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Show July The Rubber 1974 Vac ation — We who? 3 Nancy, Janet, Carolyn, Tony, Robert, Paul, James, Mike and our guide----out of an eighteen people reservation. What are you talking about? Well, it's bigger than a breadbox and costs. about twenty-five greens from your income to have a good time. “Why don't you get to the point, and stop oles me around in circles. Alright man. You didn't show up. Show up for what? What else? THE RUBBER VACATION. And what was that? By the way I a bier you were going to get to the point. That's exactly what I'm trying to. do, without getting, too upset. ‘Man, how about participating next time. I don't know the proper date but I do know it'll cost forty. bucks for a four-day weekend cruise down Westwater. Oh, I think I'm starting to. ree stand what the @#¢** you talking about. Well, it's about time. AX PAGE 4 -- sta fe . by James Gantt Jr. _ Say Brother! Could you come over _here for a minute? All I want to repeat, if I might, is the fact . that we didn't see you. ___BROAD WHEW! Are you going to go? Well, if you decide to go, let soemone at the BLACK STUDIES INSTITUTE know. Then we'll have something to do besides lay around in this Salt Lake City of ours. IN THE NEXT ISSUE: BLACKS IN THE HISTORY OF UTAH Of america by Carolyn Michaels T am ‘talice about the state of America and how there's no one now in power thinking of me. I was saying | how we ought to try to fix it, and _ find a leader who is not afraid. Then a voice came out of the darkness saying, _ ear the system down." I was thinking ‘bout how very crazy that was. And I tried to find a way to tell him so. But when I did, I used a word that was quite nasty. How the policeman ever heard me, I will never know. Then a voice came out of the darkness saying, "Tear the system down." Now I was wrestled off to one side of the stage and they said I'd have to go right to jail and that they don't permit coarse language in their city. However, they would accept a large amount of bail. And then that voice called out from the darkness, saying, "Tear the system down. Tear it down---down to the ground." WS See insights to the "T am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me." The prologue of the novel finds the protagonist ensconced below ground in the basement of a building rented strictly to whites, in a section "shut off and forgotten during the nineteenth century." The glare of the 1369 lights bulbs gives form to his invisibility, and this is quintenssential to a man whose fellows refuse to see him as he really is. The stylistic resources offered by a folk (Black) culture to a creative writer like Ellison were many. There,is the rhetorical skill of the American Black, whose ‘verbal expression, under slavery, was necessary oral. The graduation address, the political speech, the revival meeting, the funeral sermon are used to good account in Invisible Man. Then there are the sonorous biblical phrases which season the dialogue, along with the ‘spicier ingredients of street talk. ‘Terms evocative of the numbers racket, of voodoo charms, of racing sheets, of the jazz world, the boxing ring, the ball-park, the bar-room - in a word, of Harlem are available for a new vocabulary. Ellison's play on words is worth attention. The names he chooses © to attach to his characters are particularly interesting. True blood is depicted as a "trueblooded nigger" in the South. Here he is, has raped his daughter and impregnated her along with his wife. The man already has a house full of children who will never have any kind of a chance in life. So now Trueblood has shown his "manhood" and his "niggerosity" in committing this dastardly incestous act. But of course, all Black folks (men) act this way, so the whites of the town show their appreciation for him (being what he really showering him with is), attention by and invisible }man gifts. The northern white man is represented by Mr. Norton. He's horrified at what is going on just a few miles from his beloved institute of higher learning. Perhaps he thought that all of the "Negroes" were in school and had learned to behave better than this; surely some of the better educated ones could have spread the word. Norton is just plain naive when it comes to what makes people tick. He doesn't understand what's at the root of the ills of the race, consequently he can't. know how to cure these ills. Poor Norton is just as absurb as the local populace when he gives Trueblood money as a gesture of his sympathetic understanding. Dr. Bleddoe is a white man's Negro. His kind over the centuries indeed has bled so profoundly as to be anemic in terms of certainty of his manhood. But Bledsoe justifies his scraping and bowing to the trustees with the fact that he is the head of the college; he alone shapes and /or mis-shapes the future of the many eager and aspiring students who come to his feet in their thirst for knowledge. Ras (race) was not of a com- plicated temperment; he exhibited only two moods - angry and more belligerent. As the Exhorter,as his title dictated, he encouraged his following to do the right thing in regards to what their proud, Black African heritage required. The violent scene with Clifton evidences his earnest concern for strengthening the Black brotherhood’of the Mother Country. As the novel progresses, Ras becomes the Destroyer as his Black vengeance and unrelenting hatred are unleashed Interestingly enough, however, the invisible one does not have a handle of his own. This puzzled me as to why he too did not have a symbolic name. Would any name have put him by Karen Anthony in a box likened to that of the others in the novel? Perhaps; but there has to be more to it than that. Any man can become and reman invisible to his fellows if no one chooses to recognize him for what he really is. To grapple with one's own mind in the self-identity crisis and then to have to put oneself against the outside world is a bit much as a single experience. The realization that in spite of all your best efforts, you still don't count as one, does little to encourage you in your daily routine of existing. Why should anyone have to live like this? Are we so blinded to the needs and wants of others that we can obliterate their — very existence without any conscious effort at all? What makes some people visible and a part of the world, and what makes others invisible and set apart from the real world? Is it an inherent trait or are we all born visible and then fade or do we enter into the realm of invisibility because of our failure to act on our environment? In the end Ellision renders Blackness visible. One of the main veins to visibility is the power to love, "too much of your life will be lost, its meaning lost unless you approach it as much through love as through hate." We shouldn't have to be so concerned about how our interactions with others will be turned over in some inconsequential mind. Is everyone out to screw you over and/ or to just ignore the common man struggling to maintain his self respect and identity? Certainly, the Black man has to deal with a In coming - more chaotic world. to grips with his own mind, and by finding an ordered pattern to his life, he makes himself visible to both himself and to the world. © |
