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dissertation entitled

Articulated Selves:
The Attainment of Identity and Personal Voice
through Language and Storytelling in Works
by Twentieth Century American Authors

presented by

John D. Kalb

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ARTICULATED SELVES:
THE ATTAINMENT OF IDENTITY AND PERSONAL VOICE
THROUGH LANGUAGE AND STORYTELLING IN WORKS

BY TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICAN AUTHORS

BY

John D. Kalb

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of English

1989

ABSTRACT

ARTICULATED SELVES:
THE ATTAINMENT OF IDENTITY AND PERSONAL VOICE
THROUGH LANGUAGE AND STORYTELLING IN WORKS
BY TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICAN AUTHORS

by

John D. Kalb

In Zora Neale Hurston’s Iheir Eyes Were Watching God,

Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Ken Kesey’s Que Elew Over the
QHEKQQL§_H§§§, and Leslie Harmon Silko’s Qeremogy, four

characters, three of whom are also the narrators, are
invisible and voiceless--in part because of their race or
sex--and are correspondingly denied full participation in
their communities. Recent findings of language and
composition theorists about language and writing processes
concur with the themes of these works: that such voiceless
characters can find their way into, and, in fact, create
their worlds, by utilizing and mastering language and
storytelling.

Effectively rendered mute and invisible, Hurston’s
Janie begins after Joe's death to participate vocally in the
community. A careful examination of the third person
narrative suggests that Janie’s mastery of language and her
creation of her self and world lead to her ability to become
the anthropological narrator of the novel.

Ellison’s invisible man is invisible and voiceless and

blindly complies in his oppression throughout the course of

the novel. His acquiring visibility and voice is a process
invisible to the reader, occurring through his writing his
account, not through his adventures.

In Kesey’s novel, the central character and controlling
consciousness is the mute and invisible Chief Bromden.
McMurphy is a fictional character based on Bromden's father
and Taber, a fiction whom Bromden creates in order to do
battle with the similarly imagined Ratched (modeled on
Bromden's mother) and the Combine. In the end, Bromden
establishes a voice of his own and renders his two
creations--McMurphy and Ratched--mute.

Tayo, in Silko’s novel, participates in a ceremony of
acquiring wholeness which is marked by his first living the
ceremony and concludes with his telling the story to the
tribal elders. Silko’s novel offers storytelling not only
as a means of organizing experience, but as a means of
survival.

Works by Margaret Atwood, Charlotte Perkins Gilman,
Toni Morrison, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Jerzy Kosinski
address similar issues and express the importance of
language and storytelling in the discovery of personal

voice, self, and community identity.

For Mom

Acknowledgements

In producing this study of mute and invisible characters who
usually find their voices in solitude and without the
assistance of others, I have fortunately had the encouraging
guidance of Linda Wagner-Martin as I struggled to discover
my own voice. Her proffered comments and criticisms, swift
response to drafts and revisions, and her respectful regard
of insights often at variance with her own served to
facilitate my own making of meaning. I am grateful

especially for her friendship.

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Chapter One:
The Anthropological Narrator of Hurston's

s We Wa ' God

Chapter Two:
Invisible Writing: Ellison’s Invisible Man

Illuminates and Defines His Form

Chapter Three:
"It's the truth even if it didn't happen":

Chief Bromden’s Therapeutic Art

Chapter Four:
Tayo's Struggle for the Ending to His Story:

"It Never Has Been Easy"

Chapter Five

Other Unseen Faces, Unheard Voices

WORKS CONSULTED
iv

11

41

93

147

196

239

INTRODUCTION

For the past twenty years, language and composition
theorists have proposed a paradigmatic shift in the study
and teaching of language and writing. They have urged that
teachers reject the "product approach" to writing, in which
students write on assigned (canned) topics, fit their
thoughts into prescribed forms (most notorious was the five-
paragraph essay), and submit the final product to the
teacher for his or her evaluation. This evaluation, more
often than not, assesses how well the students capitulate to
the form rather than evaluating the content of their ideas,
"as though," C. H. Knoblauch and Lil Brannon attest, "the
surface decorum of texts were more valuable than quality of
thought; indeed even as though decorum were equivalent to
intellectual quality" (4).

Instead, numerous teachers and writers have called for
consideration of language learning and writing as a process,
whereby the steps which lead to growth in and facility with
language and which result in these written products warrant
observation in the teaching of English. In this regard,
they speak of the recursive and overlapping steps of pre-
writing, drafting, and re-writing, phases of the process

which were formerly beyond consideration in the classroom.1

1

2

What these people prefer is a practice of teaching that
reflects the innate language capabilities of all students.
They want to substitute a philosophical and pedagogical
attitude that stresses the language ability students possess
for one that emphasizes the skills they lack. Ann E.
Berthoff counsels subscribing to the maxim: "Begin with
where they are as language animals, endowed with the form-
finding and form-creating powers of mind and language" (The
flexing of Meening 9). In proposing a such an attitude,
these writers suggest that the processes of "real" writers--
published essayists, novelists, short story authors, poets--
deserve to be encouraged in the classroom.

The "real" authors whose fictional works are the focus
of this study offer, through their narratives, support for
this notion of the writing process. Their characters-~often
the narrators themselves--utilize "the form-finding and
form-creating powers of mind and language": through the
process of mastering language facility and telling their
stories they are able to form themselves into autonomous,
authentic selves. In turn, the assertions made by language
and composition theorists, applied to these works as
critical tools, open up the texts to new readings. The
characters' steps toward self-actualization can be better
understood if readers observe carefully the process of self-
forming inherent in these narratives.

In the four novels which are the primary focus of this

study--Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God,

3
Ralph Ellison's Inyieible_uen, Ken Kesey’s Qge glen ever the

Qeekeo's Neee, and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Qeremogy--four

characters, three of whom are also the narrators and thereby
the authors of their respective works, are invisible and
voiceless. Not some science fiction term, invisibility
indicates that Janie, the invisible man, Chief Bromden, and
Tayo are overlooked and virtually unseen by the dominant
culture. The problem is that, because their physical forms
don’t conform to prescribed criteria, society does not
recognize their humanness, much as the best student essays
often fail to fit narrowly prescribed configurations and
therefore challenge classroom assumptions. In response to
these characters’ nonconformity, the dominant culture
imposes stereotypical roles upon them instead of allowing
them to form their own identities; often, in this regard,
they also either lack identifying names or are named by
others. In the latter instances, the namers exert control
over the named, and the characters find themselves trapped
in limiting roles if and when they accept their imposed
identities. As Anya Peterson Royce notes in Ethnic
Identities.
[i]f one accepts the labeling, then one’s options
for maneuvering advantageously are drastically
reduced as one’s range of expression is limited.
It is often easier to accept the false
classification than to insist on being recognized
as an individual with many aspects. (199-200)
Similarly, these characters’ voicelessness grows out of

the culture’s withholding language practice and training

from them and/or allowing them to speak only in

4
circumscribed roles and forms. Their voices are effectively
squelched through censorship and "correction"--methods of
ensuring the "surface decorum" of their utterances, whether
written or spoken. Even if they are allowed to speak, what
they have to say is disregarded, perhaps even unheard. The
result is their deep-seated lack of self-esteem born of the
evidence before them that they are unheard, unseen,
invisible ciphers.

This suppression of identity and self, demonstrated in
these works through the dual motif of invisibility and
voicelessness, is in large part a result of their race or
sex. Hurston’s Janie and Ellison’s invisible man are both
black, and Janie’s mutedness is further complicated by her
femaleness. Both Kesey’s Bromden and Silko's Tayo are
Native Americans of mixed ancestry; the fact that they feel
ignored by whites and Indians alike further frustrates their
attempts to discover their identities and voices. Each
character falls into the predicament of the excluded in
American culture as delineated by Lillian S. Robinson and
Lise Vogel:

To be conscious of race, class or sex with respect
to high culture is to be conscious, first of all,
of exclusion. The black, the woman, the worker
and the peasant are all forced to acknowledge the
existence of a mainstream, self-proclaimed as the
whole of "culture," in which they do not--or do
not fully--participate. But "exclusion" is not in
itself a critical position; to be the Other is, by
definition, to be the element that is flee the
subject, defined only in relation to it and only

negatively. (281-82)

Denied full participation in the prevailing culture,

5

these characters tend to doubt their own worth as well as
their capacity to contribute meaningfully to their
communities. These characters accept, for a time, the
confinement placed upon them, one result of which is their
limited participation in their communities. Often their
compliance in allowing society to define their roles for
them places them in additional conflict with those who are
similarly oppressed. This acquiescence to their own mute
invisibility denotes an acceptance of the negative
stereotypes of other members of their race or sex.

In the chapters which follow, I examine the ways in
which each of these characters suffers from invisibility and
voicelessness and the means by which each seeks to overcome
circumscribed roles and identities. All of these characters
eventually find their way back into (and, in fact, create)
their worlds, by utilizing and mastering language and
storytelling. By applying the findings of composition and
language theorists--most notably James Britton--to extensive
explication and analysis of these four texts, this
dissertation explores the ways each of these authors and the
events of their novels support Britton’s notion that
language isia fundamental means of making sense of a hostile
and chaotic world and of creating a self and world of one's
own. If, as Britton has observed, language is "a key way,"
"a highly organized, systematic means of representing
experience, and as such it assists us to organize all other

ways of representing" (19, 21), then it seems plausible to

6

expect that these characters can perhaps best define their
roles for themselves and gain individual and community
identities through facility in and manipulation of language.

This is precisely what occurs in the self-made
narratives of Janie, the invisible man, and Bromden, and
through the living and eventual telling of the story by
Tayo. They each come to possess a reality, a world, of
their own. Language facility affords them the opportunity
to fashion an ordered world view, a sense of self within the
scheme of that world, and a new conception of their own
human potential long kept from them. Furthermore, implied
in this application of these theoretical works to the
narratives is the notion that the development of language
facility in students is crucial to their conception of
themselves as human and social beings--to the development of
a self-identity.

Chapter 1 analyzes Hurston's novel Thei;_§yee_fle;e
We§ehing_§eg and offers as its primary focus the suppression
of Janie’s self and voice. Until the death of her second
husband--the self-proclaimed "big voice," Joe Starks--Janie
is denied participation in the talk and storytelling of the
community. Effectively rendered mute and invisible (Joe
keeps her hidden within the confines of the general store),
Janie begins after Joe's death to participate vocally in the
community. A careful examination of the third person

narrative in conjunction with Britton's observations in

Lenggege_egg_Lee;gigg supports the argument that Janie's

7

mastery of language and hence her creation of her own self
and world lead to her ability to become the distant,
anthropological narrator of the novel.

Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man is the subject of Chapter
2 which purports that the invisible man's invisibility, lack
of identity, and loss of voice, admittedly imposed from
society, are reinforced by his own blind complicity. In his
naive blindness, the invisible man fails to see the ways he
is repeatedly defined and confined by others. Even when
delivering his public speeches, he merely repeats words and
arguments which are dictated to him. I argue that his
process of attaining identity and voice is itself invisible
to the reader, occurring as it does through the process of
writing, not in the chronicle of events recounted in the
chapters between the Prologue and Epilogue. Calling on
Britton's comments as well as those of Joseph Church, the
chapter stresses that the invisible man’s "infinite
possibilities" are rendered more believable through his
successful development, like Janie's, of what Britton terms
the spectator voice. Both Janie and the invisible man
achieve insight into their own lives and their vocal
suppression after a period of removal from their unwelcoming
communities.

Chapter 3 presents a discussion of Ken Kesey’s Qne Flew
Q!§I_§h§_QEEKQQL§_N§§§ and grows first from a comparative
analysis of the invisible man's and Bromden’s invisibility

and muteness and the pain both acknowledge in writing their

8

experiences. Contrary to much of the prevailing critical
response to Kesey's novel, I suggest that Bromden, not
McMurphy, is the central character of the book. Kesey’s own
comments and Bromden’s accumulated memories of family, the
war, and the psychiatric ward serve as the foundation for
the argument that the hallucinating Bromden actually created
McMurphy. Based on his own father and Taber--another victim
of Nurse Ratched and the mechanistic Combine--McMurphy
serves Bromden, through the therapeutic process of writing
his fictional account, as a puppet-like figure set in
opposition to the dehumanizing forces which compelled him to
play at being deaf and dumb. In the end, Bromden acquires
an identity and a voice of his own, while rendering McMurphy
and Nurse Ratched voiceless, through the creative act of
writing a story that is "the truth even if it didn't happen"
(13).

Tayo, the central character of geremony, is the focus
of Chapter 4. Another invisible man, he shares traits with
both Bromden and the invisible man. Although this novel is
narrated in the third person voice of someone other than
Tayo, Tayo's ceremony of recovery and healing and his
acquisition of wholeness is marked by his first living the
ceremony and concludes with his telling the story of it to
the tribal elders. The importance of story as an oral form

connects Qeremeny with Their Eyes Wege Watching God which is
partially an exhibition of traditional folktales. Silko’s

 

novel purports that storytelling serves not only as a means

9

of organizing experience--much as Britton indicates language
does--but as a means of survival.

The concluding Chapter 5 examines several additional
narratives in which invisibility and muteness play a role of
some prominence. After fairly extensive analysis of
Margaret Atwood's The_flengmeig;e_1ele, in which the self-
forming and self-sustaining value of storytelling is
crucial, I note more briefly Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The
Yellow Wallpaper," Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Maxine
Hong Kington’s The Weman Wagrior, and Jerzy Kosinski’s The
Reinted Bigd and Being There. These works similarly
address some or all of the issues discussed in the other
four novels. These include the suppression of voice,
identity imposed from other sources, and the discovery of
personal voice and self and community identity.

In addition, this chapter offers suggestions concerning
the ramifications of the language processes playing such a
major role in these various works. The prominence of
storytelling as a way of fashioning a world and a self
indicates the accuracy of the theorists’ belief in the vital
importance of language in the lives of students. Creating
an environment which fosters language facility--speaking,
listening, writing, reading, and thinking--can open up
broader possibilities to individuals seeking a place of
their own in American culture.

All of these works support the argument that language

plays a crucial role in personal development. Pictured as

10

these characters are as isolated and without voices,
1anguage--oral and written--provides the best method of
understanding and overcoming their estrangement. In the
end, language and storytelling become their last and best
hope for forming, and hence articulating, themselves into
authentic, autonomous beings who are able to contribute to

their communities as they shape their own potentialities.

NOTES

1 There are many works devoted to observing,
understanding, and delineating this process. Among them:
Ann E. Berthoff, orm n hinki Writi and The Making of

heening; James Britton, Language and Learning; Britton et
al., The Dexelgnnen; g: Writing Abilities (ll-18); Charles
R. Cooper and Lee Odell eds., Research on Composing; John
Dixon, growth Through English: Peter Elbow, Writing With
Regen and Writing Without Teachers; Janet Emig, The

Qennoeing Processes of Twelfth Graders; Stephen N. Judy and
Susan J. Judy, The Teaching of Writing; Dan Kirby and Tom

Liner, Inside Ou ; C.H. Knoblauch and Lil Brannon,

Bhetonieal Traditions and the Teaching of Writing; Ken
Macrorie, Unteught; Nancy Martin et al., Writing and
Learning Across the Curriculum 11-16; John S. Mayher, Nancy
Lester, Gordon M. Pradl, Learning to WritelWriting to Learn;
James Moffett, Teaching the Univeree of Discourse; Donald M.
Murray, A WziEe; Teaches Writing. Although each of these
writers espouses a process approach to language learning and
the teaching of writing, the clustering together of these
titles is by no means meant to suggest that they agree among
themselves as to the elements contained in that process.

Chapter One

The Anthropological Narrator of Hurston's

Thei; Eyes Wene Wetehing Gog

From the earliest rocking of my cradle, I had
known about the capers Brer Rabbit is apt to cut
and what the Squinch Owl says from the house top.
But it was fitting me like a tight chemise. I
couldn't see it for wearing it. It was only when
I was off in college, away from my native
surroundings, that I could see myself like
somebody else and stand off and look at my
garment. Then I had to have the spy-glass of
Anthropology to look through at that. (Zora Neale

Hurston, Mules end Men 3)

As a child in Eatonville, Florida, Zora Neale Hurston
lived fully in the folk-culture of her native home. As many
people do, she took for granted the society and culture in
which she was immersed. It was not until she began her
wanderings northward, eventually attending Howard University
and finally Barnard College, where she studied under Dr.
Franz Boas and took up the "spy—glass of Anthropology," that
she was able to see the cultural wealth of the community in
which she spent the early years of her life.

Anthropology afforded Hurston the opportunity to return
to Eatonville (as well as travel to Alabama, Haiti, and
other regions) as a cultural ethnographer, to observe and
record the folk tales and legends in the authentic narrative

voice of the native inhabitants. This fieldwork helped her

11

12
to legitimize an insatiable thirst for knowledge and

understanding. "Research," Hurston wrote, "is a formalized
curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. It is
seeking that he who wishes may know the cosmic secrets of
the world and they that dwell therein" (Duse Tracks en e
Reed 174). Thus it was necessary for Hurston to separate
and disassociate herself from her community and culture in
order that she might come to fully appreciate and comprehend
the "cosmic secrets" of her childhood years and the people
of her community.

If participation in an event makes one blind to the
full merit and value of it, and if removal of oneself from
the scene of that event is necessary for the clear and
fruitful observation and understanding of the event and
one’s participation in it, then Hurston shrewdly created an
appropriate narrator for Their Eyes Were Watehing God--one
who moves freely between these poles of spectator and
participant. Full participation is required so that the
"garment" may be experienced first-hand, and the advantage
of the spectator’s distance from that "garment" allows and
warrants observation, speculation, and evaluation from
without.

This movement from spectator to participant and back
again in the narrative voice of Their Eyes Where Wahehing
egg has troubled some critics who, upon encountering the
dialect of the various characters within the third person

narrative, become confused as to which is narration and

13
which is dialogue. Darwin T. Turner, in his Tn_e_ning;

ghgrd, provides one of the worst misreadings of the novel.
"She weakened the plot," Turner claims, "by a careless shift
of point of view and by digressions. Although she narrated
most of the story through Janie, she shifted to Nanny in the
second chapter" (107). On the contrary, although Chapter 2
features short first person narratives by both Janie and
Nanny, the frame narrative continues throughout the novel in
the third person. Lillie P. Howard, in Zora Neale Hunseon,
is also troubled by this "rather awkwardly told" tale that
employs both "an omniscient narrator" and Janie to relate it
(94). Even Robert E. Hemenway, whose Zora Neale Hugston: A
Li;e:e;y_§ieg;enhy treats Hurston with compassion and
empathy, mentions that the "ending seems poorly plotted, and
the narration shifts awkwardly from first to third person"
(233).

Other recent critics--Barbara Christian, Missy Dehn
Kubitschek, Wendy J. McCredie, Elizabeth A. Meese, and Maria
Tai Wolff, in particular--have come to terms with the fact
that the novel, although told by a third person narrator,
relies quite heavily upon tales told by various characters
and much dialogue among characters. These careful readers
have recognized the importance of storytelling itself as a
vital element in the creation of the novel, in the creation
of the communities of Eatonville and Belle Glade and the
individuals who live within them, and in the creation of the

Janie whose life this story-within-a-story recreates for the

14
benefit of the reader.1 As Christian writes in fileeh_flenen

Heyeliete, "Janie Stark[s] tells the story of her childhood,
her life, and her loves to her best friend, Pheoby, and to
the community to which she has just returned. This aspect
of the novel is critical to its substance, for Janie
Stark[s] is not an individual in a vacuum; she is an
intrinsic part of a community, and she brings her life and
its richness, joys, and sorrows back to it. As it has
helped to form her, so she also helps to form it" (57).

This notion of creation of self and community is critical to
understanding Hurston’s novel.

Hurston attempts, through the vacillation between
perspectives, to deliver the best of both worlds. In the
voice of the spectator, she provides keen observation and
explanation of the life experiences of Janie Crawford
Killicks Starks Woods, and, in the sharing voice of the
participant, she brings a sense of immediacy and intimacy to
the "garment" as worn by Janie.

This description does not imply that the spectator and
participant roles in the novel are to be equated with the
incidents of third and first person narration. Any first
person narration in the text occurs within quotation marks
and has been selected and presented by the third person
narrator herself. Certainly these passages occur
frequently. Indeed, they might be said to make up the bulk
of the novel, and they similarly increase the reader's

involvement in the action of the text. However, the third

15

person narrative itself warrants close scrutiny, as it is
within the voice of this narrator that these movements from
outside observer to inside sharer and participant occur.
Further, this motion is demonstrated by the choice of
diction and the utilization of the "standard" dialect and
the dialect of the characters (by turns) within this
narrative voice. In addition, this movement, although it
may begin so, is for the most part, not a matter of
fluctuation between pole positions. Rather, the power of
the narrative grows out of a fine blending of the spectator
and participant roles that partakes of many points of the

spectrum between them.

