BBrriigghhaamm YYoouunngg UUnniivveerrssiittyy BBYYUU SScchhoollaarrssAArrcchhiivvee Theses and Dissertations 2010-03-15 TThhee AAbbssuurrdd iinn tthhee BBrriiaarr PPaattcchh:: EElllliissoonn''ss Invisible Man aanndd EExxiisstteennttiiaalliissmm Eliot J. Wilcox Brigham Young University - Provo Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd Part of the English Language and Literature Commons BBYYUU SScchhoollaarrssAArrcchhiivvee CCiittaattiioonn Wilcox, Eliot J., "The Absurd in the Briar Patch: Ellison's Invisible Man and Existentialism" (2010). Theses and Dissertations. 2305. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/2305 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. The Absurd in the Briar Patch: Ellison’s Invisible Man and Existentialism Eliot John Wilcox A thesis submitted to the faculty of Brigham Young University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Gloria Cronin, Chair Kristin L. Matthews Wilfred Samuels Department of English Brigham Young University April 2010 Copyright © 2010 Eliot J. Wilcox All Right Reserved ABSTRACT The Absurd in the Briar Patch: Ellison’s Invisible Man and Existentialism Eliot John Wilcox Department of English Master of Arts This article claims that Ralph Ellison’s use and then revision of French existential themes is essential to understanding his overriding message of Invisible Man: Ellison’s hope for a more polyglot American democracy that transcends the white democracy of mid twentieth century America. Specifically, I argue that Ellison, after demonstrating his ability to understand and engage in the traditional ideology of European existentialism, deviates from its individualistic conclusions demanding that the larger community, not just the solitary individual, must become ethically responsible if the classic existential tenet of authenticity is to be achieved. In order to establish this claim, I identify key passages in Invisible Man that indicate Ellison’s desire to engage the existential movement. Writings from Camus and Sartre provide the foundation for comparison between Ellison’s work and the French based philosophy. This background provides the groundwork to explore Ellison’s deviations from the existential forms of his day. These departures have significant implications for Ellison’s view of a socially productive individual, and therefore of his message in Invisible Man. In order to document the prevalence of existentialism in Ellison’s literary consciousness, I then discuss its rise and decline in postwar New York. I also outline what is known about Ellison’s relationship to the movement. Lastly, I conclude with a discussion of the philosophical tradition of existential philosophy and the difference between the philosophy of existence, seen in the Western canon through philosophers like Kierkegaard, and existentialism, one of its popular manifestations that peaked in the 1940s. Separating the two existential movements allows me to explore the tangential way most Ellison critics have associated him with existentialism and advocate for a more inclusive critical discussion of Ellison’s relationship to existentialism. Keywords: Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, existentialism, Albert Camus, Jean Paul Sartre iii Table of Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Existentialism in Invisible Man ...................................................................................................... 4 Existentialism in Ellison's New York ........................................................................................... 14 Eventual New York Disenchantment ........................................................................................... 17 The Larger Existential Tradition ................................................................................................... 21 Ellison and the Philosophy of Existence ....................................................................................... 25 Works Cited .................................................................................................................................. 31 Wilcox 1 Introduction For the last six years, I have enjoyed an annual tradition of picking up and relishing Ralph Ellison’s classic novel Invisible Man. My well-worn paperback has gradually become brown, long ago losing its crisp corners and new book smell. Even the book’s binding, designed like most paperbacks for a few casual readings, is cracking and splitting. In fact, all that seems to improve with each reading is my appreciation for Ellison’s craft and a wishful belief that each journey through the novel is enabling me to unpack more of this layered masterpiece. It is the layering and play between folklore and history, myth and fact, culture and tradition, hope and despair, and the individual and society that draws into me the novel year and after year. Noted author and critic Charles Johnson noticed many of these same themes when wrote in Juneteenth’s (2000) preface that Ellison’s work challenges “philosophical questions such as reality vs. illusion, blindness vs. true seeing, and the fact that our lives are already more integrated than we usually dare to acknowledge” (xvii). What both of us detected, joining in agreement with legions of Ellison critics, is