for Baca’s “So Mexicans Are Taking Jobs from Americans.”
Instead of building on the premise of the title, however, Baca’s poem is crafted
as a direct response to anyone who has said those words. Baca demands to know
how, exactly, the Mexicans are physically taking the work, and why work that
is given to them is so resented. In line 23, he refers for the first time to children
who are starving, indicating that any jobs their parents have “taken” do not
seem to be worth very much. In the final lines of the poem, Baca puts new words
into the mouth of the person who speaks the poem’s title, forcing them to
acknowledge the poverty and callousness he sees in their speech and in their
actions.
Despite the obvious anger and despair in Baca’s poem, it can be read as a
call to action. Baca gives his audience a road map to what he believes people
should be saying. He proposes a path to change which, though uncomfortable
or even unlikely, still holds a glimmer of hope.
240 Journeys
ARGUMENTS ON THE ISSUE
steven amarota, Unskilled Workers Lose Out to
Immigrants (p.1125)
maria e. enhautegui, Immigrants Are Replacing,
Not Displacing, Workers (p.1127)
ted widmer, The Immigration Dividend (p.1128)
In “Unskilled Workers Lose Out to Immigrants,” Steven Camarota at the Center
for Immigration Studies uses appeals through logos, in this case statistics, to
convince readers that immigration is harmful to native- born job seekers. His
most explicit statement is his claim that “1.5million fewer native- born Americans
are working now than in 2007, yet 2million more immigrants are working.” Put
another way, “all net employment gains since November 2007 have gone to
immigrants.” Despite the seeming objectivity of his use of statistics, Camarota’s
personal position on the immigration issue is clear. He writes that employment
gains “have gone” to immigrants, for example, as if immigrants are usefully dis-
tinguished from native- born workers in terms of what they deserve and as if
immigrants have been simply passive recipients of these “gains.”
In mentioning Congress and President Obama’s support for issuing work
permits, Camarota might have explained the ways in which minimizing the
exploitation of unskilled, illegal labor actually benefits the economy or pointed
out the possible economic and social benefits of keeping families together. But
by neglecting to distinguish between working conditions for illegal and legal
immigrants, Camarota reveals his own lack of interest in determining whether
the work immigrants take on is actually desirable for the native- born Americans
about whom he is concerned. Underlying his claims, then, is a marked privileg-
ing of American- born individuals over immigrants, as well as an assumption that
immigrants are to blame for such issues as “stagnant wages” or even the recent
economic collapse. American- born workers receive a similar lack of discussion,
insofar as Camarota assumes all unemployed and less- educated workers are all
equally fit for work, as opposed to suffering from some form of disability or men-
tal illness. Furthermore, he does not distinguish between the different kinds of
work immigrants take on, from farming and meat processing to science and
medicine, and he ignores the variety of (sometimes problematic) factors that
might make immigrants more desirable for employers. In sum, readers might
notice that the brunt of the blame rests upon the members ofU.S.society who
have the least power.
MariaE.Enchautegui, a research fellow at the Urban Institute, argues in
“Immigrants Are Replacing, Not Displacing, Workers” that the Center of
Immigration Studies’ claims that immigrants are taking away American- born
workers’ jobs ignores that the currentU.S.workforce is far more educated now
than in past years. So, as her title suggests, immigrants are replacing a shrinking
class of unskilled workers, performing jobs for which most American- born work-
ers are overqualified. Despite her lack of agreement with the Center’s report,
Enchautegui makes apparent from the start that the issue is very complicated.
Put another way, she shows that she comes from a position of nuance that is open
to multiple points of consideration. This makes her seem trustworthy.
rih Diving into the Wreck 241
In her fourth paragraph, Enchautegui starts to show some of that complex-
ity, noting that employment gains do not mean displaced workers. We must, she
urges, consider whether or not they are competing for the same jobs. While her
evidence includes data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, she is also more
speculative in her argument. Enchautegui concludes by explaining that granting
temporary status to undocumented workers might mean more competition for
jobs, insofar as immigrants might seek new job skills. While this could hinder
her argument about the future employment situation, it nevertheless points to
the ways in which education and job training could and even should be available
for everyone. Rather than relying on a permanent underclass of undocumented
workers, we could seek a rising tide that brings everybody up.