Karla F. C. Holloway in The Character of the Word: The
Tenhe 9: gene Neale Hurston also comments on this intricate

blend of voices.2 Holloway’s comprehensive study of the
linguistic voices in Hurston's works argues that this
sharing occurs in a bi-directional fashion; the diction of
the participants enters the language of the narrator, and
the formal and poetic narrative voice intrudes upon the
language of the characters. For my purposes, the eventual
inclusion of the dialectal features of the characters'
voices--particularly the gradual blend of Janie's voice with
the narrator's--is of interest, for it parallels Janie's
progress from silence and invisibility to articulation and
self and community identity. Holloway observes this
simultaneous movement in Hurston’s other works as well:

"Because all of Hurston's novels are stories of journeys

16

toward self-awareness and actualization, the external voices
of character gradually blend into the narrative structures
in each of them" (52).
In Thei; Eyes Wege Wahching Gog, the narrator opens the
novel with a detached view of the contrasting life of men
and of women and then narrows her vision to the life of one
woman.
Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on
board. For some they come in with the tide. For
others they sail forever on the horizon, never out
of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns
his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to
death by Time. That is the life of men.
Now women forget all those things they don't
want to remember, and remember everything they
don’t want to forget. The dream is the truth.
Then they act and do things accordingly. So the
beginning of this was a woman and she had come
back from burying the dead. (9)
Interestingly, in her study of women’s psychological
development, Carol Gilligan, speaking of the idea that men
find it necessary to escape relationships in order to
realize their dreams, sounds much like the narrator in these
opening paragraphs. Gilligan summarizes Daniel J.
Levinson’s The Seasons of a Man's Life (New York: Knopf,
1978) as suggesting that "the road to mid-life salvation
runs through either achievement or separation" (152) and
that for men "relationships . . . play a relatively
subordinate role in the individual drama of adult
development" (153). She observes that

Levinson's choice is the same as Virgil's,

charting the progress of adult development as an

arduous struggle toward a glorious destiny. Like

pious Aeneas on his way to found Rome, the men in
Levinson's study steady their lives by their

17

devotion to realizing their dreams, measuring
their progress in terms of their distance from the
shores of its promised success. (152-53)
The narrator's description of "the life of men" depicts the
"achievement" of the dreams coming in with the tide or the
separation necessary for men to, in Gilligan's words,
"measure their progress in terms of their distance from the
shores of its promised success."

Gilligan’s primary thesis is that for women the route
toward individuation of self is through intimacy, which is
threatened by such separation, while for men intimacy is the
threat and separation the path of choice (8). Hurston’s
narrator, then, wisely understands the distinctions
discovered only recently in studies of the psychological
development of the two sexes.

The "distance" Hurston's narrator notes in the first
line is similar, as well, to the distance the narrator
espouses at this introductory juncture. The language here
is simple but has a detached, abstract, removed tone.3 The
reader’s eyes are turned first toward the horizon and the
dreams of men, carried afar on the distant ships, and then
turned back to the shore, where women liye their dreams,
unlike the men who live only Ten their dreams. Finally, the
reader’s gaze, guided by the narrator, singles out and rests
upon this woman who has returned from burying her dead. The
voice speaks seemingly objectively in a "standard" dialect
which borders, here and elsewhere, on the poetic.

Judgment and commentary soon enter the narrative voice

18

as it notes the jealousy and envy of the porch-sitters and
gossips who line the road. The narrator observes the mix of
the disembodied voices-~"Words walking without masters;
walking altogether like harmony in a song" (10)--and then
allows the reader to hear them, in a dialect far removed
from her own. "’What she doin' coming back here in dem
overhalls? Can't she find no dress to put on?--Where's dat
blue satin dress she left here in?'" (10). These speakers,
too, are observers, but unlike the narrator who sees from
outside the community, they are fully immersed within it and
are hostile to (and fearful of) influences outside it. In
this first chapter, the narrator, who resembles the cultural
ethnographer, authentically records and presents the
townspeople’s gossip, their exchange with Pheoby, and
Pheoby's dialogue with the newly returned Janie. The
narrator's voice continues in the detached "standard"
dialect until the very last line, when one word enters her
reportage that suggests a sharing with the speech of the
people she is chronicling. "Time makes everything old so
the kissing, young darkness became a monstropolous old thing
while Janie talked" (19). "Monstropolous" adds to the
poetry of the line at the same time that it strikes the
reader as a bit of a shock. An invented word, more enormous
than "monstrous" or "monstrosity," and sounding like
something Janie or Pheoby might create, the term trips up
the unsuspecting reader, requiring a look back in order to

read it again.

19

In the subsequent chapter, Janie begins her narrative,
telling in her own words the story that she entrusts to
Pheoby in the first chapter: "'You can tell ’em what Ah say
if you wants to'" (17). However, the opening paragraph is
in the voice of the detached narrator once again, and
moreover, Janie's first person narrative continues only for
a little over two and a half pages, when the narrator takes
over, synthesizes Janie's story, and comments upon the
events of the beginning of "her conscious life"--her sexual
awakening.

She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum

of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to

meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of

the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in

every blossom and frothing with delight. (24)
This idiom is a far cry from the diction of Janie and
Nanny's dialogue which follows. For example, when Janie
struggles to explain to Nanny her kiss with Johnny Taylor--
"'Ah don't love him at all. Whut made me do it is--oh, Ah
don’t know’" (30)--the stark contrast between the narrator's
formal language and Janie's informal, colloquial speech
reiterates the distance of the spectator narrator from the
characters she observes.

After Nanny's chapter-concluding monologue, Hurston in
Chapter 3 returns anew to the narrator’s formal voice and
distant tone. She again works in generalizations,
commenting on the mind in general and then focusing her

observation on the character of Nanny.

There is a basin in the mind where words float
around on thought and thought on sound and sight.

20
Then there is a depth of thought untouched by
words, and deeper still a gulf of formless
feelings untouched by thought. Nanny entered this
infinity of conscious pain again on her old knees.
(43)
Neither Janie nor Nanny has demonstrated the ability to use
such formal language. The narrator continues in this vein
through Janie's disappointing marriage until the
introduction of Joe Starks in Chapter 4. Unlike the
paraphrasing of Janie's introduction to her story of growing
into womanhood, however, the narrator, in retelling Joe’s
tale, slips into the informal diction of Joe’s dialect and
voice.
Joe Starks was the name, yeah Joe Starks from in
and through Georgy. Been workin’ for white folks
all his life. Saved up some money--round three
hundred dollars, yes indeed, right here in his
pocket. Kept hearin' ’bout them buildin’ a new
state down heah in Floridy and sort of wanted to
come. (47-48)
Although this passage captures the spirit of Joe's voice and
draws on many of his own words and phrasing, these are not
intended to be his remarks. Joe is referred to in the third
person ("his life," "his pocket"). This section seems to be
a synthesis of overheard remarks, and most important is the
narrator's informing us that Joe "had always wanted to be a
big voice, but de white folks had all de sayso where he come
from and everywhere else, exceptin’ this place dat colored
folks was buildin’ theirselves" (48). The attraction of
this place-éEatonville--for Joe is the potential freedom to

be a "big voice," and a big voice Joe soon will show himself

to be. Unlike Joe, who is a smooth, fast, and big talker,

21
Janie, at this time in the past of her story, has a small

voice. Whenever she speaks it is in response to others. A
Joe Starks, a Logan Killicks, or a Nanny speaks first and
Janie’s responses, usually quite brief, are offered in
answer to their direct questioning of her.

In spite of her lack of sexual, sensual feeling for
Joe, Janie is attracted to his big voice. "Janie pulled
back a long time because he did not represent sun-up and
pollen and blooming trees, but he spoke for far horizon. He
spoke for change and chance" (50). Part of Joe's
fascination for Janie is his voice. Janie lacks this
facility with oral speech, the ability to put words to
dreams. In fact, first husband Logan is caught off guard
when on one occasion Janie addresses him with
uncharacteristically outspoken candor, complaining, "'Mah
mama didn’t tell me Ah wuz born in no hurry. . . . Youse mad
’cause Ah don’t fall down and wash-up dese sixty acres uh
ground yuh got. You ain’t done me no favor by marryin’ me'"
(52-53). Such words, rushing out of the mouth of the
usually reticent Janie, so surprise Logan that he "dropped
his shovel and made two or three clumsy steps towards the
house, then stopped abruptly," and he warns her, "'Don’t you
change too many words wid me dis mawnin’, Janie'" (53).

Wounded by Logan's fierce attack with language, laced
as it eventually becomes with threats of murder, Janie
retreats into silence. "When the throbbing calmed a little

she gave Logan's speech a hard thought and placed it beside

22
other things she had seen and heard" (53-54). Janie usually

deals with her pain and her dreams in this interior fashion;
she does not verbalize her experience so much as she
internalizes it. In the face of such language bulldozers as
Nanny and Logan, who expect her merely to speak when spoken
to, and then only niggardly, Janie's language ability has
been plowed under and suppressed.

But Joe Starks, big talker and big dreamer, seems to
offer Janie a new chance. When she escapes Logan Killicks
and leaves to marry Joe, her new hopes are conveyed in the
words of the formal, poetic narrator. "From now on until
death she was going to have flower dust and springtime
sprinkled over everything. A bee for her bloom. Her old
thoughts were going to come in handy now, but new words
would have to be made and said to fit them" (54-55). For
the first time, Janie believes she will have her sexual,
sensual longings fulfilled, and, more than that, that a
whole new world of experience and discovery awaits her.
This new world will require the invention of new words to
fit her old thoughts.

James Britton, as well as other educators, language
acquisition theorists, and some child psychologists, has
noted the importance of language in creating and
understanding the world. In Language and Learning, Britton
states that "we use language as a means of organizing a
representation of the world-~each for himself--and that the

representation so created constitutes the world we operate

23
in, the basis of all the predictions by which we set the

course of our lives" (7). If, as Britton suggests, language
is the key means to organizing experience and "we habitually
use talk to go back over events and interpret them, make
sense of them in a way that we were unable to while they
were taking place" (19), the stifling and suppression of
Janie's oral speech by these other characters forces her
into depending upon others for a view of the world. Much as
she hopes that this dreamer of far horizons--Joe Starks--
will bring her to the world of "flower dust" and "new
words," in reality, Janie’s bud soon begins to wither on the
stem and the words remain Joe's as he inhibits her
development of oral versatility and in so doing further
retards her growth.

As Joe and Janie arrive and settle in Eatonville, this
further suppression of Janie's talk becomes apparent as Joe
talks, questions, and schemes without Janie’s participation.
For a while it seems as if she isn't even there, but she is-
-as window dressing. As the townspeople gather on the
Starks' porch for the first time, the order of things is
swiftly established. "Joe was on the porch talking to a
small group of men. Janie could be seen through the bedroom
window getting settled" (59). The narrator’s selection of
the passive to refer to Janie’s non-participation in this
scene--she is seen by others--and the choice of location for
Janie--in the bedroom--illustrates Joe’s expectations of his

wife. Although he seemingly gives Janie the position of

24

presiding over the store, she is to remain in the store--a
way of prohibiting her participation in the talk which
continually occurs on the porch--and to dress better than
the other ladies in the town. "She must look on herself as
the bell-cow, the other women were the gang" (66). This
ostensible high visibility as the best-dressed woman in
town, coming as it does from Jody’s demand that she maintain
a particular image, is actually a means of rendering her
invisible. Further evidence of Joe’s expectations of Janie
and indications that he alone is the talker and dreamer of
the family come as the town selects him mayor. When the
townspeople suggest that "Mrs. Mayor Starks" say a few
words, Joe cuts in to say "'mah wife don't know nothin’
'bout no speech-makin'. Ah never married her for nothin’
lak dat. She's a woman and her place is in the home’" (69).
With this usurpation of Janie's vocal role in the community
and the home, Joe clears the haze from Janie’s eyes as to
her position in his life. "It must have been the way Joe
spoke out without giving her a chance to say anything one
way or another that took the bloom off things" (70).

Joe commandeers the talk in the community and in the
home, leaving Janie ever more stifled in her attempts to use
talk to create and maintain her world. This makes the
sharing of his dialect on the part of the narrator when Joe
first enters the novel particularly apt. It is almost as if
the "big talk" of a Joe Starks encroaches upon and usurps

the narrator's voice as well. Britton states that an

25

individual's representation of a situation results from "two
processes, that of inhennelieing and that of exhernelieing"
and that "at the same time as we are drawing in from the
outside world . . . we are also projecting our own wishes,
our hopes and fears and expectations about the world"
(Lengnege_end_Leenning l4). Janie’s attempts at
externalizing, at projecting her world, are sorely limited
by the efforts of Joe and others to thwart her attempts to
put words to her thoughts. "[TJhe secrets of the female
adolescent," according to Gilligan, "pertain to the
silencing of her own voice, a silencing enforced by the wish
not to hurt others but also by the fear that, in speaking,
her voice will not be heard" (51).

At this point in the novel, the narrator begins to
share the talk of the townspeople, for they too are big
talkers. They gather on the porch and, unlike the
suppressed Janie, are afforded the opportunity to vocalize
their fears, misgivings, and attempts to make reason of this
new world cast in the image of Joe Starks. As the narrator
synthesizes their reactions to the fancy spittoon that Joe
brings to the store, she again slips into their dialect,
moving from the anthropological, poetical narrative voice of
the distant spectator into the informal voice of the
participants themselves.

Said it was a spittoon just like his used-to-be
bossman used to have in his bank up there in
Atlanta. Didn’t have to get up and go to the door
every time he had to spit. Didn’t spit on his

floor neither. Had that golded-up spitting pot
right handy. But he went further than that. He

26
bought a little lady-size spitting pot for Janie
to spit in. Had it right in the parlor with
little sprigs of flowers painted all around the
sides. It took people by surprise because most of
the women dipped snuff and of course had a spit-
cup in the house. But how could they know up-to-
date folks was spitting in flowery little things
like that? It sort of made the rest of them feel
that they had been taken advantage of. . . . It
was like seeing your sister turned into a ’gator.
(75)
Here the narrative voice indicates a blending. The narrator
uses very simple, down to earth, informal language
interspersed with the more colloquial slang and phrasing of
the townspeople. Since these people have their own voices
and therefore their own identities, born of a self-created
reality, those voices creep into the narrative voice,
bringing forth such words and phrases as "used-to-be
bossman," "Didn’t . . . neither," "golded-up," "right
handy," up-to-date," and "’gator," among others. Unlike
Janie, they can create words to fit their thoughts. And
although this voice lacks the poetical tone of some of the
previous narration, it remains much less casual than in the
directly quoted dialogue and in the narrative when it was
overcome with Joe’s dialect.

The narrative voice rests for a short time in this
blend of diction and returns to it again briefly when the
townspeople are shocked when Janie finally stands up to Joe
("It was funny if you looked at it right quick" (1211.), but
for the most part the narrator continues to recount and

comment on events in the more formal, poetic voice.

Particularly noteworthy is the fact that during nearly all

27

the time in Eatonville, from the time of Janie's and Joe's
running off together, until very near the death of Joe, the
narrator never once again shares Joe's voice. She shares
only the voice of the porch-sitting gossipers. The lone
exception to this comes immediately before his death when
the voice of Joe barely enters the third person narrative in
his refusal to see the doctor. "These medical doctors wuz
all right with the Godly sick, but they didn't know a thing
about a case of his" (129). This is not the viewpoint of
the narrator, but rather that of Starks: the sharing,
however, occurs only in the "wuz" and the "Godly sick,"
leaving other words ("these," not "dese") in the narrator’s
diction.

Immediately prior to Joe’s death, the narrator records
an outburst on the part of Janie, a speech quite similar in
tone and unexpectedness to her last words to Logan mentioned
earlier. She resolves to speak this last time, overriding
Joe’s protest and unwillingness to listen to her. "’Ah
ain’t gointuh hush. Naw, you gointuh listen tuh me one time
befo' you die. . . . Ah run off tuh keep house wid you in uh
wonderful way. But you wasn’t satisfied with me de way Ah
was. Naw! Mah own mind had tuh be squeezed and crowded out
tuh make room for yours in me"I (133). For twenty years her
mind, her self, has been pushed aside and has yielded to
Joe’s wishes and dreams and view of the world.

Until the death of Joe, the narrator has shared only

the participant diction of the community and Joe: Janie as

28
yet has had neither a story to tell nor the opportunity to

do so. With Joe gone, Janie is thrust into the community
for the first time. Her self— and world-representation have
depended upon the views forced upon her by others--
particularly Joe Starks--but now she begins the process of
internalizing her own view of the world. Slowly she comes
around to externalizing it through becoming a porch sitter
in her own right. During her six months of mourning, she
spends much time in her own thoughts, thinking of Nanny (and
admitting her hatred of her) and observing Hezekiah's manner
as a replication of the old Joe. After the mourning period,
she turns more to her "kissing friend" Pheoby for talk,
fishing, and relaxation. During this stage of the
narrative, the narrator remains distant, with a rare,
occasional slang word creeping into her voice when Janie’s
thoughts and feelings are being expressed.

In addition to Janie's new movement toward forming her
own view of the world, she also begins to develop a self-
image quite removed from that formerly imposed upon her.
Mary Helen Washington remarks the Janie's search for
identity "begins to take shape as she throws off the false
images" previously prescribed by others (15). Nanny had
informed her that the black woman was "’de mule uh de
world'" (29) and held out the hope that Janie would fulfill
Nanny's "'dreams of whut a woman oughta be and to do'" (31).
Nanny’s limited conception of the possibilities open to a

young black woman serves as her justification for arranging

29

the marriage of Janie and Killicks. Killicks' notion of
Janie's role in marriage is that she "'ain't got no
particular place. It's wherever Ah need yuh" (52). When
she leaves Killicks for Jody, she casts off the confining
garment of her married role with exhilaration.
The morning air was like a new dress. That made
her feel the apron tied around her waist. She
untied it and flung it on a low bush beside the
road and walked on, picking flowers and making a
bouquet. (54)

A major reason for her taking up with Starks is that he
seemed to see her in a new way, as he flatters her that
"'[a] pretty doll-baby lak you is made to sit on de front
porch and rock and fan yo’self and eat p'taters dat other
folks plant just special for you’" (49). However, not only
is Jody soon to effectively stifle Janie's attempts to speak
for herself; he also keeps her physically apart from, and
hence invisible to, the community. As noted earlier, Jody,
like Killicks, decides for Janie where her "proper" place
should be, either in the home or in the store with her hair
covered, and allows her to come out only on special
occasions as a mute "bell cow" (66). The queenly role of
honor he provides for her is antithetical to her finding a
place within the community. Barbara Christian notes Jody's
failure to see Janie as anything more than a suitable spouse
for an up and coming Mayor. "He sees only the mulatta
image. The appropriate one for a man of his stature. He

forcibly installs her as Queen of the Porch and cuts her off

from any real contact with the community. She becomes his

3O
showpiece, his property" (hleek Women Neyelisee 58). In
effect, Jody renders Janie both mute and invisible to the
community, without either a voice or identity she can call
her own.

On the evening of Jody’s funeral, Janie takes an
important first step toward visibility, toward establishing
an image of her own making. Similar to her earlier flinging
off her apron and the role imposed by Killicks, she "burnt
up every one of her head rags and went about the house next
morning with her hair in one thick braid swinging well below
her waist" (137). Fast on the heels of this emancipation of
her hair comes the realization of her hatred for Nanny that
Janie had kept "hidden . . . from herself all these years"
(138). She had long suppressed her feeling, but comes to
understand that,

Nanny had taken the biggest thing God ever made,
the horizon[,] . . . and pinched it into such a
little bit of a thing that she could tie it around
her granddaughter's neck tight enough to choke
her. She hated the old woman who had twisted her
so in the name of love. (138)
Indeed, Nanny, Logan, and Jody had essentially pinched
Janie's image of herself into "such a little bit of a thing"
as well. She was denied the autonomy necessary to fashion
an authentic self. "She found a jewel down inside herself
and she had wanted to walk where people could see her and
gleam it around. But she had been set in the market-place
to sell. Been set for still-bait" (138). Pinched

effectively into an invisible commodity, she was thwarted in

her attempt "to show her shine" (139).

31
Now that Jody is gone, the young, flirtatious Tea Cake

surprises Janie with his interest in her seeing "her shine."
He teases her with his appraisal of her appearance,
something she has not considered for a very long time. "’Ah
betcha you don’t never go tuh de lookin’ glass and enjoy yo’
eyes yo’self. You lets other folks git all de enjoyment out
of ’em 'thouht takin’ in any of it yo'self’" (157). Her
response to this compliment reveals her lack of self-esteem
and satisfaction with her appearance: "’Ah never gazes at
’em in de lookin’ glass. If anybody else gits any pleasure
out of 'em Ah ain't been told about it'" (157). However,
that night, after saying goodbye to Tea Cake for the
evening, "she took a good look at her mouth, eyes and hair"
(160) wondering, perhaps, what Tea Cake could see there. By
the next day, her own self-doubts turn to thoughts of
possibility, as she revives that image of many years ago and
imagines that Tea Cake "could be a bee to a blossom-~a pear
tree blossom in the spring" (161).