that Ellison works on multiple levels, conversing within his texts with a variety of ideas, topics, traditions, and writers. In these multiple readings I started to focus in one of these layers, a conversation I believed Ellison was having centered on the theme of identity and self-creation. Ellison actually summed up this theme well when he wrote, in his first collection of essays Shadow and Act (1964), about several questions that he claimed were central to his writing: “Who am I, what am I, how did I come to be? What shall I make of the life around me, what celebrate, what reject, how confront the snarl of good and evil which is inevitable?” (59). Ellison’s statement of purpose speaks to his interest in the undetermined nature of the individual, a fascination with the past and its existence in the present, and the conscious act of self-creation that defines how an Wilcox 2 individual interacts with the world. In my readings these themes appeared again and again in the text. In fact, I became convinced these themes are central to Ellison’s work, appearing both in the journey of Invisible Man, his most famous fictional creation, and throughout his award- winning essays. After all, central Ellison motifs like the trickster figure, blues singer, or cultural critic are all figures in the midst of self-creation, or as Ellison wrote, “conscious struggle for self- definition” (Invisible Man xiv). This “self-definition” based reading resonates with major authors who were concerned about these same themes during the period Ellison was writing. For example, Ellison’s questions of “Who am I, what am I, how did I become,” echoed the philosophically charged rhetoric of Albert Camus, Jean Paul Sartre, and other major French existentialists. This thematic connection was strengthened by the fact Camus and Sartre shared Ellison’s beliefs about self-creation functioning as a necessary part of individuality. The thematic links between Ellison and existentialists seemed promising enough that I searched in the Ellison criticism to see if anyone wrote about a connection in Ellison’s work. After all, because of Ellison’s broad interests, critical inquiry of Ellison spans history, psychology, cultural studies, and philosophy. Specific books on Ellison cover these relationships in terms of jazz, the blues, modernist texts and authors, art, Freudian psychology, communism, and even James Joyce. Unfortunately, what is largely absent or basically glossed over in most of these works is any relationship between Ellison and existentialism. For example, both of Ellison’s major biographers, Lawrence Jackson and Arnold Rampersad, spend less than two pages of their noteworthy works addressing the relationship between the author and the movement. This dismissive treatment is even more interesting considering existentialism was the most prominent literary movement during the period Ellison was writing the novel. In Wilcox 3 addition, most of the limited space spent on existentialism throughout Ellison criticism was used to link him to tangential figures in the existential movement like Andre Malraux. These critics did not note any significant linkage to major existential figures like Jean Paul Sartre or Albert Camus. Having failed to find relationships between Ellison and existentialism in the Ellison criticism, I searched existential criticism to see what they wrote about Ellison. His inclusion in this field was also mixed, indicating that Ellison’s work is not necessarily considered part of the field’s canon. Yet, he was claimed eagerly by some critics in this camp, like George Cotkin, author of the significant cultural work Existential America (2003), and Lewis Gordon, the founder of the Black Existential movement. Even so, both of these critics also saw Ellison as largely operating within a broad context of existential thinkers like Malraux or Dostoevsky. Both wrote very little about relationships between Ellison’s work and the existentialists who rose to international prominence in the 1940s, like Sartre or Camus. This article explores the presence and significance of these existential threads. The primary purpose of the article is to explore Ellison’s relationship to French existentialism, the most dominant literary and cultural force in post-World War II America, through the lens of Ellison’s seminal work Invisible Man. As Ellison wrote Invisible Man during the postwar era, he became familiar with the major works and figures of the French existential movement. Although he was wary of its European figures and self-centered conclusions, Ellison utilized significant existential themes in his novel to explore notions of individuality, absurdity, self-creation, and authenticity. In fact, Ellison’s use and then revision of French existential themes is essential to understanding the overriding message of Invisible Man: Ellison’s hope for a more polyglot American democracy that transcended the segregated democracy of Ellison’s era. Specifically, I Wilcox 4 wish to argue that Ellison's Invisible Man both demonstrates Ellison's ability to understand and engage in the traditional ideology of French existentialism, and deviates from its individualistic conclusions. Ellison demands that the larger community, not just the solitary individual, must become ethically