In “The Immigration Dividend,” Ted Widmer urges readers to think beyond
the current job- related immigration discussion and instead consider the wider
picture of immigration and its effects over time. Rightfully noting the divisive
nature of immigration politics, Widmer references a time when both sides could
come together in service of equality and progress. His overall claim is that our
view of the situation is too narrow and our sense of what immigrants bring to the
nation too limited in scope. He is responding to questions about what immi-
grants can and should do here by exploring the ways they have enriched
American culture, science, industry, and so on. Perhaps some of his most effec-
tive evidence, especially in light of other arguments in the subject, is in terms of
economics. He notes, for example, the role of immigrants in the Silicon Valley,
AIDS research, and even the development of Google, demonstrating the ways in
which immigrants have contributed to the long- term success of the country.
Widmer does not engage questions of where undocumented workers fit in
or how immigrants’ skill sets might complicate these concerns, issues that might
make him less persuasive to readers. In emphasizing the big picture, local con-
cerns can indeed be lost. But his gestures at the world’s immigration issues are
undeniably timely, especially given the Syrian refugee crisis. Widmer encour-
ages readers to think beyond sometimes- petty political squabbles or attention-
getting tactics to consider the wide range of possibilities for how immigrants
might not only fit in but also improve the places we call home.
LITERATURE AND CURRENT ISSUES: WHAT MAKES
A WOMAN? (p.1132)
ADRIENNE RICH
Diving into the Wreck (p.1133)
Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck” is widely read as a metaphorical jour-
ney to discover the often- unwritten place of women in human history. Before
actually “diving into the wreck,” Rich’s narrator reads “the book of myths,”
“load[s] the camera,” and “check[s] the edge of the knife- blade.” She puts on her
wetsuit and mask, described here as “ body- armor,” and proceeds down the boat’s
ladder. The ladder suggests a kind of self- propelled descent into the undiscov-
ered depths. Readers might also make special note of her mention of the
242 Journeys
knife- blade, for while divers typically bring knives for security reasons, in this
metaphorical exploration the narrator is also defending herself from an
unfriendly world and an alien history. She doesn’t mention an oxygen tank here
but rather tests the sharpness of her blade. Her camera is also significant, as it
suggests the importance of documentation. If she is indeed hoping to recover
history, she must have new ways of historicizing and sharing what has been for-
gotten or neglected. These symbolic items point to the need to not only explore
but also mark and compile her findings.
Once swimming in the depths, the narrator remarks, “it is easy to forget / what
I came for,” implying that the wreck itself is dense and complex, characterized by
a wealth of historical erasures and absences. Critics have observed that, in stanza
eight, Rich plays with gender, writing “I am she: I am he.” Such gender ambiguity
might indicate that the narrator’s journey is not simply about recovering women’s
history, for example, but also about rethinking human history. It’s not about iden-
tifying as male or female but about being human; the historical role of underrep-
resented and marginalized groups should be of concern to everyone.
The “ half- destroyed instruments” and the “drowned faces” she mentions
might refer to those who are lost or sacrificed — the victims — in the historical
quest for dominance. In ending the poem with “our names do not appear” in the
“book of myths,” Rich is doubly questioning the accuracy of historical accounts.
People outside the dominant narrative, whether by dint of their gender, sexual
orientation, or religion, are hurting, and it’s up to us to salvage, to reclaim, and
to rewrite.