The most noticeable initial blending of Janie's voice
and the formal "standard" diction of the aloof narrator
occurs concurrently with this reawakening of her self-
awareness. Tea Cake begins to turn her head, and she doubts
him (as she doubts her own self-worth), which is quite
understandable considering her past experience with men.

He’s just saying anything for the time being,
feeling he's got me so I’ll b'lieve him. The next
thought buried her under tons of cold futility.
He’s trading on being younger than me. Getting

ready to laugh at me for an old fool. But oh,
what wouldn’t I give to be twelve years younger so

32
I could b’lieve him. (159)

In this brief piece of narrative, the narrator takes a step
toward the diction of Janie in the first sentence (and into
her thoughts), then steps back again into a removed
commentary on that exposed thought in the next sentence, and
finally returns to sharing traits with Janie’s voice once
more.

Notice, however, that the narrator is not as yet
completely overcome (as was the case with Joe's introduction
and the voices of the porch sitters) with the voice of
Janie, but merely picks up a word ("b’lieve) or phrasing
("trading on"). This is quite different from the sort of
narrative found in the beginning of Chapter 12 which opens
with the presentation of the townspeople’s reaction to Tea
Cake and Janie enjoying each other’s company so much. "Joe
Starks hadn’t been dead but nine months and here she goes
sashaying off to a picnic in pink linen. Done quit
attending church, like she used to. Gone off to Sanford in
a car with Tea Cake and her all dressed in blue!" (166). In
this excerpt, the narrator's voice is once again submerged
in the voices of the speakers as it had been earlier.
However, in the diction sharing occurring thus far between
the narrator and Janie, it is a matter of a word or two, the
way a sentence is structured, which creeps into the
narrative voice, without the narrative diction surrendering
to the dialect of the spoken words as recorded (and

presented in quotation marks) by the novel’s narrative

33
ethnographer.

Janie has, until now, never completely come into her
own as an internalizing and externalizing being. When Tea
Cake runs off with her 200 dollars, however, her fears for
him--and more importantly for herself--finally break the
surface and the narrator succumbs to her voice.

She had ten dollars in her pocket and twelve
hundred in the bank. But oh God, don't let Tea
Cake be off somewhere hurt and Ah not know nothing
about it. And God, please suh, don't let him love
nobody else but me. Maybe Ah’m is uh fool, Lawd,
lak dey say, but Lawd, Ah been so lonesome, and Ah
been waitin’, Jesus. Ah done waited uh long time.
(180)
Like a dam breaking, the words and feelings just cascade
out, overpowering both Janie and the narrator--her
personhood has been stoppered up for so long. The
alteration of the first person pronoun to "Ah" is the most
telling feature here: up to this point Janie's self has been
suppressed, but now she has a personalized existence as an
"Ah." Similarly, when Tea Cake is out gambling in order to
win back Janie's money, she again fears for his safety and
the narrative voice alters once again. "She better not hear
none of them old backbiters talking about he; husband!
Please, Jesus, don't let them nasty niggers hurt her boy.
If they do, Master Jesus, grant her a good gun and a chance
to shoot ’em" (188-89).

The subsequent chapters follow Janie’s bud's belated

flowering. In the company of Tea Cake, Janie begins to

experience love, life, and community as her old suppressed

self is replaced by her growing, blossoming self. After Tea

34
Cake returns home with his winnings and repays Janie her 200
dollars, the narrator describes the rebirth of her soul
through her love for Tea Cake: "He drifted off into sleep
and Janie looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love.
So her soul crawled out from its hiding place" (192).

In Belle Glade, she begins to find her voice and to
create a place for herself in the community. "The men held
big arguments here like they used to do on the store porch.
Only here, she could listen and laugh and even talk some
herself if she wanted to. She got so she could tell big
stories herself from listening to the rest" (200).4 Missy
Dehn Kubitschek accurately notes the importance of Janie’s
active participation in the creation of these stories:

These storytelling sessions are crucial to
community unity and self-definition, since they
generate and develop communal tradition.
Participation in this process is also crucial for
the individual’s self-definition, since communal
traditions define available roles. Janie’s
previous passivity, enforced by Jody and by her
own avoidance of a confrontation with him, locks
her into a fixed role. (112)

Returning for a moment to Gilligan’s study may help
explain the course Janie followed in gaining authenticity as
a participant. Gilligan notes that "[i]ntimacy goes along
with identity, as the female comes to know herself as she is
known, through her relationships with others" (12). Janie’s
successful intimacy with Tea Cake afforded her the
opportunity to blossom in ways that her previously thwarted
attempts at intimacy did not allow. Also noteworthy is the

intimacy, limited though it might be, she experiences with

35

the Belle Glade community. In Eatonville, even after Joe's
death, she was Mrs. Mayor Starks; Joe brought her to town as
silent baggage and a dependable servant, and since she was
not allowed to contribute to the creation of the community,
her role was defined for her. Janie arrives at Belle Glade
in the company of a man she can play, laugh, and talk (as
well as disagree and fight) with. According to Rachel Blau
DuPlessis, "the romance plot becomes communitarian and Janie
[becomes] a multiple individual through Tea Cake's love.
Through Tea Cake, Janie becomes one with the black folk
community; indeed marrying Tea Cake is a way of marrying the
community" (157). In the process of her intimate
relationship with Tea Cake and the Belle Glade community,
Janie experiences the freedom to become, to create, her own
person and to participate in community activities.

As the narrative continues, it occasionally utilizes
features of all the characters' dialects, intermixing
elements of their idioms with the formal, poetic voice of
the narrator. When reporting action and events, the
narrator's voice is usually formal and poetic in tone; when
thoughts and words are synthesized for retelling, the idiom
of the thinkers and speakers is integrated into the
narrative voice. The inclusion of the language of the
characters within the narration indicates participation on
the part of the narrator; she seems to share an intimacy
with the community and the people who comprise it. The

reader, too, is brought closer to the story, and yet, the

36

"standard" idiom of the poetic narrator allows the reader to
trust the observations and evaluations--even the selection
of retold events--she presents.

Much of the critical controversy and uncertainty
surrounding Their Eyes Were Watching God stems from
legitimate concerns about the nature of the narrator's
identity. Upon initial examination of the narrative, one
might expect to find convincing evidence to support a
reasonable assumption that the narrator is Pheoby, Janie's
"kissing friend," to whom she entrusts her tale and to whose
judgment Janie leaves the decision as to whether or not the
townspeople should ever hear it. "'Ah don’t mean to bother
wid tellin' ’em nothin’, Pheoby. Tain't worth de trouble.
You can tell 'em what Ah say if you wants to'" (17).
However, such a supposition is inaccurate and false. If one
is to believe that the newly participatory Janie continues
to grow into selfhood, as the ending of the novel seems to
indicate--"Of course he [Tea Cake] wasn’t dead. He could
never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and
thinking. The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and
light against the wall. Here was peace. She pulled in her
horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the
waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much
of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and
see" (286)--the ethnographic recorder and transcriber
appears to be the storyteller, Janie.5

Finally coming into her own as a participant, the next

 

37

step for Janie on her passage to self-definition and
visibility is the move to spectatorship. As Hurston said of
her own experience in the quote from Mules and hen noted
earlier, Janie’s experiences with life--with wearing the
tight-fitting "chemise"--occur first, and out of that
immersion in the talk and events of her culture and
community comes the participant role. However, the ability
to see herself as "somebody else and stand off and look at
my garment" and to make evaluations and comments upon her
life, culture, and community, requires a necessary movement
to the role of the spectator. Britton comments on these
roles, saying,
As participants we generate expectations from past
experience, put them to the test of actuality, and
modify our representation of the world (our
predictive apparatus, the basis of all our
expectations) in the light of what happens. . . .
Events do not wait for us, so we participate as
best we can, but when the experience is over we
are left with a positive need to take up the role

of spectator and work upon it further--in order,
as we say, ’to come to terms with it.’ (Lengnege

W 118)
Although it may seem that the narration of the novel

follows a progression of voice from spectator to
participant, it should be noted that the story begins near
the end--that is, with the return of Janie from her journey
into the world of the dreams of men which eventually brought
her to the creation of her own dreams. In fact, the process
actually follows the opposite progression. The story as
Janie tells it to Pheoby--those two and a half pages in

Chapter 2--is primarily in the voice of the participant. As

38
Britton puts it, "When we use language in the participant

role we select and order our material according to the
demands made by something outside ourselves, something that
exists in the situation" (Lengnege and Learning 124). These
demands on Janie as participant arise from the curiosity of
Pheoby and the Eatonville inhabitants Pheoby represents.

But the story as told to ghe readen has been carefully
sifted through by the narrator and has been reshaped in the
voice of the spectator narrator in order to meet the needs
and requirements of the narrator--Janie herself--and in
order to share it with the wider community of the world at
large. "But in language in the role of spectator we operate
on a different principle. We select and arrange our
material first to please ourselves: and secondly, not to
please other people but to enable others to share our
pleasure" (Lengnage end Learning 124).

Moreover, the blending of idioms which occurs in the
narrative voice indicates the deeply personal involvement
(participation) that the narrator experiences in the
retelling.6 The growth and strength that was necessary for
Janie to return to Eatonville in order to tell her story
and, in so doing, to demonstrate her acquiring a voice and
an identity much different from the self she left with,
indicate the new sense of self-identity and community-
identity which would quite probably lead to her development
of the spectator, narrator role in retelling her story for

her own pleasure. Janie has finally been able to create her

39

own representation of the world; she has availed herself of
the opportunity to internalize and externalize her
experience. Furthermore, her "coming to terms" with her
experiences as a participant leads her to select and arrange
the material to meet her own needs as an authentic recorder,
spectator, and ethnographer of the culture which she at last

has helped to create.

NOTES

1 Missy Dehn Kubitschek observes that Janie "discovers
her own soul only through the art of storytelling" and
similarly criticizes Darwin T. Turner for "overlooking the
frame story" (109). Wendy J. McCredie notes that the novel
"is a many voiced text that constantly folds in upon itself"
(25), while Maria Tai Wolff argues that "The text, the
story, is the narrator’s: Through Janie's story, the
narrator tells another" (33). Elizabeth A. Meese similarly
discusses the relationship between Janie’s storytelling and
the frame narrative and draws attention to the importance of
language to Janie’s growth: "By transforming Janie’s
orality--Hurston’s intertexts--into textuality, the writer
creates both herself as a writer and her own story, while
Janie creates her life through language" (44).

For Holloway's discussion of the vocal blending in
Their Eyee Wene Watehing Gog, see especially 47-73.

Holloway contends in an observation applicable to all
of Hurston’s writings that "[t]he disembodied nature of the
narrative voice gives it a kind of Faulknerian purpose: it
presides over the activity of the novel, it is omniscient,
and it functions as a link between the conscious and visible
activity of the novel and unconscious, passive awareness"
(51-5 ).

i In contrast to this view of the importance of Janie’s
storytelling, Jennifer Jordan complains that the claim of
feminist critics "that Janie’s growing abilities to express
her feelings and to tell a story make her an artist is
tempered by the narrative structure of Their Eyes Wene
flehching gog" (114). Jordan cites the third person
narrative and the fact that the reader is not allowed either
to hear Janie tell the porch stories or defend herself at
the trial following Tea Cake's death, but only the beginning

40

and the end of her story to Pheoby. "At moments when
Hurston could have given Janie the chance to prove her skill
as a wordsmith we are not allowed to hear her voice" (114).

Robert B. Stepto similarly identifies the third person
narration as the novel’s "one great flaw." Hurston’s
failure to utilize Janie as a first person narrator of her
own story "implies," for Stepto, "that Janie has not really
won hgr voice and self after all" (166).

It's interesting to note that in this final scene of
Janie wrapping herself in the horizon as if it were indeed a
garment itself demonstrates intimacy with her dream, as
alluded to in the opening paragraphs of the novel. The
horizon, like herself, is no longer "pinched" into something
small. Gilligan claims that "male and female voices
typically speak of the importance of different truths, the
former of the role of separation as it defines and empowers
the self, the latter of the ongoing process of attachment
that creates and sustains the human community" (156).
According to Gilligan, a woman, instead of separating
herself from the community, "locates herself in relation to
the world" (35). Janie has merged her development as an
intimate being with her striving for identity.

Holloway explains the blend of voices in linguistic
terms. She says that in all of Hurston’s works "[t]he
narrator, as the deep structure of the novel, represents the
underlying competence of a character who is eventually
brought to a realization of self. The character, as the
surface structure, only externally participates in the text
until this level of self-knowledge is attained. Hurston
does not allow a character's underlying competence to be
exhibited until, through a series of activities that
structure the literary areas of plot and theme, he comes to
a degree of self-knowledge that matches the narrative
understanding of him" (52). In my argument, the fact that
Janie is the spectator narrator writing the story of her own
failures and successes as a participant helps explain this
shared knowledge on the part of the narrator and the central
character.

Chapter Two
Invisible Writing:

Ellison’s Invisible Man Illuminates and Defines His Form

Ralph Ellison's Tnyieihle_hen depicts the struggle of a
young black man attempting to see both himself and others
with clarity and desiring to be seen by others for what and
who he is. The events of the novel eventually lead him to
discover and understand his invisibility in the eyes of
those he once believed were better equipped to see him than
he was prepared to see himself. For the reader he remains
unnamed, but during the course of his adventures, he is
repeatedly named and identified in the image of others.
This surrender of the autonomy of self-definition and self-
identity keeps him invisible and perpetually on the run--if
only on a treadmill heading nowhere--and, therefore,
powerless. Although, through his heartfelt oratory, he
sometimes comes close to "finding" himself, it is by way of
the act of writing his adventures and chronicling his
naivete, blindness, and invisibility that he attains sight
and visibility, and--in the process--identity and voice.
However, before that process can begin, the invisible man,
like Janie, must first place some distance between himself

and the experiences of his life.

41

42

When Ellison's narrator first introduces himself to the
reader in the Prologue, he immediately confesses his
invisibility. It’s not, as he says, because he lacks
substance, but rather "because of a peculiar disposition of
the eyes of those with whom I come in contact" (3). Those
who might, but "refuse" to, see him are able to "see only my
surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination"
(3). Regardless of the few advantages of his invisible
state-~such as his rent-free apartment cellar home and his
siphoned off energy from Monopolated Power and Light--he is
not content to remain invisible. One of the reasons for
illegally acquiring the electricity to light his 1,369
incandescent light bulbs is to give shape to his substance,
visibility to the being that others fail to see. "Without
light I am not only invisible, but formless as well" (7).
For the invisible man the notion of light is tied in with
illumination--in the sense of enlightenment and
understanding--as well as visibility. He calls for "more
and brighter light," because "[t]he truth is the light and
the light is the truth" (7).

Truth, like visibility, depends upon the sight of
others as well as his own ability (or inability) to see.
The chapters which follow the Prologue, devoted as they are
to an exposition (an exposure to the light, if you will) of
the events that brought him to his "hole" beneath the city,
portray the lack of illumination, understanding, and

enlightenment due to his own inability to see and his

43

continued reliance upon the blindness and distorted vision
of those who attempt to offer him direction and provide him
with their own sense of truth.

His first chapter begins with an admission that he "was
naive" because he had spent the last twenty years "looking
for something . . . . I was looking for myself, and asking
everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could
answer" (15). His "looking" entails sight directed outward
from himself, a crippling dependence upon the vision of
others. If we were to say that instead of looking within
himself he looked without, the word "without" provides a
perhaps more fitting appraisal of the leeh involved in his
rather hollow search.

In the scene which soon follows of the battle royal,
the invisible man’s eyes, like those of his nine fellow
combatants, are covered with blindfolds. For much of the
battle, the ten black youths strike blindly at one another
for the "entertainment" of the white men who urge them on.
When the battle winds down to two opponents--the invisible
man and Tatlock--the invisible man offers Tatlock a bribe to
take a fall. His insistence on winning serves as further
indication of the invisible man's belief that in order to
garner the support of the whites he must defeat his own
race. Had his objective been merely to cease the fighting
and the degradation before the crowd, he could have offered
Tatlock money to allow himself to take a convincing fall.

However, the invisible man wishes to be (if only for

44

appearance's sake) the victor. Perhaps he believes that he
must win in order to move to the evening's next event which
he supposes is the delivery of his speech, but his real
concern is the way he appears in the eyes of the white men
who incite them.

Once the battle ends with Tatlock’s victory, there is
the unanticipated next step of frantically groping for
coins, some of which are worthless advertising tokens, upon
the electrified carpet. Here too the competition is stiff;
garnering the most wealth is another way for the black man
to earn the "respect" of the whites. Yet, when that portion
of the "entertainment" has ended, the boys are ushered out
of the room and sent home. To the invisible man's pleasure
and relief he is called back to give his speech for which he
receives a briefcase and a scholarship to the Negro college.

The major components of the battle royal--blacks kept
blinded and fighting amongst themselves, degradation of
blacks as a means of both entertaining white audiences and
reinforcing their notion of blacks as uncivilized brutes,
and laughing tolerance of black speech when it appears
harmless and humble--are repeated again and again during the
course of the novel.1 This first occurrence of the battle
royal leads to the invisible man's being sent off to the
Negro college.

In one of the very rare occasions in which the
experienced narrator of the Prologue intrudes upon the

usually innocent voice of the youthful invisible man, he

45

describes, with a mixture of elegiac longing and biting
irony, the beauty and splendor of the college campus. At
the center of the campus stands the statue of the college
Founder, who seemingly is in the act of lifting a veil which
obscures the vision of the slave who kneels at his feet.

The narrator is swept back in time again to his innocent
state when in wide-eyed wonder he stands "puzzled, unable to
decide whether the veil is really being lifted, or lowered
more firmly in place; whether I am witnessing a revelation
or a more efficient blinding" (36). The ambiguous nature of
the Founder’s statue is further developed in the alternating
revelations and blindings which follow.

While the invisible man awaits word from Dr. Bledsoe,
the college president, as to the punishment he must endure
for taking Mr. Norton, one of the white Trustees of the
college, to the black slums on the outskirts of the campus,
he first sits through a speech by the Reverend Barbee. In
this oration, Barbee builds up the self-sacrifice and
accomplishments of the Founder to mythic proportions. He
portrays Bledsoe in this highly flattering light as the
fitting recipient of the burden of the continuing operation
of the college as the mythic torch of leadership is passed
from the dying Founder to Bledsoe the favorite "son."

Before Barbee's speech, the invisible man fails to see him
up there on the platform next to Bledsoe. "My eyes had
focused only upon the white men and Dr. Bledsoe" (116). To

the invisible man, in the light (or shadow) of the white

46

Trustees and Dr. Bledsoe, who, although a black man, wields
a power matched only by that of whites, an unknown black man
like Barbee is invisible. (The invisible man soon shows his
ignorance when he asks the boy sitting next to him who this
Barbee is and receives a "look of annoyance, almost of
outrage" [121].)

Nevertheless, the room soon swells with Barbee’s loaded
rhetoric as he adds to the legend of the Founder and, by
association, Dr. Bledsoe as well. Ironically juxtaposed as
a frame around this homily are two revelations. Prior to
the speech, the narrator recalls that part of Bledsoe's
legend is that his first job at the college was that of
"feeding slop to the hogs but [he] had made himself the best
slop dispenser in the history of the school" (114). The
impression on the reader is that such a humble beginning
prepared Bledsoe perfectly for his "slop dispensing" job as
president. When Barbee concludes his speech, which relies
heavily on the things Barbee has witnessed at the side of
these two great men, the invisible man assumes his eyes are
newly open: "Old Barbee had made me see the vision" (131).
However, as Barbee steps back from the lectern to regain his
seat, he trips over Bledsoe's legs and sprawls on to his
hands and knees. Then the invisible man sees "the blinking
of sightless eyes. Homer A. Barbee was blind" (131). From
the blindness of the "vision" brought to the invisible man's
eyes to the revelation of the blindness of the purveyor of

that vision, it would seem that revealed truth is only as

47

true as the eyes that perceive it. This is but one of many
occasions in which Ellison shows that those who ostensibly
lift the veil from the invisible man's eyes, in actuality
more carefully secure it. Or, as the narrator puts it in
the opening lines of Chapter 1, he undergoes "much painful
boomeranging of my expectations" (15).

