Invisible man journal
Racism in the 19th century made it hard for African Americans to get educated or secure a decent job. However, most of them would not settle for the kind of life that they were expected to live and looked for ways to improve themselves. The novel The Invisible Man was written in the social and politically turbulent 1940s and illustrated the African-American experience. It addresses the issues that confront people in the modern world: not only personal identity but also racism, and the impulse of individuals to assert themselves in a world which is blind. The narrator in the novel is invisible in the broader culture because he is black. Still, his feelings can be understood by others who experience the same kind of anonymity of modern life. While some African Americans chose open defiance to address the troubling issue of race, others took the easy way out. This paper will describe why it is not wrong to take the easy way out if choosing any other course might get you beaten into submission or even killed.
The easy way for the blacks had minimum risks and higher chances of survival. With every African-American trying to succeed in the white-dominated nation, they were all unsure of the best way out. However, being alive meant that one would live to fight another day. Some of them succeeded by collaborating with the white man while others were recognized as heroes for resisting segregation. While there were many who managed to stay alive while things were tough by not resisting, others lost their lives trying to achieve their goal of bringing equality. In the novel, the invisible man represents the young, intelligent black Americans. Just like other black brilliant pupils in college, his greatest dream was to bring equality in the nation. However, when he joins the brotherhood, he is taught an ideology that promises to save the people, although it limits and betrays the freedom of the individual. This helps him to stay alive even though he continues to suffer the consequences of racism.
The easy way out also provided African Americans with ways to better themselves and equip themselves with skills and resources to stand up for their opinions in the future. In the novel, the narrator is not the only black American who feels the limitation of racist stereotyping. While some of them, including the narrator aimed at escaping the grip of prejudice at an individual level, others aimed at prescribing a defence tactic for all blacks. However, most of them were not successful because they did not have the means or resources to accomplish their mission. For instance, had the narrator stayed quiet while in college, he would have completed his education and stood a better chance to improve his life. The narrator also gets into a fight over union politics while he was working at the liberty paint plant, which costs him his job. Although he did this to fight segregation, these actions always cost him dearly.
While most black Americans experienced racial discrimination in various aspects of their lives, including education, employment and politics as seen in the invisible man, they all aimed at creating a society with equality. In an attempt to achieve these African Americans were at times required to choose the easy way out if any other ways meant being beaten to submission or killed. In my opinion, this was justified as they had a better chance of making it when they were alive and also provided the means and resources which they would use later in their fight against racism.
Work cited
Ellison, Ralph. Invisible man. Penguin UK, 2016.