1. Warm-up: Exploring the evolving (or devolving?) patterns in Chapters 1-16 of Invisible Man
Find the single most important line in your assigned chapter and read it aloud.
As you listen, consider what these lines have in common. In other words, what patterns do they establish?
Draw conclusions by considering these questions:
What's evolving? What only seems like it's evolving?
What's devolving?
What's staying the same, and why is this important?
2. Socratic seminar: Chapters 15 and 16 of Invisible Man
3. Wrapping up discussion and exchanging bookmarks
HW:
1. Go back to your metacognitive writing and paste your poem directly into it. Also, at the top of your writing, please indicate whether you are completing a project or a poem.
2. Bring your paper/project materials to class tomorrow, which will largely be a work day and conference day.
3. Read Chapters 17 and 18 of Invisible Man for Friday's Socratic; remember that your bookmark and your annotations are your reading ticket.
How others treat the narrator:
ReplyDelete• As people treat the narrator terribly, he begins to become more and more cynical
• The importance of the novel shifts to how society treats blacks
• Every time the narrator tries to move forward, something holds and/or pushes him back
• But does the narrator realize that?
• It also seems to motivate him to try to change
• Patterns: after something bad happens, there’s always something that pulls the narrator out (paint factory to Mary’s place, no money to a huge salary from the Brotherhood)
Chapter 15:
• When the narrator smashes the bank, he tries to get rid of it but no matter what, it seems like he can’t
• Symbol of the heritage he can’t escape
• Dichotomy of narrator being ashamed after he smashes the bank
• Regression: narrator accepting his heritage (yams) to smashing the Sambo bank
• Pg 320: “act civilized!” narrator talking to himself (irony with the bank)
• Final scene with Mary: the narrator doesn’t say goodbye
• Why did he lie to Mary about the money he got? It’s understandable he was afraid to let her down, but why did he feel the need to lie to her?
• Brotherhood = Communist party (hand in hand with civil rights because they were both for equality)
• Satire because they ^ pay the narrator a lot of money though they want economic equality
• Pg 326: coins motif – go back to pg 26-29
• Similarities: the bank is something people would find amusing, like they are amused by the black men on the electrified rug
• What does the electrified rug represent? It harms people yet draws them to it.
o A trap; someone thinks it’s for someone good but it comes back to harm them
o How society expects the black men to act
o The people were chained/enslaved to the money
• If this is what keeps happening to him, what will the Brotherhood do to the narrator? Are they just manipulating him? Is he just for entertainment like he was on the rug with coins?
• Pg 339: John Brown was an American abolitionist – executed before Civil War
o Used violence to protest slavery (even murder)
o Believed he was an instrument of God: he was called to punish and destroy sinful slave owners
• Why is the Brotherhood angry about the narrator’s speech? What did they originally want him to do?
o Pg 350: “I am of the opinion that it was a mistake.”
o Look for patterns: is the narrator transforming?