Further pairing of revelation and blindness occurs when
the invisible man receives harsh treatment from Dr. Bledsoe
for showing Mr. Norton the harsher side of Negro life by
taking him past the old slave cabins to speak with Trueblood
(of whom the college community is greatly ashamed) and to
the Golden Day, where institutionalized shell-shocked vets
take periodic retreats in the company of their attendants.
Behavior that the invisible man thought was the only
acceptable form, namely doing the white trustee’s bidding,
turns out to cost him his place in the college. The
invisible man is quite perplexed when, in words that echo
his grandfather's cryptic deathbed exhortation "to overcome
'em with yeses, undermine ’em with grins, agree 'em to death
and destruction, let 'em swoller you till they vomit or bust
wide open" (16), Dr. Bledsoe bawls him out for having taken
Norton where Norton wanted to go instead of using his
"mother wit" and humility to deceive Norton into thinking he
wanted no such thing. Bledsoe admits the way he acquired
his power (a far cry from the dignified and saintly story
contained in the Barbee speech): "'I had to be strong and

purposeful to get where I am. I had to wait and plan and

48

lick around . . . Yes, I had to act the nigger!’" (141). As

Edward Margolies has observed,
[Bledsoe] informs the hero that he would not have
achieved his exalted position had he not played
along with the white man’s Negro fantasies and
cleverly manipulated these psychoses to acquire
power for himself. He has the facility, he says,
of making the white man do his bidding by
insinuating his ideas into the white man’s
fantasies. Thus Bledsoe, despite his abject and
humble exterior, is one of the most powerful men
in the south, who sustains a vested interest in
keeping the Negro invisible. (130)

Bledsoe's insistence on the insignificance of the
invisible man's existence--his invisibility--and Bledsoe's
revelation of his power over the whites, surprise and
confuse the invisible man. "'You're nobody,'" Bledsoe tells
him. "'You don't exist--can't you see that? The white folk
tell everybody what to think--except men like me. I tell
them: that’s my life, telling white folk how to think about
the things I know about. Shocks you, doesn't it? Well,
that’s the way it is’" (141). This revelation that humility
is merely a cover for an unseen power strikes the invisible
man as terribly disconcerting. Moreover, Bledsoe further
shocks him by confessing the drastic measures he would be
willing to take in order to retain his power: "’I’ll have
every Negro in the country hanging on tree limbs by morning
if it means staying where I am'" (141).

These admissions and revelations take the invisible man
by surprise; he’s been taken in by Bledsoe's seeming

humility to the whites and by the cliche that "white is

right": therefore, these new "truths" seem just too much to

49

bear. The problem is that the invisible man believes truth
is something that will protect him; Bledsoe, however, is
telling him that truth--particularly telling Norton the
truth about how Bledsoe is expelling him from the college--
can only work against the desires of one so invisible and
powerless as he is. The invisible man’s disillusionment is
so overpowering that he is forced, for his own self
protection, to tune Bledsoe out.

But I no longer listened, nor saw more than the

play of light upon the metallic disks of his

glasses, which now seemed to float within the

disgusting sea of his words. Truth, truth, what

was truth? Nobody I knew, not even my own mother,

:guld believe me if I tried to tell them. (141-

For the invisible man it's as if his world has

collapsed. At the close of this eventful interview, he
stumbles out the door, vomits "[a]lmost a total
disembowelment," and when he looks into the sky he sees a
"double-imaged moon. My eyes were out of focus. I started
toward my room, covering one eye with my hand to avoid
crashing into trees and lampposts projected into my path"
(143). With his vision thus distorted, one eye covered, and
his thoughts whirling through his head, he decides that he
will shoulder the blame for his actions and leave the
college as quickly as possible. These revelations of
Bledsoe’s deserve a full-sighted, clear-headed
consideration, not the cursory acceptance of a one-eyed

glance (lacking in depth perception and binocular

perspective), but unfortunately the invisible man is ill-

50
equipped to adjust his vision to such seemingly shocking

incongruities.

Foreshadowed in the invisible man’s monocular view of
the world is Brother Jack’s later dramatic revelation of his
glass eye. While taking the invisible man to task for his
participation in Tod Clifton’s funeral, Jack theatrically
plops his eye into a glass of water as a means of
demonstrating his selfless dedication to the Brotherhood and
in order to shame the invisible man into continued blind
obedience. "He was gloating now, holding up the eye in the
glass as though it were a medal of merit" (464). Following
as it does on the heels of Jack’s telling him "'We do not
shape our policies to the mistaken and infantile notions of
the man in the street. Our job is not to eeh them what they
think but to hell them!’" (462), the effect this action has
on the invisible man is quite similar to that of Bledsoe's
admission. First, he recoils in horror: then he leaps to
the insightful conclusion that the meaning of discipline is
"sacrifice . . . yes, and blindness; he doesn’t see me. He
doesn’t even see me" (464; ellipsis is the author’s). Here
is the invisible man, more than 300 pages since Bledsoe
informed him that he doesn’t exist, finally, the reader
thinks, coming to understand his invisibility in the eyes of
those in power, be they white, black, brother, or other.
However, this "understanding" is accompanied by confusion.
The invisible man’s thoughts are a jumble, racing through

his head:

51

Discipline. Is learning, didn’t he say? Is it?

I stand? You're sitting here, ain't I? You’re
holding on, ain’t I? He said you’d learn so
you're learning, so he saw it all the time. He's
a riddler, shouldn't we show him? So sit still is
the way, and learn, never mind the eye, it's dead
. . . All right now, look at him turning now,
left, right, coming short-legged toward you. See
him, hep! hep! the one-eyed beacon. All right,
all right . . . Hep, hep! The short-legged
deacon. All right! Nail him! The short-changing
dialectical deacon . . . All right. There, so
now you’re learning . . . Get it under control . .
. Patience . . . Yes . . . . (465: ellipses are
the author's.)

The invisible man’s bewilderment results in his
separation of himself in this internal dialogue into two
selves: the "I" and the "he." Again, the truths the
invisible man has based his life upon come toppling down
around him and, without something solid to grasp, he is
impotent. The narrative continues:

I looked at him again as for the first time . . .
. I looked at him carefully now . . . with the
feeling that I was just awakening from a dream. I
had boomeranged around. (465)
However, this is not the first, nor the last, of the
invisible man’s boomeranging experiences. And in this case,
when he takes the antagonist role, his voice dripping with
sarcasm, telling Jack "’maybe you’ll recommend me to your
oculist . . . then I may not-see myself as others see-me-
not’" (466), he still does not realize how inadequate his
own eyesight is, whether directed outwardly or within. He
resolves to fight, but since he is not kicked out of the
Brotherhood as he had been booted from college, he is
determined to retain his position--"it was the only

historically meaningful life that I could live. If I left

52
it, I'd be nowhere" (467). However, remaining within this

crippling organization, one in which he is not paid to think
but to act according to the wishes of others, keeps him
impotent and renders meaningless what little power he thinks
he has accrued.

Shortly thereafter, the invisible man, pursued by two
of Ras’ henchmen, dons the sunglasses and hat disguise in
which he finds himself magically "transformed" into
Rinehart. In his discovery of the many people this Rinehart
seems to be--gambler, numbers runner, pimp, minister, lady’s
man-~the invisible man once again shows his naivete when he
misses the point. He thinks that Rinehart has seized the
possibilities of being, and perhaps there is some truth to
that, but the invisible man’s being mistaken for Rinehart is
actually further evidence of his own invisibility. Where
before he was judged falsely because of the color of his
skin, now he is additionally judged on the attire he wears.
Admittedly, the treatment he receives seems to be better,
but in neither situation is his self, his essential being,
taken into consideration. In fact, he has a difficult time
persuading a young hooker that he is nee Rinehart, and that,
in light of the intimacy the prostitute supposes with
Rinehart, serves as evidence of Rinehart’s own invisibility.
One has no reason to suppose that Rinehart is aware of what
the invisible man’s involvement in these cases of mistaken
identity allegedly indicates about Rinehart's nature. What

the invisible man should learn from this experience--that

53

one’s invisibility can become a potent force against those
who oppress him--does not fully occur to him until he falls
into his hole and begins to light his way by setting fire to
and destroying the many tokens of his own Rinehart-like (in
the sense that they are imposed from without) identities.
These are mistaken identities in two ways. On one
hand, they are superimposed upon him by those who either see
him in a false light (e.g. Norton's supposition that the
invisible man is his fate; Brockway’s assumption that the
invisible man is after his knowledge, job and power; Mary's
conjecture that he will be a standard bearer for his race)
or see him with poor vision (e.g. Bledsoe’s near-sightedness
as evidenced by his eyeglasses and his appraisal of the
invisible man in his letters of "recommendation," Brother
Jack's monocular view of the black race and its place). On
the other hand, these identities are taken on by an
inexperienced, naive, unaware invisible man (mis-taken).
The invisible man's complicity in his own oppression--his
being kept running and his remaining invisible--is what he
fails to see until he falls into his hole, or, as he more
accurately portrays it, saw "the hole I was in" (559).2 As
Ellison has remarked, "Part of his problem was a refusal to
demand that people see him for what he wanted to be.
Always, he was accommodating" (Going te the Tenrihony 59).
His final accommodation occurs when he thinks that he
will at last take his grandfather's deathbed advice and

embrace the tactic of overcoming his enemies with yeses. He

54

had witnessed its successful execution in the seeming
humility of Bledsoe and determines, after being boomeranged
by Jack and the Brotherhood, that he must fight from within
the organization. "I didn’t know what my grandfather had
meant, but I was ready to test his advice" (497). Thinking
that he is going to agree them to death and destruction, his
accommodation-—for example, falsely filing reports of
neighborhood support for the Brotherhood--will, he believes,
somehow be a method of wielding power. Instead, his
accommodation affirms for the reader how little the
invisible man has learned and the way he continually refuses
to demand that others see him as he wishes to be seen.

When, under the guise of trying to spy on the enemy, he
courts Sybil in hOpes of learning some important Brotherhood
secrets, he surrenders to her false image of a black man.
Surprised to discover that that she wants to be raped by a
big, black buck, he conforms, even if he creates only an
illusion of a rape committed, to her expectations. He
thinks to himself, "What does she think you are? A
domesticated rapist, obviously, an expert on the woman
question. Maybe that's what you are, house-broken and with
a convenient verbal push-button arrangement for the ladies’
pleasure" (510). His "yesing" of Sybil, even if he fools
her into only ehinhing she has been "raped" by him, further
reinforces a racist stereotype. Because he still sees the
world in terms of absolute values-~such as black and white,

light and dark-—he is unable to see the sophisticated

55

nuances that lie between yes and no. Therefore his
embracing of the one becomes an acceptance of the other; his
attempt to step around the stereotype of the animalistic
black buck by creating the illusion of rape further instills
the stereotype in Sybil's mind.

Similarly, what he supposes is a betrayal of the
Brotherhood is instead a betrayal of Harlem. As Harlem
erupts in fighting and destruction--a final appearance of
the battle royal as the blacks are kept fighting among
themselves for the amusement of the whites--he realizes that
"By pretending to agree I heg indeed agreed, had made myself
responsible for that huddled form lighted by flame and
gunfire in the street, and all the others whom now the night
was making riper for death" (541). His yeses supplied to
the Brotherhood (as well as to Sybil), false as they may
have been, eeeneg to be true and that was enough.
Acquiescence in word was compliance in deed.

The invisible man--boomeranged repeatedly in his quest
for identity by the dominant culture, his own people, and
the Brotherhood, all who (with the exception of Ras) accept
the notion that white is right--fails to see himself and
others clearly. Moreover, as Ellison has stressed, he fails
to demand that others see him for who he is and who he
desires to be. The veil remains firmly in place before his
eyes throughout the narrative, with the notable exception of
the Prologue and Epilogue. On each occasion in which it

appears that the veil is briefly raised, thus allowing the

56

invisible man to see beyond the fabric, the invisible man's
concern with the fabric before him instead of the reality
beyond the veil keeps his sight confined and myopic.
Furthermore, as with the slave in the statue of the Founder,
the veil thus held before the invisible man's eyes not only
obscures his vision, but keeps those who encounter him from
seeing him as well, as demonstrated in his brief "role" as
Rinehart. The invisible man's simple-hearted insights into
his plight render him as sightless before his fall into his
hole as he was when Chapter 1 began. Each conclusion the
invisible man naively forms as the result of what he assumes
is yet another illuminating discovery convincingly
underscores his blindness and his invisibility in the eyes
of those he encounters in his adventures.

The invisible man, then, is like the blind man,
grappling with yet another portion of.the elephant's
anatomy, supposing and assuming that a mere part (or even
the sum of them after repeated repositionings and subsequent
encounters) will reveal the whole. But his memory, like his
vision, is faulty. As each new aspect of the white race and
his place in the society is revealed to him, he allows that
facet to supersede and replace the previous aspect. The
invisible man responds to each illumination as if that
discovery were the answer itself rather than a piece of the
puzzle. Like a stone sent skipping upon the sea, he merely
skims the surface of events, until he finally plops into his

hole and in the darkness begins to see with clarity and

57

precision where he has been and how he was sent skimming.

Whereas during the course of the novel, for the reader the
invisible man remains unnamed, never once providing an
identifying name for himself and hence remaining anonymous,
he is repeatedly named by others. Beginning with degrading
terms like "shine," "samba," and "nigger" at the battle
royal, through acquiring his Brotherhood name, to becoming
in others' eyes--by his donning the disguising hat and
sunglasses-~Rinehart, the invisible man’s journey comes full
circle as he is termed a "boogy," "goddam black nigger
sonofabitch," and "nigger in the coal pile" as he stumbles
into his hole. The question Ellison poses is, how can the
invisible man he anyone when everyone he encounters projects
personality traits and stereotypical racial characteristics
upon him? Grandfather, Bledsoe, Norton, the fat vet,
Brockway, Mary, Brother Jack, Ras, and Sybil, among others,
all suppose that they can readily identify the invisible
man. When he slips into sunglasses and a hat, he finds
himself transformed into a multi-personalitied Rinehart.

Yet who he feels or desires himself to be goes ignored by
these identifiers.

Norton tells the invisible man that he is Norton’s
destiny, yet the invisible man wonders how that can be when
"you don’t even know my name" (45). The irony lies in the
fact that the reader likewise lacks any means of identifying

the invisible man. However, the narrator seems to confess

58

to being identified by Norton (and other white men) as he
refers several times to "following the white line" (of the
highway) as he chauffeurs Norton about the campus and into
the Negro slums. In the narration which follows his
expulsion from college, the narrator's remarks indicate his
blind submission to the white line and his shock at being
punished for his obedience.

I had kept unswervingly to the path placed before

me, had tried to be exactly what I was expected to

be, had done exactly what I was expected to do--

yet, instead of winning the expected reward, here

I was stumbling along, holding desperately to one

of my eyes. (144)
He finds himself losing what he had earlier termed "the only
identity I had ever known" (97), which may explain why he
later feels it so important to retain his Brotherhood
identity--yet another one forged for him by others--rather
than return to anonymity. Brother Jack and the Brotherhood
provide the invisible man with a means of becoming the
speaker that he always wanted to be, but he must do so
identified by a name which they supply. The power of the
namer over the named appears obvious when Jack reveals that
he and the Brotherhood furnish all ideas for the speech-
maker.

But the invisible man fails to see that with eny name
he is anonymous in this culture. After the paint factory
accident, the invisible man loses the ability to recall his
own name. The hospital personnel repeatedly quiz him on his

identity, his own and his mother's name, but he fails to

recall it. This is perfectly fitting as they have claimed

59
to make him a "new man" and even to create new memories for
him. Yet when he is released and is asked for the last
time "’What is your name?’" he is not given adequate time to
respond before the "tall austere-looking man in a white
coat" says, "'Oh here, I have it'" (240). By "owning" his
name, others control his identity. The power of naming
becomes evident in the invisible man's response: "I heard
myself say, 'Oh!’ as a pain stabbed through my head and I
shot to my feet and looked wildly around me and sat down and
got up and down again very fast, remembering" (240). This
denial by others of the invisible man's arriving at his own
identity in his own good time serves as but one example of
the ways in which those who name him control him. His
response to the sound of his name, his suddenly shooting up
and sitting back down, seems puppet—like. Like the Sambo
doll that Tod Clifton later sells and gives his life for,
the invisible man is without self-control, dependent for his
movements and actions on the jerking of his string--
something both whites and blacks are willing to do for him.
The fat vet at the Golden Day points out to Norton and
the invisible man both the invisible man’s situation and his
inability to fathom it.
"You see," he said turning to Mr. Norton, "he has
eyes and ears and a good distended African nose,
but he fails to understand the simple facts of
life. Understand, Understand? It’s worse than
that. He registers with his senses but short-
circuits his brain. Nothing has meaning. He
takes it in but he doesn’t digest it. Already he
is--well, bless my soul! Behold! a walking

zombie! Already he’s learned to repress not only
his emotions but his humanity. He's invisible, a

6O
walking personification of the Negative, the most

perfect achievement of your dreams, sir! The

mechanical man!" (92)
The vet understands that the invisible man thinks in terms
of absolutes. The invisible man’s reaction to the allegedly
positive power of whites is to see himself as a negative,
the opposite and lesser image, and in his blindness he is
unable to digest these "simple facts of life." The vet
realizes that the invisible man, like others of his race,
"’believes in that great false wisdom taught slaves and
pragmatists alike, that white is right'" (94). As long as
this false wisdom, these polarities of white versus black,
right versus wrong, prevails in the hearts of blacks as well
as whites, it will persist in the society. Hence the
invisible black thread which controls the mechanical,
automaton-like actions of Tod Clifton's Sambo doll. The
manipulation of the puppet-like invisible man stems not only
from the visible machinations of the whites, but from the
invisible collusion of the black race in his dominance as
well. Yet the mimicry of the invisible man's actions
embodied in the dancing doll--the ever-smiling two faces,
the uncontrollable jerking about by the invisible thread--
are as yet still beyond his comprehension, beyond the
"digestion" of his accommodating and short-circuiting brain.
Hartmut K. Selke recognizes the invisible man’s continued
blindness to his actions in that, with the image of the
dancing doll, "Clifton is holding up a mirror to him, in

which, however, he fails to see himself" (203).

61
The invisible man’s fervent belief in the dictum that

white is right--and the ancillary, "if you’re black, stay
back"--and his failure to see the invisible black thread
lead to an unquestioning willingness to conform to the
wishes of whites and mold himself in the cast of black
models. He never aspires to being a Norton, or a Kimbro, or
a Brother Jack. Instead he aspires to becoming a Bledsoe, a

Founder, or a Booker T. Washington.3

No wonder, then, that
he--like Norton and Bledsoe-~18 so appalled at the audacity
of the fat vet and his outspoken, fearlessness in the face
of Norton. It’s not that the vet speaks like a white man
instead of a black man, but that he speaks like a man, a
human being, rather than in the image of either role model
regardless of color. The vet clearly does not know his
place: he neither conforms to "the white line" nor responds
to the invisible black thread. The invisible man recoils
from the autonomy and fearlessness of the vet, who dares to
see and be himself. The invisible man likely feels as
Bledsoe does: "’A Negro like that should be under lock and
key'" (138), and Bledsoe apparently acts swiftly to remove
this threat to the college because the invisible man next
finds the vet on the train headed north.

On the train, the vet again tries to explain the nature
of the invisible man’s invisible state to him, but without
success. The invisible man is ill-equipped to fathom the

vet's exhortations to him that he "'come out of the fog,'"

"'play the game, but don't believe in it,'" and "'[b]e your

62

own father'" (151, 154). The vet’s suggestions about
playing the game echo Grandfather's death bed advice, but
the invisible man continues to search "without" for his
father, instead of looking within. His "yesing" which he
plans for the north is that of the submissive and compliant
Negro.
When I met the big men to whom my letters were
addressed I would put on my best manner. I would
speak softly, in my most polished tones, smile
agreeably and be most polite; and I would remember
that if he ("he" meant any of the important
gentlemen) should begin a topic of conversation (I
would never begin a subject of my own) which I
found unfamiliar, I would smile and agree. [Like
that two faced Sambo doll.] My shoes would be
polished, my suit pressed, my hair dressed (not
too much grease) and parted on the right side; my
nails would be clean and my armpits well
deodorized--you had to watch that last item. You
couldn't allow them to think all of us smelled
bad. (155)

Lost in some mistaken notion of the American Dream,
still persisting in his desire to "follow the white line,"
and as yet blind to the true (and invisible) contents of
those letters to the "big men," the invisible man plans his
new identity for the north, vowing to shape himself as they
would have him be: "[H]ere in the North I would slough off
my southern ways of speech" (161). And, when the counterman
suggests that he might like the daily special of pork chops
and grits, the invisible man takes pride in his resistance:
"It was an act of discipline, a sign of the change that was
coming over me and which would return me to college a more
experienced man" (175).

These attempts to suppress himself in a more palatable

63
and presentable package to his potential white employers
(those who he believes are his betters) are coupled with
examples of his own elitist snobbery toward his fellow
blacks. He is shocked to encounter a black policeman
directing traffic, objectifies Negroes when he thinks with
much sarcasm "they’re a hell of a people," and finds an
unusually ironic solace in a movie house while watching a
typical Hollywood western. He obviously has no difficulty
identifying with "out-numbered settlers winning each
engagement" with the Indians, although "there was no one
like me taking part in the adventures" (167). And later,
further evidence of his racist attitudes surfaces, as he is
unable to believe that Lucius Brockway can possibly be in a
position of power ("I was so disgusted to find such a man in
charge" [203]) and when he curses the "cotton patch ways" of
the radiator-beating tenants in Mary's boarding house.
He originally moved to Mary's after his "treatment" at
the factory hospital and his feeling of discomfiture at
Men's house.
I was overcome by a sense of alienation and
hostility. My overalls were causing stares and I
knew that I could live there no longer, that that
phase of my life was past. The lobby was the
meeting place for various groups still caught up
in the illusions that had just been boomeranged
out of my head. (250)

Once again, terming himself the "disillusioned dreamer," the

invisible man believes that he has seen the light-~another

boomeranging-~and feels contempt "for those still unaware

that they dream" (250). His final act at Men's House is to

64

take a measure of revenge for Bledsoe's treatment of him by
dumping what appears to be the contents of a spittoon upon
the head of someone he mistakes for Bledsoe. "I . . .
lifted it shining, full and foul, and moved forward two long
steps, dumping its great brown, transparent splash upon the
head" (251).

