Blind

(In class on Thursday, Mr. Mtichell said someone should write an essay on how the poem, The Odyssey by Homer is incorporated in Invisible Man. I do not know if I can write an entire essay about this topic but I can definitely write a blog post about it.)

Ralph Ellison includes many allusions in Invisible man but one such allusion that stood out to me was The Odyssey. This allusion is very subtle and I honestly did not pick it up until we discussed it in class. In class, Mr. Mitchell brought up the point of how the scene of the meeting with the members of the Brotherhood and the narrator has a connection to The Odyssey. Mr. Mitchell explained the part where Brother Jack's eye falls out and the narrator is absolutely disgusted. During this encounter, Ellison uses the word "cyclopean", a direct reference to The Odyssey. This single word shows that Ralph Ellison is thinking about The Odyssey so there has to be other references to this poem in Invisble Man. 

I thought about The Odyssey and what I have read so far in Invisible Man, seeing if I can find any other comparisons between the two pieces of work. I remember in Chapter 1 and in Chapter 1 there was the beautiful blond girl in the club where the battle royal was taking place. She was like a tool to try and lead the narrator and the rest of the black boys into temptation. The narrator is encaptured by the seducing girl but his mind is telling him to stop. The girl seems just like a Siren in The Odyssey. There is also a line in the first chapter that makes it super obvious, "And then she began to dance, a slow sensuous movement; the smoke of a hundred cigars clinging to her like the thinnest of veils. She seemed like a fair bird-girl girdled in veils calling to me from the angry surface of some gray and threatening sea." When I was first reading this chapter, I didn't understand what the "threatening sea" meant so I just thought of it as an author just wanting to sound more sharp-witted and brushed it off. Now that I see the connection between The Odyssey and Invisible Man, it is SO obvious. 

I also remembered the scene where the narrator goes to church in Chapter 5 and I remember the reverend of the church. The reverend's name was Homer, Homer Barbee. Homer Barbee is blind. I looked up online if Homer (the poet of The Odyssey) was blind and sure enough he was. 

There has to be a reason why Ellison wanted to include this allusion into his book and I believe that reason is to strengthen the theme of blindness in Invisible Man. Going back to the "cyclopean" reference, the cyclops in The Odyssey was blinded by Odysseus. Before he was blinded, the cyclops was able to see everything perfectly and clearly but now that an outside force has affected his vision, he cannot see for himself. This kind of symbolizes most of the characters in Invisible Man. The characters are fighting for what they believe in but the people in charge, the people with power, blind the truth from these characters. They blind them from what is truly happening.