Why the Narrator’s Rebirth Occurred When It Did.

Why the Narrator’s Rebirth Occurred When It Did.

After being injured in an accident at the paint factory, the Narrator of Invisible Man is forced to be held in a hospital. While being “cared for”, he undergoes a number of sensations and experiences, including being in an enclosed space, hearing a woman's voice, and having a cord cut off of his stomach, which all give the semblance of him being rebirthed. He comes out a new man, stumbling and struggling to understand the unfamiliar world around him. This is the start of a new chapter, if you will, in the Narrator’s life. One separate from Bledsoe and Norton, separate from his former submission and meekness.

But why now? What is so special about the accident and the paint factory that the Narrator had to be reborn then? Surely there were several other moments of change, of revelation, where his identity could’ve been shed and he could’ve become a new man. What about, for example, when he finds out that Bledsoe gave him eight letters essentially sentencing him to die? Why was that not a rebirth? Or how about the speeches the vet gives him explaining his situation? Or when the Narrator yells at Bledsoe? Why did his rebirth occur only after he had experienced and realized those things, rather than when he experienced and realized those things?

Ellison gives the sense that perhaps the Narrator is not ready to be reborn prior to the paint accident. Upon arriving in Harlem, for example, he opens a Gideon Bible and attempts to read it, but cannot. The book he opens to is Genesis. For Star Trek fans like myself, you’ll recognize this as a device that was capable of creating habitable planets from nothing. To less sci-fi-y people and more Bible-y people, this is the first book of the Bible, the one where God creates Earth, the Book of birth and creation. It is striking that in this chapter the Narrator cannot start a new book, as it were. Ellison seems to suggest that perhaps he is unable to be rebirthed yet.

But what about after this? The Bible is at the beginning of the Narrator’s journey in Harlem, so it might be excusable. But the Narrator’s encounter with Emerson seems like it should very well be the tipping point. And in many ways it is. The Narrator’s anger bubbles up, he starts thinking rebellious thoughts, it's clearly something within him has changed. So why is it that he has to undergo yet another process in order to become a new man? Part of it may be because he hasn’t changed enough. He tries to convince himself that Emerson is lying, in an attempt to grasp on to the fleeting remnants of his former life. But what really reflects why his transformation takes place when it does can be found by looking at the paint factory.

The factory, as the Narrator describes it, is very much like a small city, a city within a city. One could take that to mean that it is merely a mini version of what may go on in the real city. Or one could also consider the fact that a factory is at the root of everything, it is where everything comes from, where the sausage is made. It is there that the Narrator can truly understand what visibility means. Nowhere but a paint factory could the Narrator learn that black drops had to be added to make something white. Nowhere but a paint factory could he have learned that they don’t understand what white really is. And then he goes deeper, to where the paint is “really made”, suggesting that perhaps even the paint factory building with the buckets is still just a facade to hide something more. In this building, he has to constantly keep balance between colors, suggesting the need for some sort of racial symmetry. Perhaps the explanations given by Bledsoe and the vet were not enough, perhaps what the Narrator needed was to really see what they meant, what was going on, the visibility of black and white.

One could also consider the idea that perhaps the Narrator still has more births to encounter altogether. Some of his behavior after his rebirth seems to suggest that he has not completely shed his old ways. He still likes giving speeches and still worships the Founder of the college that left him to the dust. And we do know that he has yet to become the person he is in the prologue, a hermit slapping away at a typewriter. I think we can look forward to a couple more “births” for the Narrator.