His disillusionment has obviously not improved his
vision in the slightest. The victim of this "baptism" turns
out to be a prominent Baptist preacher and not Bledsoe at
all. Perhaps his attack, out of misplaced revenge though it
may be, has a certain ironic sweetness--the blind invisible
man taking revenge on a preacher reminiscent of the blind
Barbee, both blind men steadfast in their certainty of what
they have seen, particularly of Bledsoe. Unfortunately,
although the invisible man finally accepts the fact that
Bledsoe cannot and will not help him, this scene illustrates
that he continues to see his place in the world in terms of
Bledsoeness, modeling his identity on what he still believes
the myth of that man to be. Once a champion of Bledsoe, he
now sees himself as a victim; either way his image of
himself is cast in otherness.

The invisible man does, however, manage for a brief
moment to come close to feeling and being himself. In the
yam eating scene, he forgets to be afraid of what the
Northern whites will think of him. When he had felt
resentment at the counterman’s suggestion of the pork chop

and grits special, followed by pride at having orange juice

65
instead, he was denying the fulfillment of his own desires
and tastes in order to appear as he thinks northern whites
would want him to be. He feels it necessary to order what
he doesn't want, or to not order what he does want, in order
to appear to be who "they" want him to be. The orange juice
he settles for is portrayed as an unpalatable substitution:
"A seed floated in the thick layer of pulp that formed at
the top of the glass. I fished it out with a spoon and then
downed the acid drink" (175). His action further indicates
the distance between his aspirations and what he may become,
between who he may be and who he feels he must become in
order to be anyone at all.

He encounters the yam man some months later. The
invisible man has been living on his Liberty Paints
compensation and enjoying--with the notable exception of
"her constant talk about leadership and responsibility"--
living in Mary’s boarding house, but he "had lost my sense
of direction" (252).

I had no doubt that I could do something, but
what, and how? I had no contacts and I believed
in nothing. And the obsession with my identity
which I had developed in the factory hospital
returned with a vengeance. Who was I, how had I
come to be? Certainly I couldn’t help being
different from when I left campus: but now a new,
painful, contradictory voice had grown up within
me, and between its demands for revengeful action
and Mary’s silent pressure I throbbed with guilt
and puzzlement. I wanted peace and quiet,
tranquility, but was too much aboil inside. (253)
His reaction to his betrayal by Bledsoe has been to retreat

into anonymity. He has braced himself to his inability to

return to campus, but has replaced that aspiration with

66

nothing but confusion and puzzlement. "One moment I
believed, I was dedicated, willing to lie on the blazing
coals, do anything to attain a position on the campus--then
snap! It was done with, finished, through. Now there was
only the problem of forgetting it" (253). Unable to resign
himself to complacence, however, he finds himself inhabited
by "contradictory voices shouting inside my head" and wishes
they would "sing a song in unison" rather than in dissonance
and avoid "the uncertain extremes of the scale" (253). His
own need to discover a single voice amidst these warring
voices leads him to fear losing his self-control, "[a]nd the
more resentful I became, the more my old urge to make
speeches returned. While walking along the streets words
would spill from my lips in a mumble over which I had little
control" (253-54). His need both to speak and to forge some
sort of identity--to replace his losing the only identity he
had ever known in Bledsoe’s care--lead him in a most
vulnerable state to the yam vendor.

Wandering through Harlem rather aimlessly, "with the
hot inner argument continuing" in his mind, he focuses on a
window display containing "[a] black statue of a nude Nubian
slave" grinning out at him and another display featuring
products for "ointments guaranteed to produce the miracle of
whitening black skin," promising that the black consumer
will "'[w]in greater happiness with whiter complexion'"
(256). With the blatant stereotype of the grinning black

image and the salves and ointments used to "cure the

67

affliction" of blackness freshly impressed on his mind, he
smells the odor of baking yams which are accompanied by "a
stab of sweet nostalgia." Rejuvenated by childhood memories
of yam-eating in the past, the invisible man hesitates not
at all in swiftly purchasing one. His encounter with this
treat provides an epiphany of the self.

I walked along, munching the yam, just as suddenly

overcome by an intense feeling of freedom . . . .

I no longer had to worry about who saw me or about

what was proper. To hell with all that, and as

sweet as the yam actually was, it became like

nectar with the thought. (258)

Free, suddenly, of his compunction to behave and appear
"proper," and putting aside, for once, his obsequious
following of the white line, he finds great joy and release
in his yam eating. This experience leads him to contemplate
the way his people are so easily humiliated by being
confronted with something they like. In his fantasy of
confronting Bledsoe with Bledsoe's own hidden desire for
chitterlings, the narrator observes that such a public
accusation "would be worse than if I had accused him of
raping an old woman" (259). Taken with the delicious irony
of the scene conjured before him as well as with the
deliciousness of the yam, the invisible man vows, "'[T]o
hell with being ashamed of what you liked. No more of that
for me. I am what I am!’" He even relishes the word play
of substituting "I yam" for "I am," parodying the self-
naming of God (who indeed started his creation with the

Word).

And just as quickly his joy gives way to sadness and

68

understandable regret.
What and how much had I lost by trying to do only
what was expected of me instead of what I myself
had wished to do? What a waste, what a senseless
waste! But what of those things which you
actually didn’t like, not because you were not
supposed to like them, not because to dislike them
was considered a mark of refinement and education-
-but because you actually found them distasteful?
The very idea annoyed me. How could you know? It
involved a problem of choice. I would have to
weigh many things carefully before deciding and
there would be some things that would cause quite
a bit of trouble, simply because I had never
formed a personal attitude toward so much. I had
accepted the accepted attitudes and it had made
life seem simple . . . . (260; ellipsis is the
author’s.)
Having never been called upon before to express his own
opinion and having been conditioned to defer opinions to
those of educated and powerful men, he is unable to form an
identity all his own. Expression of taste or attitude or
desire in a Negro is out of the question in the time and age
depicted in the Invisible Man. Neither Norton nor Bledsoe
ever cared what the invisible man thought.

In this brief scene and at the eviction speech which
follows, the invisible man comes the closest--prior to his
falling into his hole--to feeling himself to be a whole
human being, secure in his tastes and attitudes and ideas.
It marks the first occasion of his rejecting the white line.
His expression of pleasure is without censure; it stems from
himself, not from what is expected or demanded of him.
Similar as it is to Janie’s burning of the head rags--
emblems of the identity Jody imposed on her--and her

pleasure in the lessons in playing, fishing, and shooting

69

Tea Cake gives her, the invisible man’s epiphany is not the
turning point that Janie experienced. However brief this
feeling and expression of personal identity may be, it is
indeed a high point for the invisible man.4

In the immediately subsequent eviction speech, the
invisible man, for the first time, finds the voice--amidst
all those teeming within him--that comes closest to that
new-found (and soon to be lost) identity. He allows himself
to forgo the self-control that he earlier expressed fear of
losing. Moreover, that self-control he so prizes is the
control he has exerted in order to obfuscate and withhold
from view the real self--the "unexpected" and unanticipated
self--that he has been taught is not good enough, is wrong.
Just as he might be expected to whiten his skin to fit in
with the proper social set, so is he required to "whiten"
his attitudes, beliefs, and his very self to please others.
His willingness to possess his own beliefs for once in his
life gives him the presence of mind to own his voice as
well.

Unlike his speech of humility at the battle royal,
where his white-displeasing slip of saying "social equality"
instead of the white-pleasing "social responsibility"
angered hislisteners, who required him to recant and
reshape his speech to meet their requirements, at the
eviction he speaks his own mind. Unlike the later
Brotherhood speeches, born of his indoctrination and re-

education in the "scientific method" and gutted of emotional

70

and sensual appeal, the words of the eviction speech flow
from his heart and mind. This extemporaneous speech seems
to emerge of its own volition, out of the control of the
invisible man, perhaps because it is the one occasion in
which he speaks without restraint and without being expected
to restrict himself to the prepared text or the party line.
He is without fear of what others may think or say: his fear
is rather of the language and its power. He admits to the
almost involuntary beginning of the speech when "I heard
myself yelling" the first words and begins "talking rapidly
without thought but out of my clashing emotions" (269).
Because this speech is spontaneous, he feels unprepared
for the nearly overwhelming emotions that accompany its
delivery. "Oh, God, this wasn't it at all," he worries.
"Poor technique and not at all what I intended" (270).
However much he criticizes his speech, he effectively uses
cynicism and irony to move the people to action. Soon he is
surprised when "no longer struggling against or thinking
about the nature of my action" (275) he also participates in
deed in the event. When the police arrive, he fears "[t]he
whole thing had gotten out of hand" and wonders "[that had
I said to bring on all this?" (277). In effect, an
emotional chord was struck in him by the dispossession of
these people, and his playing it touched a similar chord in
them. While feeling a certain lack of control, he also
experiences a sense of excitement and exhilaration, a sense

of freedom similar to that of the yam eating incident.

71
Unfortunately, his newfound sense of being and his
discovery of his voice are short-lived. Shortly thereafter,
Brother Jack offers to make the invisible man the new Booker
T. Washington and gives him a new name for his Brotherhood
role.
But to hell with this Booker T. Washington
business. I would do the work but I would be no
one except myself--whoever I was. I would pattern
my life on that of the Founder. They might think
I was acting like Booker T. Washington; let them.
But what I thought of myself I would keep to
myself. (303-04)
He thinks that he can fool them, but he will fool only
himself. His freely confident "I [y]am what I am" will soon
degenerate--hidden under his new Brotherhood identity--into
"I am what they think I am" (370). He continues to try to
convince himself that this new identity is the real identity
or that a name is nothing, but the reader remains
unconvinced. After all, just before the invisible man takes
the proffered position with the Brotherhood, Ellison
presents his comic and poignant scene of the invisible man
struggling, yet unable for all his efforts, to dispose of
the racially stereotypical coin bank he removed from Mary's.
Although he is able to smash it to bits, the "self-mocking
image"--the picture of the smiling darky in the white world-
-is not so easily shed, particularly when one is blind to
the many ways in which one is forced to perpetuate the
stereotype. However shattered it may be, the invisible man

will continue to carry that image in his battle royal

briefcase until he falls into his hole.

72

Upon joining the Brotherhood, our illuminated and
enlightened invisible man, boomeranged yet again, he
supposes, out of his disillusionment, begins to substitute
the Brotherhood "line" for the white line, but as both are
founded on the second class status of the black race, the
alteration is not that difficult for the invisible man to
make. Unwittingly--as Tod Clifton eventually seems to
realize he had done--the invisible man plays the role of the
Sambo doll to the Brotherhood, dancing on command, smiling
for all to see, as he responds to the movement of the white
and the black threads. Brother Jack makes no compunction
about his willingness to sacrifice the Brotherhood's black
membership and all of Harlem, for that matter, for the sake
of an idea. Jack also sees to it with his anonymous letter
of warning that the invisible man must always remember to
stay in his place, and, with his careful placement of
watchdogs such as Wrestrum, Jack may ensure the black man’s
continued impotence by keeping the blacks fighting amongst
themselves as in the battle royal.

The invisible man’s speechmaking history in the
Brotherhood further indicates why he is unable to foster a
identity that is self-made regardless of what name he goes
by. After the eviction speech, he goes to speak at the
Chthonian. The great irony of the speech at the Chthonian,
this great underworld speech from a man unaware as yet of
the hole he is in, lies not only in the mirror images of the

battle royal--particularly in his being blinded by the light

73
on the platform and in his speech coming last--but in the

content of the speech.

As he steps on to the platform, he is temporarily
blinded by the light--obviously not the first occasion in
which illumination obscured rather than enhanced his vision.
When he moves toward the microphone, he finds "the light was
so strong that I could no longer see the audience, the bowl
of human faces. It was as though a semi-transparent curtain
had dropped between us" (332). Like the slave kneeling at
the founder’s feet, the invisible man has his vision
obscured as he steps forward and begins his lecture on
blindness and dispossession to an audience which is
ostensibly invisible to him. His choice of topic is
appropriately ironic as he says, "'[T]hey’ve dispossessed us
each of one eye from the day we’re born. So now we can only
see in straight white lines'" (335). He briefly questions
the sort of blind willingness to follow the white line which
he demonstrated so well in his college days as he drove
Norton about the campus, but he is about to substitute the
Brotherhood line which he will follow with the same blind
acceptance.

Just as his decision to leave the college and make his
way in the world (carrying the seven letters, the contents
of which are kept from his vision) was based on monocular
vision, the invisible man now determines--unwittingly as
usual-~to bet all of his (and Harlem's) chips on the one-

eyed Jack of the Brotherhood. Again, the invisible man

74

trades one form of blindness for another as he trades one
identity for another. His stumbling "as in a game of
blindman's bluff" at the conclusion of his speech echoes
blind Barbee's earlier tumble at the conclusion of his own;
both speeches offer evidence of faulty vision.

He begins his speech tentatively with a populist, an
"I’m-sick-and-tired-of-the-way-they’ve-been-treating-us
approach" (334), but soon moves from such a strategic
technique into a more natural, heartfelt method, one
seemingly beyond his control. Suddenly, he "felt quite
naked, sensing that the words were returning and that
something was about to be said that I shouldn’t reveal"
(336). As the words wield their power over him--"ripped
from my solar plexus"--Brother Jack (as the white men at the
battle royal felt they must do) cautions the invisible man
to stay on track, to stick to the Brotherhood line, as it
were. By this time it is perhaps too late to rein in the
invisible man as he "could feel the words forming
themselves, slowly falling into place" (337). This
experience of nearly automatic speaking is accompanied by
that feeling of epiphany the invisible man underwent at the
eviction, and he is startled to find that "I feel suddenly
that I have become nene human" (337). Unfortunately, such
humanness, such unbridled and passionate language, such
power in speech is not to be tolerated by the Brotherhood.

In order to quash the potency of his language, the

invisible man is sent to Hambro for training in the

75
scientific method espoused by the Brotherhood, a virtual

emasculation of his potent demonstration of oratorical
skill. The brothers recognize that such power in the mind
and mouth of a black man is a very dangerous thing. The
invisible man’s behavior is considered inappropriate and out
of line; he must learn to control himself in the future.
However, simultaneous with the brothers’ planning an
effectual castration of the invisible man’s speech, he is
pondering the power as well as the content of the speech
just delivered. He wonders to himself what he meant by
being more human. "It was a mystery once more, as at the
eviction I had uttered words that had possessed me" (346).
Unfortunately, the invisible man surrenders himself to his
forthcoming indoctrination (instead of to the language
itself) which will help remove the potency of his speech.
Such a surrender makes his own dispossession complete.
Prior to delivering his speech, he "felt the hard,
mechanical isolation of the hospital machine" (333), and now
he seems as helpless as he was for his electro-shock
treatments in the hospital--the convulsive (and castrating)
therapy that left him with a new identity. The Brotherhood
sets out to emasculate the invisible man’s voice.

Once more the invisible man supposes that he can "see
the possibility of achieving something greater and more
important than I’d ever dreamed" (346). In keeping with his
unawareness of his invisibility and of the hole he inhabits,

he further believes that

76

[h]ere was a way that didn’t lead through a back
door, a way not limited by black and white, but a
way which, if one lived long enough, and worked
hard enough, could lead to the highest possible
rewards. . . . Lying there in the dark, I could
glimpse the possibility of being more than a
member of a race. It was no dream, the
possibility existed. I had only to work and learn
and survive in order to go to the top. (349)
In his blindness, the invisible man not only supposes this
Brotherhood world is different just as he is about to
undergo a virtual gutting of his verbal and mental skills,
but his ambition begins to grow as he falsely perceives--
this man incapable of casting off that false and self-
mocking image--that he can be more human in a Brotherhood
where he hhinhs black and white are unimportant
distinctions.

The invisible man has again jumped to false
conclusions. The possibilities before him are limited, but
from his blind and dispossessed perspective, they seem
broadly and richly beckoning. Later, in his Rinehart
"disguise," he will again suppose a field before him of
immense potential possibilities. However, until he
"discovers" his hole and sets ablaze the tokens of his many
identities--his false "possibilities"--he will be unable to
forge a self and set of limitless possibilities--which is
precisely what he does when he tells his tale. As Ellison
has elsewhere observed:

Each section begins with a sheet of paper; each
piece of paper is exchanged and contains a
definition of his identity, or the social role he
is to play as defined for him by others. But all

say essentially the same thing, "Keep this nigger
boy running." Before he could have some voice in

77
his own destiny he had to discard these old

identities and illusions; his enlightenment
couldn’t come until then. Once he recognizes the
hole of darkness into which these papers put him,
he has to burn them. (Shadow ang Ace 177)

In repeatedly denying the invisible man access to his
own language, in continually censoring and adjusting the
invisible man’s speech to fit some socially acceptable norm,
the members of American culture make it increasingly
difficult for the invisible man to determine his own
identity and to fashion his own destiny. When a slip of the
tongue brings him to say "social equality" instead of
"social responsibility" at the battle royal speech, his
white audience immediately sees that the text is corrected
to its acceptable state. Later, at the Chthonian, his newly
found "brothers" criticize him for appealing effectively to
his listeners emotions--their shared dispossession--instead
of using scientific rationalism and promptly send him to
Brother Hambro for indoctrination. And after he speaks at
Tod Clifton’s funeral on his own "personal responsibility,"
Brother Jack makes it quite clear that the invisible man has
responsibility only to the Brotherhood and that personal
responsibility does not exist for individual members,
particularly if they are black. Hence, Jack’s sacrifice of
Harlem, members and non-members of the Brotherhood alike.

In denying the invisible man a name of his own, his
namers have cost him his identity as well.5 Ellison, in an

essay titled "Hidden Name and Complex Fate," stresses the

importance of owning one’s name.

78

Once while listening to the play of a two-year-old
girl who did not know she was under observation, I
heard her saying over and over again, at first
with questioning and then with sounds of growing
satisfaction, "I am Mimi Livisay? . . . T am Mimi
Livisay. I am Mimi Livisay . . . I am Mini Li-vi-
say! I am Mimi . . ."

And in deed and in fact she was--or became so
soon thereafter by working playfully to establish
the unity between herself and her name.

For many of us this is far from easy. We must
learn to wear our names within all the noise and
confusion of the environment in which we find
ourselves; make them the center of all our
associations with the world, with man and with
nature. We must charge them with all our
emotions, our hopes, hates, loves, aspirations.
They must become our masks and our shields and the
containers of all those values and traditions
which we learn and/or imagine as being the meaning

of our familial past. (Shagoy eng he; 148)

Ellison’s observation of this connection between names
and finding one’s place in the world also implies a
connection between language and finding identity. His
example of the two-year-old offers confirmation of James
Britton’s discovery that "we use language as a means of
organizing a representation of the world" (Lengnege_eng
Leenning 7) and illustrates the way this child must first
use the power of language to identify herself before being
able to relate her world experience to her own knowledge and
experience. The invisible man, unfortunately lacking any
name he can call his own, fails in his many attempts to
construct a viable representation of his world. If, as
Britton states, "with the aid of language as an organizing
principle, we construct each for himself a world
representation" (31), the imposition on the invisible man of

the speech of others as noted in the censored speeches above

79

cripples his ability to fashion a world and a world view.
It’s no wonder, then, that the power of language frightens
him; his capability has languished for so long.

Ellison, in words which echo Britton’s comments about
language, has remarked that "[o]ne uses the language which
helps to preserve one’s life, which helps to make one feel
at peace in the world, and which screens out the greatest
amount of chaos" (Going to the Ternitogy 67). Unable to use
language as an organizing principle, held back from forming
his own conception of his world, and forced to fend for
himself in a world that fails to recognize or even see his
strengths and abilities, the invisible man lacks that
ability to "screen out" the chaos he discovers in the course
of his "adventures." His blindness, imposed from both
within and without, keeps him from constructing a vision
which may justly serve him. Just as his speeches are
criticized and censored, so too are his activities in the
world manipulated by others. Tossed from college to Liberty
Paints to the Brotherhood and eventually into his hole, the
invisible man falsely patterns his concept of the world on
the images presented for him to become and aspire to.
Without a name and identity of his own, he is ill-equipped
to take on the individual challenges of the world.