responsible if the classic existential tenet of authenticity, or living in a position of good faith, is to be achieved. This argument relies on a historical and cultural context. The cultural existential allusions Ellison references in Invisible Man require an established historical connection. Since this context does not currently exist in Ellison criticism, the remainder of the article provides the critical background to establish the prominence of French existentialism in Ellison’s cultural psyche. Lastly, the paper explores the treatment of Ellison and existentialism by previous critics and provides a place for my critical reading within this larger conversation. Existentialism in Invisible Man After World War II, a new philosophical movement called existentialism rose to prominence in the United States. The movements champions, writers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, were published in almost all of the major New York publications. Their writings, available in France since the 1930s, were focused on core ideas of self-creation once recognition of the world’s absurdity, or lack of innate meaning, spurred an individual past to a realization of their own responsibilities. These ideas were popular with a disillusioned intellectual population attempting to comprehend the broken narrative of Western philosophy—a traditional that many saw culminating the tragedies of the holocaust, targeting of civilian populations, and use of atomic weapons. The specific theoretical tenets of the movement will be discussed in further detail later in the article. Wilcox 5 Existentialism appears throughout the novel Invisible Man and eventually culminates in a critique of the self-centered conclusions of the French philosophers. The character Invisible Man, like other existential heroes, struggles to understand his place until he recognizes the innate absurdity of existence and embraces the freedom that emerges from the angst of his realization. It is not until the Invisible Man makes a choice about how he will choose to live and why that choice is important that he finally deviates from typical existential form. This deviation is Ellison’s response to and critique of the existentialism promoted by Sartre and Camus. Existentialism first appears in the novel through a repeated existential theme—the absurd. Although the term itself does not appear until the novel’s concluding pages, when it is used again and again, absurdity runs through the novel. For example, Invisible Man’s quest takes him from one absurd situation to another. Although this pattern continues through the entire novel, the first three major incidents in the novel: the Battle Royal, the visit to Trueblood’s quarters, and the encounter at the Golden Day, illustrate this reoccurring motif. Each incident is characterized by Invisible Man’s inability to understand both the incident’s cause and effect on him. Incongruous to his worldview, these events traumatize Invisible Man again and again as each absurd situation propels him to the next. Eventually, as the novel nears its conclusion, he begins to recognize and acknowledge the absurdity. Recognition of and response to absurdity are existential traits. Albert Camus explained in “The Myth of Sisyphus” that society “cannot be tragic or epic today because we are so concerned with one particular part of man that we do not see that our tasks are hopeless. Because we no longer know what is tragic or epical, we are absurd” (Barnes 38). Camus believed that the way to respond to this fallen condition was for man to “realize his lack of tragic or heroic stature, but through struggling, even through only to an inevitable defeat, he will eventually conquer. The Wilcox 6 triumph comes in the recognition and the struggle” (38). Therefore, the existential response to absurdity is for an individual to recognize the prevalence absurdity and then choose to face life despite one’s recognition. Invisible Man follows through the same transition. He is transformed during the Harlem riot when he is attacked by Ras and followers, much in the way that Camus suggests one must be transformed to face life in the absurd. Facing these imminent threats, Invisible Man responded: I looked at Ras…and recognized the absurdity of the whole night and of the simple yet confounding complex arrangement of hope and desire, fear and hate, that had brought me here still running, and knowing now who I was and where I was and knowing too that I had no longer to run for or from the Jacks and the Emersons and the Bledsoes and Nortons, but only from their confusion, impatience, and refusal to recognize the beautiful absurdity of their American identity and mine…I knew it was better to live out one’s own absurdity than to die for that of others, whether Ras’s or Jack’s. (559) Invisible Man’s recognition of the limits of social constructions led to an internal struggle and the acknowledgement that creation is better than ignorance. From the hole in which he finishes the novel, Invisible Man later concludes, after giving “absurd answers” to others and seeing that society was “compromised to the point of absurdity,” that “life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat” even as “all life seen from the hole of invisibility is absurd” (573, 574, 577, 579).