ARGUMENTS ON THE ISSUE
elinor burkett, What Makes a Woman? (p.1137)
leela ginelle, Trans Women Are Women. Why Do We
Have to Keep Saying This? (p.1142)
In her 2015 New York Times article “What Makes a Woman,” Elinor Burkett
argues that, in the process of claiming female identity, some members of the
trans community reinforce damaging gender binaries that position women as
fundamentally different from men. In so doing, she maintains, trans women like
Caitlyn Jenner dismiss decades of feminist work that has sought to frame
“female” as a social construct. The “nonsense” she refers to is the idea that dif-
ferences in men’s and women’s brains foretell a kind of “gendered destiny,” and
she references Jenner’s claim that she has become “much more aware of [her]
emotions” as evidence of how far afield we have gone. Burkett implicitly answers
her title’s question “What makes a woman?” with an explanation of how our
brains are formed through experiences. She worries that people “on her side”
contribute to this problematic schema of womanhood by excluding the experi-
ences of women who have lived their whole lives as women.
In some sense, her implicit claim that trans identities are not authentic
female identities seems reasonable, insofar as we understand woman- ness to be
a combination of biological parts and life experiences. Her specific concern is
that men who have transitioned or are transitioning to women are starting to
seem like “the only ‘legitimate’ women left,” the only ones whose feelings and
ellison Battle Royal 243
experiences of womanhood matter. However, Burkett does not consider how the
life experiences that trans women bring to the table might help us reimagine or
expand what womanhood looks and feels like. Why, for example, must Jenner’s
explanation of her womanhood be read as limiting other women? What experi-
ences might trans people live through that are not included in Burkett’s off- hand
discussion of Bruce Jenner’s male privilege? Indeed, by limiting her explanation
of Jenner’s history to traditional masculine stereotypes and assumptions of privi-
lege, Burkett risks reinforcing the same binaries she decries.
Leela Ginelle’s “Trans Women Are Women” takes Elinor Burkett to task for
distinguishing between women and trans women, arguing that Burkett’s “What
Makes a Woman?” is rehearsing the tired arguments of second- wave feminism.
While she does briefly identify Burkett’s complaint, Ginelle’s introduction does
ignore a key component worth additional consideration: the nature-versus-
nurture question. Readers might recall that Burkett outlines feminists’ efforts to
dismantle the notion that women’s and men’s brains are fundamentally different.
So Burkett’s issue with Caitlyn Jenner isn’t necessarily her stereotypically femi-
nine appearance but rather Jenner’s comments about her growing feminine
sensitivity and emotional awareness.
Later, Ginelle cites Burkett’s point that trans women haven’t experienced
particular moments, like the onset of one’s period on the subway, as evidence of
Burkett’s “classic” transphobia. Ginelle argues that Burkett’s remarks reflect the
transphobic belief that only a cis person can define “‘true’ gender identities” and
thus are fundamentally harmful to trans individuals. She is similarly critical of
Burkett’s reference to Caitlyn Jenner’s “residual male privilege,” pointing out
that “for many trans people, it is not all high wages and safe walks home at
night.” Here, she relies on a combination of pathos and logos to demonstrate the
limits of Burkett’s claims.
Throughout the article, Ginelle relies on her own experiences as a trans
woman, a key ethos- building move, to support her argument that our definition
of woman must include trans women. She finds understandably offensive
Burkett’s assumption that being born into the wrong body is simple or safe, and
she offers an important corrective to feminists who view trans women as “mock-
eries” of womanhood. Many readers will likely find her use of personal experi-
ence effective at inducing empathy, a significant rhetorical decision given the
very real threats faced by members of the trans community.
CONTEXTS FOR RESEARCH: RACE, SOCIAL EQUALITY,
AND “BATTLE ROYAL” (p.1147)
RALPH ELLISON
Battle Royal (p.1148)
The journey of African Americans as an ethnic group within the United States
has lasted generations, beginning with the abduction of individuals from their
homes in Africa and continuing through the horrors of slavery and into the disap-
pointment of the postemancipation years. After the American Civil War, the
244 Journeys
anticipated opportunities failed to develop, and the journey toward economic,
political, and social equality continued to be a difficult one through the Jim
Crow era of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Despite the civil
rights movement of the mid to late twentieth century, the goal of full equality has
not been achieved.