In an interview in which he was asked if the search for
identity was "primarily an American theme," Ellison
responded, "It is ehe American theme. The nature of our

society is such that we are prevented from knowing who we

80

are" (Shegey_eng_Aeh 177). Elsewhere, Ellison has commented
that democratic societies place a larger burden on the
members of the citizenry, observing that
[p]rimitive societies are much more efficient and
consistent: they are much more concerned with
guiding the young through each stage of their

social development, while we leave much of this to
chance, perhaps as part of the responsibility of

freedom. (Going to the Territony 51)

Joseph Church makes a similar observation in comparing
primitive and Western societies:
Self-verbalization is closely linked to what is
called the "search for identity." In primitive,
closed societies the individual’s identity is
defined from birth by the social role he occupies.
In Western societies, by contrast, each member
must find his own place in the scheme of things,
his own goals and meanings and values, his own
functions and roles--in sum, his own unique
identity. (100)
The invisible man flounders in his innocence due to the lack
of clear guidance his society provides for him. Of course,
much of the difficulty he faces stems from his rather
obvious placement due to his race outside the primary
society, a society that fails to either see or hear him and
which denies him the self-verbalization required to bring
order to the chaos around him.

Church goes on to address the necessity of the school
age child to develop a skill "in the duplicity that is so
important a part of adult functioning, the ability to adapt
oneself to the changing demands of different situations and
to mask one’s feelings when these conflict with the

standards of one’s surroundings" (103). This ability to

mask one’s feelings is another that the invisible man lacks.

81

regardless of the many masks he has worn. His naivete, his
innocence, leads him to simple solutions to complex
problems. When he comes upon a new experience outside the
realm of his understanding, he is unable to adapt himself or
his world view to this experience. He continues on the same
path--of emulating the Founder, of hoping to become
Bledsoe’s assistant, of thinking himself a "brother" to Jack
and his cronies-~even when the evidence obviously
demonstrates how impossible a dream his hopes have created
for him. It took him "much painful boomeranging of my
expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears

to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself" (15).

More than 35 years have passed since the initial publication
of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man; more than 40 following the
appearance of the essential episode of the battle royal.
During those years, numerous critics and reviewers have
explored the passage of the invisible man from innocence to
experience in his quest for identity.6 Much has also been
made of the recurring paired images of blindness and sight,
invisibility and visibility, black and white, and darkness
and illumination. There are even those who have seen the
struggle for voice on the part of the narrator as an
essential element in this search for self and meaning in an
alien world, and acknowledged that the very fact and act of
the writing of the invisible man’s tale of naivete ending in

maturity serves as the evidence of his attainment of

82

understanding and acquisition of a self-articulated, self-
authenticated self.

Thomas A. Vogler, for instance, sees the importance of
the narrator’s creative act of writing and states "that the
writing of the book is itself part of the experience, and of
the discovery of identity, which is the subject of the
book," but unfortunately, he, like Eleanor R. Wilner and
Ihab Hassan, credits the novel’s series of events and
speeches with bringing illumination to the narrator’s eyes
(69).7 However, the process that brings the invisible man
to self-awareness is nee the progression of events as
portrayed in the narrative itself; those do not depict a
movement toward awareness, but rather present a recursive
rendering of the same experience repeated again and again,
with each repetition followed by the invisible man’s
assuming that he has gained something of himself, when in
reality his gain has also meant a loss of something
intrinsic. The actual experience that mediates the poles
between innocence and maturity is invisible for it grows
from the unseen act of writing, not the experiences as they
occur. While the invisible man is caught up in the events,
he remains naive and blind. Each insight brings blindness,
each illumination brings a darkening. Each step "forward"
on the part of the invisible man entails an equal movement
"backward." As he tells us in the opening paragraph of
Chapter 1:

All my life I had been looking for something, and
everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what

83
it was. I accepted their answers too, though they
were often in contradiction and even self-
contradictory. I was naive. I was looking for
myself and asking everyone except myself questions
which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a
long time and much painful boomeranging of my
expectations to achieve a realization everyone
else appears to have been born with; That I am
nobody but myself. But first I had to discover
that I am an invisible man! (15)

He is naive throughout, despite his attempts to see how
they have him running.9 The motives of those who send him
spinning in motion are as invisible to him as he is
invisible to them. Each ostensible lifting of the veil from
the invisible man’s eyes is in actuality a lowering, perhaps
more accurately a securing, of the veil before his eyes.
Because he thinks in terms of black and white, dark and
light, every choice is a rejection, each gain a loss. For
him, these absolutes remain polarized values throughout the
novel until he realizes the hole he is in and begins,
through the painful process of writing his experience, to
reconcile these opposites. Once he can see the negative of
the positive, the visibility within the invisibility, and so
forth and conversely, for the first time he sees his own
blindness with clarity and accuracy.

Thwarted in his attempts to find his own identity,
named (and therefore owned) by others, impeded in his
efforts to express himself verbally, censured for straying
from the "proper" or "scientific" script for his speeches,
the invisible man is kept running, kept apart from himself
with his needs unfulfilled:

I was pulled this way and that for longer than I

84

can remember. And my problem was that I always

tried to go in everyone’s way but my own. I have

also been called one thing and then another while

no one really wished to hear what I called myself.

(560)
(This observation occurs in the Epilogue, after the
invisible man has written the bulk of his adventures in the
world above.) Often feeling split into two personalities
and lacking the resources to join these conflicting elements
effectively within himself, he arrives at the discovery of
his hole without much insight into who he is. Destroying
the contents of his briefcase—-the file he has kept on
himself-~briefly illuminates for him all the characters he
has tried to be at the behest of others. But without the
telling of the tale, without the attempt to make meaning
through the act of writing, he would not have become the
sighted and full voiced person we take him for in the
Prologue and Epilogue.

As the narrator observes in the Prologue, "Without
light I am not only invisible, but formless as well." He
might well have added that without language--lacking
autonomous command over the words he speaks and writes--he
is invisible, and it is through the creation of the book,
the telling of the story, that he attains voice and
illuminates his form. The novel becomes a visible form of
his being, the delineation of his substance. As Thorpe
Butler observes, "In an act of creative memory he tells his

own story in his own way, discovering thereby patterns and a

paradoxical meaning that he had never before perceived in

85

his own experience. In so doing he creates an ordered world
out of the chaos of his experience, a world in which he has
an authentic identity (323).10 The writing process has
brought him new insight as to the cause and nature of his
invisible state. "The fact is that you carry part of your
sickness within you, at least I do as an invisible man. I
carried my sickness and though for a long time I tried to
place it in the outside world, the attempt to write it down
shows me that at least half of it lay within me" (562). He
realizes now that he had been a full partner to his
blindness and running, an accomplice to his being invisible
and voiceless.

But writing the book--exercising a voice long
neglected--has also been a very painful experience: "So why
do I write, torturing myself to put it down? Because in
spite of myself I’ve learned some things" (566). While he
began his writing in anger, now he wonders if he has failed:
"The very act of trying to put it all down has confused me
and negated some of the anger and some of the bitterness."
But while he doubts his success it becomes clear that he
understands much better what led him to his hole and the
possibilities that now await him should he decide to return
to the world. He has difficulty confining himself to
polarities and abstract absolutes. Even attempting honesty
in his Epilogue becomes a problem:

When one is invisible he finds such problems as
good and evil, honesty and dishonesty, of such

shifting shapes that he confuses one with the
other, depending upon who happens to be looking

86

through him at the time. Well, now I’ve been

trying to look through myself, and there’s a risk

in it. I was never more hated than when I tried

to be honest. Or when, even as just now I’ve

tried to articulate exactly what I felt to be the

truth. No one was satisfied--not even I. (559)
He found that in order to be liked it was necessary to
stifle his honesty. Through writing his story, he has
learned the painful, yet important lesson of duplicity which
Church says is "so important to adult functioning" (103).
Hence his discovery that his "world has become one of
infinite possibilities" (563). No longer hampered by the
definition and identification at the hands of others, no
more dependent upon others for the right words for the right
occasion, the narrator has finally seen that the world is
not split down the middle into two polar parts at war with
each other. He sees the possibilities in the world--and the
potency in the word.

Ellison, in a discussion of the richness of language
ability which black children often lose when they come
north, perceives that such loss--something the invisible man
also undergoes when he moves north--is "a reflection of
their sense of being dispossessed of the reality to which
their vocabulary referred. Where they once possessed the
keys to a traditional environment--the South--they now
confront an environment that appears strange and hostile"
(Wiser): 67)-

Until the invisible man falls into his hole, sees the
hole he has been in all along, he lacks the language skill

to bring order to his chaos. Much of his dispossession was

87
of his own making as he filtered from his speech and
mannerisms much of his Southern (i.e., "cotton patch") ways.
With the exception of the yam eating scene and the delivery
of his speech at the eviction which followed, the invisible
man denies himself the pleasure and the peace of his own
heritage and his own language. Once in his hole, separated
from the forces which compel him to adapt and adjust himself
to the chaos around him (or, in Hurston’s terms, once out of
his tight-fitting garment of experience), he begins his
narrative.
Alan Nadel correctly asserts that

[w]e need to remember that the invisible man is

not the narrator but a person whom the narrator

has renounced or distanced himself from. The

crucial difference is that the invisible man did

not know how to interpret signs, did not know that

in limiting his possibilities to other people’s

versions of reality, he was yielding up his

identity. (72)
It should be noted that the invisible man is not the
narrator only in the sense that he is unable to see what the
narrator can. For all the pain it causes him, the invisible
man in this newly acquired role of narrator must relish the
telling of the tale, for he moves from what Britton calls
the speech of the participant (the language of the invisible
man as he experiences the events of the novel) to the speech
of the spectator (the language of the narrator and the
character we meet in the Prologue and Epilogue).

Britton’s explanation of the distinctions between these

two modes of language use illustrates the important role the

writing of the book--that act which although invisible to

88

the reader gives form and substance to the invisible man--
has on the narrator’s ability to understand and cope with
his (the invisible man’s) experience.

As participants we generate expectations from past
experience, put them to the test of actuality, and
modify our representation of the world (our
predictive apparatus, the basis of all our
expectations) in the light of what happens. As we
go back over the same experience, now in the role
of spectator, we may make further and probably
more far-reaching adjustments--for . . . we are
likely to refer to a more extensive set of values
than we are free to do as participants. But
occasionally, what happens is en unlike our
expectations that we are not able to achieve even
an initial adjustment ’in our stride,’ as we
participate. Events do not wait for us, so we
participate as best we can, but when the
experience is over we are left with a nosihive
neee to take up the role of spectator and work
upon it further--in order, as we say, ’to come to

terms with it.’ (Langnage and Leerning 118;

emphases are the author’s.)

In his participant role, the character of the invisible
man has been unable to make the adjustments necessary to
generate adequate expectations. His expectations,
boomeranged again and again, are based on faulty
assumptions. However, as spectator, the narrator can
finally come to some understanding of his "boomeranging"
experiences. He, for the first time, can more clearly see
himself--even should Monopolated Light and Power suffer a
blackout--because he has finally formed himself and his
world through the writing of his tale. Denied an identity
and denied a personal voice, the narrator finds both through
his writing experience. He announces that he is now ready
to come out of his hole. However frightening such a re-

emergence may seem to him, the narrator knows that the time

89
is right: he is at last prepared to heed the exhortation of

the fat vet to "[c]ome out of the fog" (151).

D. W. Harding distinguishes between the unfocused
vision of the participant and the clarity of the spectator’s
perception, and his comment helps identify the source of the
invisible man’s fog: "Detached and distanced evaluation is
sometimes sharper for avoiding the blurrings and bufferings
that participant action brings, and the spectator often sees
the event in a broader context than the participant can
tolerate" ("Psychological Processes" 136). The narrator’s
separation from the world has given him the opportunity to
sharpen his focus and fashion himself through language, but
he realizes that however belatedly that has occurred, it is
not the final step--merely an initial one on his way to the
possibilities which await him. Britton says it simply: "As
participants we have only one life to live: as spectators,

an infinite number is open to us" (Language and Learning
116).

In a descriptive depiction of Hurston the narrative artist,
Karla Holloway observes that "Hurston, I feel, understood
that she celebrated herself through her word, crafted
herself, affirmed herself, and perhaps most important and
primal, neneg herself" (151). Ellison’s remark on his
discovery that "[f]or all his conscious concern with
technique, a writer did not so much create the novel as he

was created hy the novel" (Shadow and Age 162) seems to echo

90

that sentiment. Obviously, these notions of creating and
naming oneself through the act of writing appropriately
apply to these writers’ narrative protagonists, Janie and

the invisible man.

NOTES

1 Other critics have noted the recursive nature of the
battle royal. Tony Tanner says, "The whole experience is an
early paradigm of the treatment he is to receive all through
his adult life" (51). Similarly, Marcus Klein observes that
"the same chaos of appetites and guilt that is the hidden
nature of Negro and white relations is exploded at the hero
in each of his subsequent accidents" (118), and Thomas A.
Vogler suggests that a careful analysis of the battle royal
would reveal "a prefiguration of almost everything else in
the navel" (76).

Interestingly, the narrator alludes to his
foolishness and the hole he has yet to discover is his own
when he is "saved" by Mary Rambo and falls asleep "thinking
in echo of her words, f don’ think ’m

’ " (247; emphasis is the author’s).
Ellison cleverly includes this paraphrase of the folk-blues
song "Stealin’," apparently sung by Mary as she tends to the
invisible man and left echoing in his mind as he drifts off
to sleep. The verse runs "If you don’t believe I love
you,/Look what a fool I’ve been,/If you don’t believe I’m
sinkin’,/Look at the hole I’m in." Ostensibly recovering
from his treatment in the factory hospital, the invisible
man, Ellison hints, is once more about to retreat to his
previous boomeranging habits: "stealin’ back to my same old
used to be."

Vogler’s observation concerning the various meaningful
images that seem intended solely for the reader’s benefit
but remain beyond the invisible man’s grasp accurately
applies to this song allusion as well. Vogler says,
"Although they [the images] are registered through the eyes
[in this case, ears] and consciousness of the invisible man,
they are not noted by him as containing any special
signigicance" (77).

Selke points out that in light of Ellison’s negative
attitude toward Booker T. Washington, Jack’s suggestion that
the invisible man become another Washington figure is
absurd. "The very choice of Washington is an indictment of
the Brotherhood and a further indication that the hero is

91

indeed to be used again. A further indication that the hero
is again deluded is the fact that he obtains his first
Brotherhood assignment on April first, All Fools’ Day"

(198)

4 The invisible man’s brief "conscious and ritual
acceptance of Negro food," according to Selke, "amounts to a
communion which confirms him in his folk identity. Whereas
earlier he had referred to his race as ’they,’ he now uses
the inclusive ’we’ when talking about his ethnic group"

(190)

5 This issue of naming and identity arises as well in
Their Eyee Wege Watching God, although to a lesser extent.
In the beginning of Janie’s first person story to Phoeby,
she recalls when as a six year old child she first
discovered she "’wuzn’t white’" and says, "’Dey all useter
call me Alphabet ’cause so many people had done named me
different names’" (21). Wolff comments on these two
revelations: "She becomes intrinsically aware that there
are two possible perceptions of her: the intrinsic, natural
image she has of herself, and the image held by the rest of
the world. . . . The outside world has also attached its
perceptions to her as names, although with no consistency. .
. . She is what she has been called" (29). There is, for
Janie, the self she feels herself to be, which appears to be
in conflict with the image others superimpose upon her due
to her race. Up until this point, she considered herself
just another little girl. Suddenly, she finds herself
redefined as some alien other. Like her grandmother, who is
called "’nothin’ but Nanny, ’cause dat’s what everybody . .
. called her’" (20), she receives the name Alphabet--the
summary of numerous names--from the white Washburn family.

Where, in fact, her last name of Crawford originated is
unknown to the reader-~perhaps coming from Nanny’s
employers, perhaps not. The fatherless daughter of a
fatherless daughter, Janie becomes a Killicks, a Starks, and
a Woods during the course of the novel, acquiring a new name
for each of her new positions in relation to the men in her
life.

Hurston further plays this naming game, selecting the
cold and lifeless sounding names "Killicks" and "Starks" for
Janie’s first two husbands and the more natural sounding
"Woods" for her third. These names help indicate Janie’s
early plight with Logan and Jody--who keep her from
realizing her vision of the budding pear tree--and her
eventual development through intimacy with Tea Cake Woods.
The latter helps her return to that "natural image" of
herself which Wolff discusses, an image in keeping with the
name 8f Janie’s natural mother, Leafy.

In 1971, Tony Tanner called the Tnvisible Man "quite
simply the most profound novel about American Identity
written since the war" (51). Jonathan Baumbach stresses the
invisible man’s acquisition of a variety of false identities
or masks in lieu of one of his own (75). Robert Bone,
"Ralph Ellison and the Uses of Imagination," also discusses

92

masks and dual identity as well as "the question of
individual and group identity" as illustrated in jazz as a
tension between the musical ensemble and the individual
soloist (86-111). Ellin Horowitz summarizes the book as "a
search for [the invisible man’s] identity, denied both by
society and himself" (331). See also Thorpe Butler, Harold
Kugelmass (especially, 157-208), Steven Marcus, and Eleanor
R. Wilner for further considerations of the search for
identity in the novel.

Selke devotes his dissertation to the theme of identity
in Invisible Man and other works of Ellison’s. See
especially his study of Invisible Man (177-233).
Additionally, Selke provides an interesting summary and
appraisal of critical response to the novel before 1975 in
light of this and other themes (96-104).

See Wilner 242 and Ihab Hassan 170. In addition,
Wilner argues that the invisible man never attains
authegticity as an individual (256-57).

Margolies, while admitting that the writing of the
book becomes "an affirmation, a celebration of life" (131)
shares Klein’s skepticism that the hibernating invisible man
of the Epilogue will ever emerge from underground. Ellison,
however, sees that emergence as the inevitable next step for
his narrator: "I assumed that by finally taking the initial
step of trying to sum up the meaning of his experience, he
had moved to another stage of his development" (geing no the
Ternihery 59). And Ellison elsewhere states that "[t]he
hero comes up from underground because the act of writing
and thinking necessitated it. He could not stay down there"
( h w and Ac 179).

Ellison refers to his naive protagonist as "a young
man who has an infinite capacity for making mistakes (and
being a fool, I think)" (Goin o the err' o 49). He is
enough of a fool to keep repeating the same mistakes.

0 In addition, Todd Lieber terms the narrator’s
writing an act of celebration and notes that "[i]n the
creative act of writing the invisible man succeeds in giving
form to the pattern of his own reality and in the process
defines himself" (98). Similarly, Tony Tanner writes of
"the patterning power" of the invisible man’s mind: "This
is not the artist as hero so much as the hero out of dire
necessity having to become an artist. For it is only in the
’symbolic’ freedom of lexical space that he can both find
and be himself" (59). In the same vein, Kimberly W. Bentson
mentions the importance of the narrator’s "[w]riting himself
into being" (163), while Stepto argues that the invisible
man, through his "acts of written articulateness and
literary form-making," replaces the tokens of his false
identities which he carried in his briefcase with "the self
authored ’protection’ [in the sense of a pass or
identification card] that constitutes the completed
narrative" (174).

Chapter Three
"It’s the truth even if it didn’t happen":

Chief Bromden’s Therapeutic Art

Most of the discussion of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Oven the
QBQBQQL§_N§§£ over the past 25 years or so has entailed
careful analysis of Kesey’s larger-than-life protagonist,
Randle Patrick McMurphy, and his life and death struggle
with Nurse Ratched and the dehumanizing, mechanistic forces
which she represents, identified by Chief Bromden as the
Combine. The brawling, lusting, gambling McMurphy captures
the interest of readers in the same way he seems to seize
the attention of the other inmates on the ward, especially
Bromden. McMurphy has been called hero, anti-hero, Christ,
comic Christ, king, fool, comic book caricature, and male
chauvinist, to name but a few of his descriptive labels.1
Whether characterizing the novel as a picaresque in the
tradition of Mark Twain,2 the "first truly successful novel
of the absurd since World War II,"3 or as a modern tragedy,
the critics usually devote much of their attention to this
mesmerizing character.

For example, Michael M. Boardman, who opts for the
tragic reading of McMurphy’s adventures just noted, contends

that "[t]here should be no confusion over just who this

93

94

story is ’about.’ For all of the Chief’s importance and
vividness as a narrator, he is still part of the ’telling’
and not the ’essence’" (175). The fact that Kesey’s falling
out with the filmmakers who brought his novel to the movie
screen was due in part to the reduction of Bromden to a
minor "buddy" character receives cursory attention in
Boardman’s essay. While he admits it is "tempting to
accept" Kesey’s comment that "[i]t is the Indian’s story--
not McMurphy’s or Jack Nicholson’s," Boardman determines
that Bromden’s role is to tell "McMurphy’s story as
powerfully as possible" (180).4 But telling the story in
itself makes Bromden essential, and understanding Bromden’s
situation and attitudes is crucial to any appraisal of the
work.

While John C. Pratt, in his introduction to the Viking
Critical Edition of Cuck ’s Nest, suggests that "one should
approach this novel by paying close attention to point of
view. . . . After all the narrator . . . is insane by
anyone’s standards" (again citing Kesey’s own comments about
the importance of observing the narrator’s consciousness),
Pratt turns his attention instead to Kesey’s consciousness,
and the peyote that led to Kesey’s discovery of his narrator
(viii).5 If, as Pratt asserts, "Kesey’s Chief Broom is
obviously deforming the events that figure in the early part
of the novel" (xi), the reader must at least entertain the
possibility that ell the novel’s events are likewise

"deformed." After all, who is to say where Bromden’s

95

insanity begins and ends.

However, Bromden is neither "deforming"
(misrepresenting) the events nor reforming them (in the way
that Janie or the invisible man attempted to write their
life experiences as autobiography). Rather, Bromden is
forming them, simply making them up, and, as is the case
with many novelists, he uses experiences from his own life
to form the foundation for the story as it unfolds in his
creative consciousness. He, too, forms himself through the
process of writing, "even if it didn’t happen," and Kesey’s
invisible and mute character shares numerous similarities

with Ellison’s invisible man.

Upon first encountering Chief Bromden, the half-white, half-
Indian narrator, in his hospital environment, the reader
learns that Bromden is "cagey enough to fool" the ward
personnel into thinking he is deaf and dumb (10). Aware
that it’s best not to be seen by the attendants, Bromden
"creep[s] along the wall quiet as dust" (9). Later, at the
revelation that Bromden is six foot eight inches tall, the
irony of his attempts to render himself invisible to others’
eyes becomes apparent. When Big Nurse arrives on the ward
in the morning, this big man pathetically endeavors to hide
his huge frame behind the handle of the mop he carries (11).
One page later, already hidden from view in the mop closet,
Bromden undertakes a similar disappearing act, trying to

conceal himself in memories of the past. Due to his fear of

96

Big Nurse and the attendants, Bromden feigns invisibility,
muteness, and deafness, but the reader discovers later in
the book that these defensive weapons were learnt long ago
in reaction to his invisibility in the eyes of others.

Bromden recalls, in words that echo the invisible man’s
opening comments in his Prologue, that his invisible state
was initially contingent upon the failure of others to see
him. "[I]t wasn’t me that started acting deaf; it was
people that first started acting like I was too dumb to hear
or see or say anything at all" (178). "[P]eople first took
to acting like I couldn’t hear or talk a long time before"
he entered the hospital. Whether in the Army or in grade
school, Bromden found that people would assume that he
wasn’t listening, "so they quit listening to the things I
was saying" (178).

His first and most vivid memory of this occurring was
when he was ten years old. Two white men and one white
woman arrive at the Indian village where Bromden lives and
at first they seem to see this young boy, although Bromden
notes their obvious displeasure with the sight. One of the
men "bends toward me and squints and lifts his mustache up
to his nose again like it’s me stinking instead of the fish"
(180). But they speak as if he isn’t really there, making
disparaging remarks about "little Hiawatha" and the
"squalor" these Indians live in, and, when the young Bromden
addresses them directly in his "very best schoolbook

language," he is surprised to discover that "[n]ot one of

97
the three acts like they heard a thing I said; in fact

they’re all looking off from me like they’d as soon I wasn’t
there at all" (181). Suddenly the confused Bromden is
confronted with the fact that in their eyes he doesn’t even
exist and to their ears he might as well be mute, but he
learns one of the few values of invisibility--the ease of
eavesdropping--as they discuss their plans to forgo speaking
to his father, the Chief, and instead decide to talk to his
white mother. That this "little Hiawatha" overhears their
scheme is of little concern to the whites; as they drive
away Bromden is left "standing there wondering if they ever
even eey me" (182).

Thus originated Bromden’s lessons as to the value of
what he had to say and the obvious unimportance in the minds
of white people as to whether he was within earshot or not.
These experiences continued through grade school, college,
and his Army experiences, until he began to wear the cloak
of his invisibility and determined to hide behind his deaf
and dumb act. In stark contrast to the invisible man,
Bromden is not naive or slow to learn; he is well acquainted
with the source of his invisibility. Indeed, like the
invisible man, it took some painful boomeranging of his
expectations for him to achieve the knowledge that his half
Indian heritage renders him invisible to others, but
Bromden, as he begins the novel, is securely in his "hole"
and not as yet ready to venture out. He is not illuminating

his hole in order to give substance to his form; rather, he

98

is content to stay fogged in on the ward. It’s safer that
way.

Bromden claims to understand the generation of the fog
because of his Army experiences and recalls the feeling
being in the fog produced in him. "You felt like you were
out on that airfield all by yourself. You were safe from
the enemy, but you were awfully alone" (116). That’s
precisely the predicament Bromden finds himself in on the
ward. His acceptance and virtual embrace of his
invisibility allow him to feel safe and secure, but the fog
also keeps him in isolation-~awfully alone. And, in this
meager attempt to overcome them with yeses, he has fallen
into the entanglement the invisible man eventually
discovered; his surrender to others’ notion of his
negligible value to the community has only made him more
alone. As Jack De Bellis observes, Bromden’s "withdrawal .
. . only continued to justify those who treated him as
invisible. Like a good Indian, he had accepted the whites’
vision of him and carried it to its bitter conclusion"
("Alone No More" 72). Similarly, Don R. Kunz mentions
Bromden’s acceptance of "a false mechanical self supplied by
his therapists" (67), and Leeds notes that "[b]y accepting
society’s evaluation of him, Bromden has abdicated the
frightening responsibility of defining himself" (Ken Kesey
32), observations equally applicable to the invisible man.

Bromden also shares the invisible man’s belief in the

rightness of whiteness, and from his unwitting complicity in

99

his oppression comes his many self-deprecating remarks
concerning his Indian heritage. In fact, he even doubts
he’s adequate to be an Indian. For example, on first
encountering McMurphy, Bromden thought "that he was laughing
because of how funny it looked, an Indian’s face and black,
oily Indian’s hair on somebody like me" (26). Later, when
he looks at his reflection in the mirror wondering how
McMurphy can so easily be himself, Bromden sees
my face in the mirror, dark and hard with big,
high cheekbones like the cheek underneath them had
been hacked out with a hatchet, eyes all black and
hard and mean-looking, just like Papa’s eyes or
the eyes of all those tough mean-looking Indians
you see on TV, and I’d think, That ain’t me, that
ain’t my face. It wasn’t even me when I was
trying to be that face. I wasn’t even really me
then; I was just being the way I looked, the way
people wanted. It don’t seem like I ever been me.
(140)
He has adjusted himself to the image others expect him to be
and is estranged from his Indian heritage. It might even be
fair to say that others’ imposed view of him coerced him
into this embrace of invisibility and feigned deafness and
muteness. In much the same way, McMurphy will, in the
course of the novel, seem to be coerced into behavior which
is in stark contrast to his selfish nature.

In order to understand that the security the fog
affords is a false one, Bromden needs a catalyst to shake
the foundation of others’ notion of him. Only then can he
provide his own form to his identity and fly from this

cuckoo’s nest. Bromden does, at least, feel some

ambivalence about the fog. Once fogged in he sometimes

100

fears the isolation--"I’d never see another thing"--or the
frequent inevitable end--"I’d get lost and turn up at the
Shock Shop door" (117). At one time he "had figured that
anything was better’n being lost for good, even the Shock
Shop," but after McMurphy’s arrival on the ward, he has his
doubts: "Being lost isn’t so had" (118).

It took the invisible man a long time to discover the
virtual fog he was in, whereas, for Bromden, the fog is a
tangible thing. Bromden finds the risks of visibility too
frightening, whereas maintaining his invisible state demands
little effort or risk at all. Certainly a six foot eight
inch man who can hide behind a mop handle or slide unseen
into a painting on a wall and who neither speaks nor hears
will not be summoned to dangerous participation. Usually
he’ll be left alone or required only to accomplish some
mindless menial task such as sweeping and mopping the halls.
Accepting his role on the ward further reduces his
visibility: "I been at it so long, sponging and dusting and
mopping . . . that the staff usually don’t even notice me; I
move around in my chores, and they see right through me like
I wasn’t there" (131). Even if the fog-bound Bromden does
arrive at the Shock Shop door, assuming Harding’s account of
Bromden’s previous 200 EST treatments is at all accurate,
one more may not be particularly difficult to endure for
this veteran.

There are many other similarities between Ellison’s

novel and Qne Flew Qve; the Cuckoo’s Nesh. For instance,

101
keeping the inmates fighting among themselves helps render

them powerless. The one o’clock group meeting resembles the
battle royal as what is theoretically a democratic session
"run completely by the patients and their votes" (48)
becomes under Nurse Ratched’s guidance what McMurphy calls a
"peckin’ party" (55). McMurphy’s colorful description
depicts the way the patients are kept battling each other:
”’The flock gets sight of a spot of blood on some chicken
and they all go to neckin’ at it, see, till they rip the
chicken to shreds. . . . Oh, a peckin’ party can wipe out
the whole flock in a manner of a few hours’" (55). One way
Ratched is able to ensure a "successful" group session is to
use the log book where patients betray each other, under the
guise of friendship and for the benefit of the "Therapeutic
Community," as Wrestrum effectively "squealed" on the
invisible man for the sake of the Brotherhood.

In response to McMurphy’s criticism of the group
therapy session where Harding was the victim of the others’
pecking, Harding offers a rigorous defense of Ratched’s
methods. In a speech which begins in earnest Harding’s tone
gradually changes to ironic overstatement, and he concludes
with the bitter acrimony of the tensely whispered "’Oh the
bitch, the bitch, the bitch’" (58-59). Like Barbee’s loaded
rhetoric in depicting the mythic Bledsoe, the slop
dispensing college president, Harding’s speech addressing
the unselfish beneficence of this "veritable angel of mercy"

defines Ratched, the altruistic and legendary, pill

102

dispensing nurse. As Bledsoe was unwilling to tolerate
dissent or controversy in his smoothly run school and
Brother Jack would sacrifice individual members for the
successful control of the Brotherhood, so, too, Ratched
"tends to get real put out if something keeps her outfit
from running like a smooth, accurate, precision-made
machine" (30). For the good of the "Therapeutic Community,"
the patients are "adjusted to surroundings" (30) through
intimidation, suspension of privileges, shock treatments,
and the threat (sometimes carried out) of lobotomy.
Furthermore, the mechanical imagery of both novels is
striking. The fat vet’s comments about the invisible man’s
being an automaton are matched in ankoe’s hes; by Bromden’s
observations of the fate of Ruckly--"another robot for the
Combine" (21)--and his ubiquitous comments about the
dehumanizing influences of the Combine itself. Ratched’s
power over the patients is nowhere more apparent than in her
coercion of Billy Bibbit after finding him with Candy. For
the first time, Billy’s stutter is gone, but Ratched knows
precisely the strings to pull--guilt, fear of Ratched’s
disapproval, fear of his mother--to manipulate her puppet-
like Billy toward powerlessness and his eventual betrayal of
McMurphy. Billy’s needless sacrificial death seems quite
reminiscent of the senseless death of Tod Clifton, who it
seems had begun to understand the maddening plight of blacks
at the control of white and black puppeteers.6

The struggle for power between Ratched and McMurphy can

103
reasonably be described as one between puppeteers, each
seeking to gain control of the ward and its inhabitants.
McMurphy’s power manifests itself in this fashion when he
commandeers the men to vote, by a show of hands, to watch
the World Series on television. Bromden has some difficulty
arriving at just the right descriptive metaphor for
McMurphy’s effectiveness:
It’s like . . . that big red hand of McMurphy’s is
reaching into the fog and dropping down and
dragging the men up by their hands, dragging them
blinking into the open. First one, then another,
then the next. (124)
When McMurphy needs one more hand raised to break the tie,
Bromden feels the power exerted directly on his own hand.
McMurphy did something to it that first day, put
some kind of hex on it with his hand so it won’t
act like I order it. . . . I wouldn’t do it on my
own. . . . I can’t stop it. McMurphy’s got hidden
wires hooked to it, lifting it slow just to get me
out of the fog and into the open where I’m fair
game. (126)
Even though Bromden admits that he lifted his own hand, this
portrayal of the hidden wires, which both McMurphy and
Ratched seem able to control, accurately depicts the plight
of both of these invisible men.

Both novels also use electro-shock treatments for
crucial scenes and effects; Pratt’s edition even includes
the factory hospital episode from Invisible Man, which is
particularly appropriate in light of Bromden’s
characterization of the ward as "the factory for the

combine" (40). But more importantly, both works discuss

castration and other forms of emasculation; rendering the

104

black man and the Indian impotent is considered effectual
manipulation. Moreover, Harding calls a lobotomy
"’[erontal lobe castration. I guess if she [Ratched] can’t
out below the belt she’ll do it above the eyes’" (165).
Lobotomy serves Ratched as an excision of the dangerous
potency of the mind.7

To McMurphy, this ward of patients seems comparable to
a warren of rabbits--sexually inadequate rabbits, Harding
adds, who have lost their "whambam" (62)--who are content to
remain in their holes. McMurphy, following his short stint
of playing it safe after discovering Ratched’s power over
the length of his hospitalization and just prior to his
return to the battle with Ratched when he puts his fist
through the Nurses’ Station window, is characterized by
Bromden as worried "like a dog worries at a hole he don’t
know what’s down" (169). Bromden "wanted to tell him not to
fret about it" and "was just about to come out" of his own
hole of muteness and tell him (169), but that first step
from his hole comes later in a "Thank you" for some Juicy
Fruit chewing gum (185). Eventually, Bromden will emerge
from his hole of invisibility and muteness, exemplified by
his incarceration in this hospital, but first he must
attend, like the invisible man, to writing his way to

wholeness.

Offered $10,000 by the producers to write the screenplay,

"Kesey wrote it--as he had the book--from the vieWpoint of

105
the schizophrenic Indian chief Bromden" (Riley 25).8 But

his screenplay was rejected and the film, instead, utilized
a third person perspective, greatly reducing the role of
Bromden to that of a strong yet mild-mannered Indian whom
McMurphy befriends and helps to independence. But such a
transfer of point of view ignores the central issue of the
book, that of the workings of Bromden’s mind. As Kesey puts
it, "The emphasis should not be on the battle between
McMurphy and Nurse Ratched but on the battle going on in the
Indian’s mind between this man and the Combine that is loose
in America which is trying to inhibit any kind of freedom of
expression" (qtd. in Grunwald 10). For it is within
Bromden’s mind that this battle ensues, not on the ward
itself.

Gerald Schwaberger, in his masters thesis, concurs with
Kesey’s insistence that this mental landscape serves as the
locus for the events of the novel and shares my dismay at
the readers who have "largely neglected" the narrating
Bromden (3). Unfortunately, most of the critical
respondents have overlooked Schwaberger’s contributions.

Only a handful of critics have given Bromden the
attention he deserves. As I have already observed, most
have focused on McMurphy, his struggle with Ratched, and the
eventual sacrifice of his life for the good of the other
patients on the ward. Bromden figures in this sort of
scenario as a character similar to that found in the film

version: he is the pupil who learns from McMurphy’s example,

106

rendering his escape a mere side-effect of the main action
which centers on McMurphy’s experiences. Or, worse, Bromden
is the disciple set on the task of telling the gospel of
McMurphy. Bromden’s growth, taken in such a context, stems
solely from his careful observance of McMurphy’s example.

However, John W. Hunt and Ellen Herrenkohl both see a
double storyline, one focusing on the actions of McMurphy,
the other following the development and transformation of
the narrating Bromden.9 In one of the most thoughtfully
developed considerations of Bromden as the central
consciousness of the novel, Barry H. Leeds argues that
Bromden "learns and develops through the tutelary example of
the protagonist’s life and ultimate death" (Ken Keeey 15), a
statement that still concedes the role of protagonist tO'
McMurphy. Fortunately, Leeds at least acknowledges the
importance of the act of writing in enhancing Bromden’s
growth: "[IJn recounting the story of his friend’s life,
[Bromden] clarifies his own development to the point where
he takes on both the strengths of the protagonist and an
awareness of how to avoid a similar downfall and death"
(15). Others have also credited the writing process with
adding to Bromden’s return to full stature as an
individual.10 But most refreshing about Leeds’ work is his
focus on Bromden’s development and his own turning point in
the novel.

Those who have limited their attention to McMurphy’s

progress (and decline)--almost to the exclusion of

107

considering Bromden--struggle to understand McMurphy’s
turning point. Seen from this perspective, McMurphy’s
transformation from the self-centered wolf who aims to
fleece the lambs of the ward to the altruistic mentor set on
helping the patients recover their human dignity seems to
occur too suddenly to be believed. Interestingly, Tony
Tanner, in this regard, comes quite close to uncovering the
reason for McMurphy to exist in the first place. Tanner
remarks that if the inmates "could dream collectively they
would dream McMurphy. From one point of view that is
exactly what they do" (375). Unfortunately, Tanner doesn’t
choose to read the novel from that perspective, nor does
Pratt elect to carry forth his observation that the narrator
is "insane by anyone’s standards" (viii). Certainly, a
narrator who believes that pills contain transistors, that
whole floors of the hospital behave like elevators and can
descend in the night to a slaughterhouse-like basement, and
that he can enter a picture on the wall, among other things,
cannot be expected to render an indisputable eyewitness
account. The reader has no reason to assume that the
portrayal of McMurphy is any more factual than are Bromden’s
other hallucinatory accounts. Klinkowitz even acknowledges
that "McMurphy is made larger than life, too large even to
be believable" (25), yet critics, Klinkowitz included,
selectively dispense with their qualms about reliability and
believability and accept Bromden’s story as if it were an

authentic depiction of actual events.11

108

The narrator, Bromden, who introduces himself to the
reader through his narration and this alleged narrative of
"actual" events is wildly confused and emotionally and
mentally handicapped. He actually believes in his
invisibility, in the fog, and in the Combine. His writing
may be easier to understand if we approach the subjects of
his ramblings as metaphoric constructs, but to him they are
tangible, very real things. How then, we need to ask, is
one to come to grips with the narrative? The answer lies in
understanding that just as the invisibility and fog are to
be taken by the reader as metaphoric, so, too, are McMurphy
and Nurse Ratched and the battle between them. If
understanding Broom’s childhood makes his "invisibility"
coherent, then understanding his childhood and other events
of the past may uncover the reason for his creating this
novel and the two much larger than life characters who

inhabit it.

Ronald Wallace, in The Last Laugh; Eonn and Affinnation
in hhe QODEQmDQIQIY Qomic Novel, is the only critic who

accords Bromden’s novel writing the attention it deserves.
Wallace correctly observes that Bromden is not merely a
chronicler of McMurphy’s ward experiences. In addition to
identifying Broom as the central character whose development
is the focal point of the novel, Wallace understands that
McMurphy is Bromden’s own creation.

Thus it is Bromden, and not necessarily Kesey, who

is ultimately responsible for the creation of

McMurphy. McMurphy is Bromden’s romantic vision
of what a hero should be like, his action and

109
motives existing only insofar as Bromden imagines
them. McMurphy becomes in part a metaphor for
Bromden’s own development and the central focus of
the novel is on Bromden’s growth toward health and
a comic understanding of himself and his society.
(107)

While I agree with Wallace that Bromden "must regain
his laugh before he can regain his speech" and that the
life-affirming power of laughter is essential to Bromden’s
reassertion of self, I have some difficulty accepting
Wallace’s assertion that Bromden is "exposing his own
comedy" in this novel (109). Wallace’s comments that
Bromden develops "the kind of comic perspective that enables
him to write such a novel. When he can turn the Combine
into comedy, he has defeated it" (109) are provocative and
invite the reader to perceive Bromden’s character and
narrative role in a unique way. Certainly, there is humor
in the mere pathos of a huge Indian who believes in his own
invisibility, and Bromden does learn to laugh at himself
when seen through the eyes of his created hero. But the
Combine, the metaphor for the forces that have whittled him
down to size and pushed him out of society and into a fog of
withdrawal because of his racial characteristics, is not
comic. Indeed, laughter becomes a potent tool against the
power of the Combine: Bromden demonstrates the strength of
his protagonist by having him refuse to take his EST
seriously and laugh at his own predicament. "[Y]ou have to
laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in

balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb

crazy" (212). But humor, in these desperate situations, is

110

of a brutal darkness, born of adversity and pain.

While Wallace’s portrayal of Bromden’s novel as a
comedy may serve his inclusion of it in his critical
appraisal of other humorous works, I fear it may obscure the
sober seriousness of Qnehoe’s Nes . For all its humor,
QHQBQQL§_N§§§ is no more a comic novel than is Tnyieihle
n_n. In that book, when the invisible man fails to part
with the shattered bank image, the scene verges on
Chaplinesque slapstick, but the tragic aspect of that scene
depicts his inability to form an identity separate from that
forced on him by the society that mocks and ridicules him.
While the narrative strategies of both narrators may well
indicate their awareness of the humor within their
functional paralysis, neither novel fits a narrow concept of
a comic novel. However, Wallace’s central point--that
McMurphy and Ratched are fictional and metaphoric creations
of Bromden’s--is vitally important.