In the early 1950s, before the civil rights movement had some success in
challenging legal discrimination, Ralph Ellison wrote his novel Invisible Man,
from which the short story “Battle Royal” is taken. In the novel, Ellison’s main
character takes his own journey, both literal and symbolic, anticipating freedom
and opportunity, only to find his hopes crushed again and again.
In the prologue of the novel, Ellison’s unnamed protagonist begins: “I am
an invisible man. . . . I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse
to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as
though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they
approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their
imagination — indeed, everything and anything except me.” After he thus sets
the stage, revealing the protagonist as a trickster who has surrendered to his invis-
ibility, appropriating it to his own uses by hiding in an underground room where
he steals electricity from Monopolated Light and Power, Ellison has his hero
take us on a journey back to his childhood. It is there in his first chapter, “Battle
Royal,” that we see the protagonist, his idealism still intact, beginning his long,
futile quest for recognition and the fulfillment of the American Dream.
The sense of futility and the ironic and self- mocking tone of the novel upset
many African American readers when the book first appeared in 1952.
Nevertheless, Ellison’s Invisible Man stands as a modernist American master-
piece and offers a surreal and resignedly bitter view of African American experi-
ence in the twentieth century. Writing just after World WarII and just before the
rise of the civil rights and black power movements, Ellison shows the dilemma
of a man who is naive and powerless before the political and social forces that
seek to define him.
Our first step in preparing our students for “Battle Royal” might be to read
excerpts from the prologue and to lead them to see that the text is both serious
and satirical. It is appropriate for readers to be overwhelmed with empathy for the
young boy and to be horrified by the actions of the white bigots. But they can also
be led to see the author’s anger at the accommodationist ethic that shapes the
narrator’s response and the satirical tone that critiques it. The background materi-
als following “Battle Royal” in this cluster provide invaluable social, historical,
and philosophical background.T.S.Eliot’s “The Love Song ofJ.Alfred Prufrock”
(p.109) might be used to show an example of the pessimistic, modernist tone
used by a writer whom Ralph Ellison admired and might have emulated.
Although some who lived during the early twentieth century in the
American South will maintain that the horrors of racial hatred and its perverse
manifestations cannot be overestimated, Ellison’s story is best seen as symbolic
rather than directly representational. The narrator thinks that he will be seen and
heard as an individual and as a credit to his race, but he instead must go through
trials that debase his humanity and both ignore and misuse his voice. He and his
peers are set against each other in the battle royal. Students may see the eco-
nomic ramifications of this hegemony, when workers must agree to compete for
ellison Battle Royal 245
limited jobs and incentives rather than being able to unite. The hegemonic
nature of the competition becomes especially evident in the electrified rug trial,
in which young men must scramble for money that turns out to be counterfeit.
Not only do they compete rather than unite, but the promised reward turns out
to be a lie, just as the African American community found itself divided and full
equality deferred in the century between emancipation in the 1860s and the
gains of the 1960s.
The presence of the white stripper aptly symbolizes the mixture of fear and
pornography implied in miscegenation laws intended to keep supposedly lustful
and bestial black men from presumably overwhelmingly desirable white women.
The woman is a temptress, but she is also being used. Students might consider
further the competition between the rights of women and the rights of minorities
that was long encouraged to the detriment of both groups, especially women of
color. They might also research the “cult of Southern womanhood” that grew
out of race and gender prejudice.
Students may also notice that the boys must wear blindfolds and are denied
the information they need to defend themselves. In some states, it had been
illegal to teach slaves to read. Later, separate schools, when they existed for
blacks, were unequal. Accommodationist leaders such as BookerT.Washington
felt that African American students would be best served by vocational educa-
tion, and they worked against university education for blacks. Students who
think the white establishment rewards the hero of Ellison’s story after his trials
by sending him to what is obviously BookerT.Washington’s Tuskegee Institute
are mistaken, for the school clearly maintains the ideals of segregation. The
next stage of the protagonist’s journey, at the Negro college, will dash his
hopesagain.
The bizarre behavior of the white town leaders may be exaggerated for dra-
matic and satirical effect, but we should not be too quick to assume that it is
unrealistic. Lynchings were characterized by just such behavior, with castration,
burning, and flaying accompanying the hanging. Historical research will provide
students with examples even more horrifying than those in Ellison’s narrative.
Photographs show not only civic leaders but also women and children, all
dressed in their Sunday best, viewing the torture. Picture postcards from this era
provide a macabre record of lynching, showing victims and their killers, the lat-
ter proudly posing beside the hanging bodies.
The narrator’s dream in which his grandfather laughs at him is puzzling
unless we consider the irony of his situation. He does not yet realize that he is one
of the clowns in this bizarre circus that is twentieth- century America. His grand-
father has claimed that the only way to fight is to subvert, to be a trickster who
hides behind the mask of servility. It is ludicrous to believe the empty promises,
to be willing to wait only to realize that another kind of slavery must be escaped.
The narrator has endured the trials because he believes he will eventually be seen
and heard. But the only phrase really heard in his speech is the “social equality”
slip of the tongue that could potentially get him lynched. Students will propose
solutions for dealing with oppression that reflect debates about passive resistance
and violent action, but many need help understanding the complexities of a situ-
ation that made direct action so difficult and dangerous.
246 Journeys
CONTEXTS FOR RESEARCH
booker t. washington, Atlanta Exposition Address (The Atlanta
Compromise) (p.1160)
w. e. b. du bois, Of Mr.BookerT.Washington (p.1163)
gunnar myrdal, Social Equality (p.1168)
journey remains an issue for debate.
W.E.B.Du Bois, by contrast, had no doubts about the potential of African
Americans to complete their journey. As editor of the newspaper published by
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and
holder of a Ph.D.from Harvard University granted the same year as Washington’s
speech in Atlanta, he was a vocal critic of Washington’s compromising patience.
In this essay from The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois objects to Washington’s tacit
acceptance of the notion of the inferiority of Negroes at a time when, according
to Du Bois, leaders should be seeking full citizenship for members of the race.
Ralph Ellison’s narrator is still under the influence of Washington, but read-
ers can recognize that he is learning the folly of his subservience to the white
establishment. Though he spends most of the story just wanting to give his
speech, to show what a good little Negro boy he is, the mask is beginning to slip.
At the beginning of the novel, we hear the voice of experience as he describes
his invisibility. But, mostly, doubts surface in his memory of his grandfather’s
ellison Battle Royal 247
words on his deathbed and later in the protagonist’s dream. The grandfather has
lived out the letter of BookerT.Washington’s law of compromise, but the spirit
of his submission is the ironic treachery of the trickster. He implies that only a
clown would take seriously the precepts of Washington. “I did what I had to do,”
he seems to say, “but I kept my sense of self. I was faking it all the time.” Perhaps
he would feel that the open declaration of human rights espoused by Du Bois
would make him vulnerable to attack. For people with dark skin, the South is
more dangerous than Du Bois’s native Massachusetts, though Du Bois certainly
experienced prejudice. As the protagonist eventually does in Harlem in the
novel Invisible Man, the grandfather uses his invisibility as a weapon, pessimisti-
cally rejecting attempts to be seen and heard as a man. Rather than feelingemas-
culated, he feels empowered by his ability to fool the white man. What many of
Ellison’s readers would say about this, however, is that his protagonist therefore
chooses the way of the slave, not Du Bois’s stand for human dignity.
Viewing the culture from the outside, Myrdal saw the fears raised by the
social issue of interracial mixing of black men and white women as central to the
maintenance of institutionalized racism in the United States in the years imme-
diately following World WarII.Thus, when black men in Ellison’s story react to
the presence of a white woman in a physical way, or when the protagonist utters
the phrase “social equality,” a long history of prejudice is evoked.