In short, it seems plausible that Bromden invented
McMurphy--a father figure modeled on the recently dismissed
Taber and on traits he wished his father had possessed--to
replace his father. He set his created character the task
of challenging the very tangible (yet equally "deformed," to
use Pratt’s term) Ratched--the mother figure--and the
Combine in order to effect his own therapeutic experience
and no longer play it safe as his father had. As a mental
construct, McMurphy assumes Bromden’s burden, helps to clear

the fog, and short-circuits the electricity (and power) of

111
the ward. Through the process of imagining and writing
these exploits, Broom gains enough confidence and autonomy
to necessitate his manipulation of his novel’s "hero" to
silence Ratched, at which point the hero, too, is silenced.
Their voices disappear as Bromden’s voice returns. The
crucial next step, psychologically, is to kill McMurphy, an
effectual means of at once killing the father and cutting
the umbilical cord, so to speak, in order to attain a true
autonomous identity. Finally, he writes his own escape from
his hole, accomplished by heaving the control panel--a final
image of the Combine, now impotent with severed wires
dangling and inert--through the window and hurdling "after
the panel, into the moonlight" (272).12
Like Ellison’s narrator, Bromden considers the pain in
overcoming one’s invisibility and muteness through writing.
He remarks,
It’s gonna burn me . . . finally telling about all
this, about the hospital, and her, and the guys--
and about McMurphy. I been silent so long now
it’s gonna roar out of me like floodwaters and you
think the guy telling this is ranting and raving
my go ; you think this is too horrible to have
really happened, this is too awful to be the
truth! But, please. It’s still hard for me to
have a clear mind thinking on it. But it’s the
truth even if it didn’t happen. (13)
The novel Bromden is writing is born of pain and anguish.
Like the invisible man in his occasional surrenderings to
the potency of language in his speeches, Bromden fears the
overwhelming power of the word and that he may lose control.

And, finally, he suggests the "truth" of what his novel will

portray "even if it didn’t happen," or, in other words, even

112
if the events and occurrences are not factual themselves.
As Hunt observes,

Bromden’s purgative act . . . significantly comes

in the shape of a story, that is, it comes in a

form which requires that the events alluded to be

ordered with a coherence sufficient to explain or

yield their meanings to the narrator himself.

Thus the story told is given its structure by the

need of the narrator to find the truth in it.

(27)
Bromden’s story, then, is not ordered for the reader’s
understanding but for Bromden’s benefit. From the reader’s
perspective, the narration may become confused, the events
may seem too bizarre to be believable. According to Kunz,
Bromden "seems unable to control the confused free
association of memory, fantasy, and present sensory
experience" (66). However, as the creator of this fictional
representation of truth, Bromden requires the license to
move through time and space as he grapples with ordering the
occurrences of the novel and utilizing his personal
experiences to do so. Britton et al. explain the importance
of going back over our experiences, "in mind, in talk, or
(if we are young enough) in make-believe play. Our re-
enactments are likely in some degree to distort the
experience in the direction of what is acceptable to us, or
what is intelligible to us" (79). The extent to which
Bromden imposes a sense of order and control over the lives
of his character is crucial: his successful movement to an
autonomous self requires that he wrest command over his life

from others who have sought to rule and falsely identify

him.

113

This story ie too horrible to be believed: McMurphy is
much too large for life; Ratched is too simplistically evil
and cruel to be human. But as characters populating an
imagined environment, an altered version of Bromden’s place
of "real" habitation, they become puppets who are able to
engage in conflict on a battle field on which the narrator
is, as yet, not prepared to venture. He needs a McMurphy to
lead the way for him, to cut a path for Bromden’s recovery
and escape.

One of the ways in which Bromden’s narration is most
confusing is his manipulation of time. Ironically, this
facility to control time’s passage is a power he attests
belongs to Ratched:

The Big Nurse is able to set the wall clock at
whatever speed she wants by just turning one of
those dials in the steel door; she takes a notion
to hurry things up, she turns the speed up, and
those hands whip around that disk like spokes in a
wheel. . . .
But generally it’s the other way, the slow way.
She’ll turn that dial to a dead stop and freeze
the sun there on the screen so it don’t move a
scant hair for weeks. (70-71)
However, Bromden demonstrates his own ability to manipulate
time and thus manipulate the reader by slipping in and out
of the alleged present time of the ward. He often retreats
to past events, particularly of his childhood, without
warning. For example, before creating McMurphy’s entrance
onto the ward, Broom twice retreats in memory to his
childhood hunting experience with his father.

Then, when McMurphy enters the ward, Bromden observes

the similarities and the differences between McMurphy and

114
his father.
He talks a little the way Papa used to, voice loud
and full of hell, but he doesn’t look like Papa;
Papa was a full-blood Columbia Indian--a chief--
and hard and shiny as a gunstock. This guy is
redheaded with long red sideburns and a tangle of
curls out from under his cap . . . and he’s broad
as Papa was tall, broad across the jaw and
shoulders and chest, a broad white devilish grin,
and he’s hard in a different kind of way from
Papa. (16)
While McMurphy is reminiscent in voice and size of Bromden’s
father, he is significantly broader, and, oddly, redder.
For Bromden, the characteristics which distinguish McMurphy
from his father are nearly as important as their
similarities.

When McMurphy violates the rules by brushing his teeth
at the improper time, Bromden recalls his father’s
outmaneuvering the white government men and the power of
laughter. "I feel good, seeing McMurphy get that black
boy’s goat like not many men could. Papa used to be able to
do it--spraddle-legged, dead-panned, squinting up at the sky
that first time the government men showed up to negotiate
about buying off the treaty" (86). Bromden’s father speaks
of Canadian geese flying overhead in July, pulling the legs
of these authoritarian whites. "By the time it dawned on
the government men that they were being poked fun at, all
the council who’d been sitting on the porch of our shack . .
. had all busted up laughing fit to kill" (86). Bromden
takes pleasure as well in creating a good humored man in his

father’s image.

Another side of Bromden’s invisibility is his believed

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lack of size and stature, a trait he shares with his father
who diminished in size as his potency as chief of his tribe
was spent.- During the course of the novel, Bromden worries
that McMurphy will suffer the same fate as his father. He
tells McMurphy, "’Everybody worked on him because he was
big, and wouldn’t give in, and did like he pleased.
Everybody worked on him just the way they’re working on
you’" (187). Based on Bromden’s experience, he believes
that once those in the Combine see a person’s size and
strength, "’they got to bust you’" (187). Bromden
anticipates the inevitable end for McMurphy, as he had
witnessed his father’s eventual demise: "’The Combine had
whipped him. It beats everybody. It’ll beat you too. They
can’t have somebody as big as Papa running around unless
he’s one of them’" (187).

The safest way to forestall the inevitable is to do the
"smart thing," which Bromden learned from his father and
sees McMurphy start to do when McMurphy discovers that
Ratched alone determines the length of his stay in the
hospital.

[McMurphyJ’s finally getting cagey, is all. The
way Papa finally did when he came to realize that
he couldn’t beat that group from town who wanted
the government to put in the dam because of the
money and the work it would bring, and because it
would get rid of the village. . . . Papa had done
the smart thing signing the papers. . . . McMurphy
was doing the smart thing. I could see that. He
was giving in because it was the smartest thing to
do. . . . He didn’t say so, but I knew and I told
myself it was the smart thing to do. I told

myself over and over: It’s safe. Like hiding.
(150-51)

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When McMurphy silences himself and begins to limit his
visibility on the ward, Bromden clearly comprehends the
rationale involved. He doesn’t like it, but he understands.
It’s the method he’s employed for many years. At this
midway point in Bromden’s novel, his "hero" has fallen into
the same hole Bromden has. But Bromden as novelist intends
to extricate them both.

As mentioned above, Wallace recognizes the importance
of considering Bromden as a fiction writer, and he also
explores the influences of Bromden’s childhood experiences
upon the novel as Bromden forms it.

Just as the Chief’s mother worked on his father to
make him small, so the Big Nurse works on the
Chief and McMurphy. Just as the government
officials failed to hear or see Bromden, so the
medical staff labels him deaf and dumb. In some
ways the Chief’s novel is a fictionalized account
of his childhood experience. This McMurphy and
the Big Nurse are not "real" characters at all,
but rather the Chief’s metaphors for his own real
experience. (108)
However, Wallace overlooks another motivator for Bromden’s
fictionalization of his experiences and model for the
fictional McMurphy. Bromden witnessed the "adjustment" of
Maxwell Wilson Taber, an earlier victim of the therapeutic
experience on the ward, and endeavors, through the formation
of the McMurphy character, to resurrect this previous
questioning patient.

The novel’s narration occurs in three distinct times.

The bulk of it takes place in the ostensible ongoing

present, beginning with McMurphy’s entrance on the ward and

ending with Bromden’s mercy-killing of him. In addition,

117
there are flashbacks to the distant past of his father and

mother, the tribe, and even his army experiences. However,
when Bromden tries to establish the day to day routine of
the ward and hospital, he utilizes a narrative that involves
a present tense that actually depicts a more recent past, of
a time on the ward before he began to write about McMurphy.

Dismissed from the ward "some years back" (29), Maxwell
Wilson Taber figures prominently in the chapter in which
Broom addresses Ratched’s reaction to any disruption of the
smooth workings of the ward routine. Taber’s name is
mentioned some sixteen times in this chapter (29-41) because
Taber serves Bromden as an example of the costs of
questioning and opposing Nurse Ratched and as a model for
the character of McMurphy. This section begins with Ratched
explaining to one of the "little nurses" how a manipulator
like McMurphy operates, and she seems to wax nostalgic in
the telling. She recalls Taber as "’an intolerehle Ward
Manipulator" and then "[h]er eyes get far-off and pleased
with the memory. ’Mistur Tay-bur,’ she says" (29). Broom’s
ensuing discussion of the ward routine provides, in the
examples of Taber’s experiences there, a capsule summary of
the sorts of things that can be expected to occur during
McMurphy’s stay there, particularly if he should prove to be
the ward manipulator Ratched predicts he will be.13

Taber, too, had some difficulty following the rules and
his first offense is in questioning his prescribed

medication.

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"Miss, I don’t like to create trouble. But I

don’t like to swallow something without knowing
what it is, neither. How do I know this isn’t one
of those funny pills that makes me something I’m
not?" (35)
Compared to McMurphy’s strident antagonism and heavy irony,
Taber seems mild-mannered in his alleged role as
manipulator. When McMurphy questions the rules, such as the
proper time for brushing his teeth or the appropriate volume
for playing the radio, he’s not just asking why; he’s also
working on an angle, trying to figure out how to get things
running his way.

In Bromden’s further outline of the "usual" morning
events, he mentions the prompt eight-thirty arrival of two
technicians, one of whom says they’ve come "’to install an
Indwelling Curiosity Cutout in some nosy booger’" (36). The
recipient of their advanced technology is the curious Taber;
his objectionable questioning must be curtailed. In the
struggle which ensues, Taber is forcibly restrained by two
of the orderlies. "He gets in one good kick in the shins.
He’s yelling bloody murder. I’m surprised how helpless he
looks when they hold him, like he was wrapped with bands of
black iron" (36). They hold Taber prostrate on the
mattress, his "peach-colored rear . . . framed by the ragged
lettuce-green" of his ripped pants, while the Nurse smears
"Vaseline on a long needle," and following the injection,
leaves the jar of Vaseline in the room (36). The orderlies

stay in the room with the defenseless Taber "a long time

before the door opens up again and they come out, carrying

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him across the hall to the lab. His greens are ripped clear
off now and he’s wrapped up in a damp sheet" (37).

Bromden implies what he supposes happened behind those
closed doors; he suspects the orderlies of forcibly
sodomizing Taber. In creating McMurphy’s entrance a few
pages earlier, Bromden took a certain pleasure in having
McMurphy out-maneuver the orderlies, as they chased him
about the ward with their thermometer and the jar of
Vaseline. Bromden has effectively rewritten this incident
by giving his "hero" the upper hand. Later, when Bromden
will have McMurphy intercede on George’s behalf by taking on
Washington while Bromden battles, in his mind, with one of
the other orderlies, it will serve as sweet revenge for the
way they treated the defenseless Taber. During the course
of the novel, McMurphy will deliver, to Ratched and the
Combine, more than "one good kick in the shins."

At nine-fifty, continuing Bromden’s portrayal of an
ordinary day of extraordinary circumstances, "Taber is
wheeled out of the lab on a Gurney bed" and, since the
technicians had to give him a second shot, they suggest to
the nurse that "’we take him right on over to Building One
and buzz him with EST while we’re at it--that way not waste
the extra Seconal’" (37). Ratched agrees and further
suggests that they "’take him to the electroencephalograph
and check his head--we may find evidence of a need for brain
work" (37). As the technicians wheel Taber off, Bromden

mentions that they seem "like puppets, mechanical puppets in

120
one of those Punch and Judy acts where it’s supposed to be
funny to see the puppet beat up by the Devil and swallowed
headfirst by a smiling alligator" (37). The automaton-like
nature of the Combine’s technicians serves as another reason
for Bromden to instill McMurphy with the powers of a
puppeteer, particularly if Bromden expects him to grapple
with the ace "Ward Manipulator," Nurse Ratched.

And yet, Bromden surely has his doubts about the
strength his McMurphy will be able to exert against the
Combine, particularly considering the fate of Taber. As a
result of his implanted "Indwelling Curiosity Cutout" (which
we can safely assume is actually a lobotomy) and in light of
his successful re-introduction to his family and community,
the Combine considers Taber to be a technological
achievement:

When a completed product goes back out into
society, all fixed up good as new, hetter than new
sometimes, it brings joy to the Big Nurse’s heart;
something that came in all twisted different is
now a functioning, adjusted component, a credit to
the whole outfit and a marvel to behold. (40)
Bromden further envisions the reactions in the neighborhood
to Taber’s return: "’Why, I’ve never seen anything to beat
the change in Maxwell Taber since he’s got back from the
hospital; a little black and blue around the eyes, a little
weight lost, and you know what? he’s a ney nen’" (40).
(Taber’s rebirth sounds strikingly similar to the invisible
man’s after his hospital stay.) Bromden sees the futility

of such "adjustment"; he won’t let that happen to his

created free spirit, McMurphy. Not if he has any say in the

121

matter. But Bromden will need to take great care that he
does not relinquish control of his creation to the forces of
the Combine and Nurse Ratched.

The only other mention of Taber occurs when Doctor
Spivey introduces (as a result of McMurphy’s manipulation of
him) the notion of a carnival on the ward. "Nobody’s
jumping up and down at the idea. [As yet the patients do
not respond in puppet fashion to anyone but Ratched.] Some
of us can remember Taber trying to engineer a carnival a few
years back, and what happened to it" (97). Since McMurphy’s
predecessor suffered greatly for his suggestion, Bromden
steers his hero in other directions and the carnival never
materializes.

Created by Bromden in the image of Bromden’s father and
the "adjusted" Taber, McMurphy is set in motion against the
one force which epitomizes the Combine, Nurse Ratched.
Ratched, the mechanical, ball-busting matriarch of the ward
is no more flesh-and-blood real than McMurphy is. Just as
McMurphy is fashioned out of these remembered incidents from
Bromden’s past, so, too, Ratched grows out of Bromden’s
memories of his mother and her role in reducing his father
to a cipher. Just as McMurphy’s size and color mirrors
traits of Bromden’s father, so, too, Ratched reflects
similar characteristics of Mrs. Bromden. As Fiedler
observes, "Not only is Mother II big, . . . she is even more
essentially yhihe" (180; emphasis is the author’s). The

starched whiteness of her uniform contrasts starkly with

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McMurphy’s unkempt red hair and sideburns.

One of Ratched’s methods of exerting power over the
patients is through the use or misuse of names. Bromden,
the son of Chief Tee Ah Millatoona, has the name of his
white mother. His father changed his own name when he
married outside the tribe. On the ward, his name of "Chief
Broom" stems from his usual activity at the behest of the
ward orderlies. As Leeds notes, "Defined by his menial
function, Bromden is no more than an object to the staff, a
tool. But even his legal name, ’Bromden,’ represents a
false identity that is imposed upon him by others" (Ken
Keeey 16). Like the invisible man’s, Bromden’s acceptance
of the given name interferes with the discovery of the
authentic self. Both characters tend to become (and to
remain) what they are named.

Ratched uses her strategy of keeping a patient in a
weakened state by manipulating the name of that patient when
she calls McMurphy "Mr. McMurry" (27-28, 44-45, 47). At the
first occurrence, it might be construed as an error of
pronunciation, but when she continues to call him McMurry
during the group session her misnaming is an obvious method
of exerting control. After all, she’s sitting with his file
open on her lap. At first, it works so well, in fact, that
Doctor Spivey also addresses him as McMurry (45). Following
McMurphy’s correction of Spivey and after Spivey uses his
name correctly four times, Ratched persists in her "mistake"

as she suggests that Spivey "advise Mr. McMurry on the

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protocol of these Group Meetings" (47). Ratched is

purposely misnaming him in order to keep him off-balance and
to render him as ineffectual and compliant as the other
"pecking party" victims. Unfortunately for her, McMurphy is
equally able to influence her balance with his sexual
innuendo and his assertiveness. Her misnaming of him had
followed his double entendre with her request that the
others might want to "touch upon" the subject of Harding’s
wife: "’I thought you mean touch upon her--something else’"
(44). One of the reasons for Bromden’s creating this scene
of misnaming is to have the father figure, McMurphy, reject
the name imposed by the mother figure, Ratched. Bromden
also gives his "hero" three strong names--Randle Patrick
McMurphy--in honor and memory of his ward predecessor--
Maxwell Wilson Taber.

Bromden’s mother was instrumental in his father’s
reduction in size. As he tells McMurphy, "’He fought it
[the Combine] a long time till my mother made him too little
to fight any more and he gave up’" (187). In the novel, as
Bromden writes it, the father figure of McMurphy is set in
confrontational opposition with the antagonistic mother
figure of Ratched. His novel, then, becomes an exercise in
rewriting his past, in stage managing the interrelationships
within his own family and between those who will control and
adjust others and those who will be free. As Bromden
observes, "you never can tell when just that eegeein one

might come in who’s free enough to foul things up right and

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left, really make a hell of a mess and constitute a threat
to the whole smoothness of the outfit" (41; emphasis is the
author’s).

Certainly, there is a "real" nurse somewhere within
Ratched as Bromden portrays her. He has had experiences
with authority that have made his lopsided view seem "real"
to him. But this automaton of cruelty--the pecking party
overseer, the catalyst for Billy Bibbit’s suicide, the
vindictive nurse practitioner who gains revenge through EST
and lobotomy--is as unbelievable as McMurphy is, whom
Bromden at one time imagines as "a giant come out of the sky
to save us from the Combine" (224). Instead, McMurphy is
the meek Taber and the shrunken Tee Ah Millatoona (Mr.
Bromden) recast as an outspoken, forceful character set in
conflict with the mother and authority figure of the cruel
Ratched.14

The term "Big Nurse" is a misnaming of sorts on
Bromden’s part, an attempt to depict her as a role in
contrast to his own believed smallness rather than as an
authentic identifying name. And his selection of the name
of Ratched typifies her as a functional element of the
Combine machinery instead of a human being. As Leeds has
noted, she "is conceived in mechanistic terms. Even her
name, ’Ratched,’ sounds like a kind of wrench or machine
component, and the association with ’rat’ makes its very
sound unpleasant" (Ken Kesey 20). The reader cannot help

but hear the near homonyms of her name--"wretched," "rat

125

shed," and "rat shit." Bromden practices the power of the
namer in his selection of a fitting, dehumanizing and
insulting name for his antagonist. He certainly knows what
he is doing when he has McMurphy call her "Miss Rat-shed"
(87) in echo of Ratched’s earlier "Tay-bur" (29).

In fact, Kesey made an error in his novel when he
allowed Bromden himself on one occasion to refer in his
narration to the nurse as "Miss Ratched" (252).
Interestingly, except for that lone exception, Bromden
always refers to her as "Big Nurse" or "the nurse," more
often relying on the less explicit pronouns "she" or "her"
whenever possible. They mark Bromden’s narrative and
psychological strategy to reduce her in size and potency.
Without Bromden’s other characters’ referring to her as
Ratched--although he named her for this fiction--the reader
would be as unaware of her name as Ellison’s reader is of
the invisible man’s. Certainly, Kesey’s lone oversight in
this regard doesn’t alter the fact that he, like Bromden,
understands the power of naming.15

As the creator of this fiction, Bromden poses these two
larger than life figures in direct opposition to one
another. As they look horns (and libidos and intellects),
Bromden takes McMurphy from an initial outspoken and highly
visible stage toward his father’s, Taber’s, and his own
silence and shrunken invisible state. Moreover, he brings
McMurphy to a new ascendancy as his "hero" rejects the

safety of muteness and invisibility and finally scorns doing

126
"the smart thing." Oddly enough, just as the character of

Broom, every bit as much a creation of the narrating Bromden
as any other character in the book, feigns invisibility and
muteness in order to be privy to the conversations and
machinations of other, so, too, the narrator hides his own
manipulations of his characters behind their manipulations
of each other. The novel in this sense takes on those
characteristics of the Punch and Judy show, or, more
accurately, a Punch and Judy show put on by Punch and Judy.
In this manner, Bromden can keep himself twice removed from
the action and feign innocence and non-involvement. No
wonder so many readers overlook Bromden’s importance; he
almost makes himself invisible to the reader as well.16

Curiously, within the text of the novel, Bromden hides
himself at one point by entering a picture on the wall in
the staff room: "There’s a path running down through the
aspen, and I push my broom down the path a ways and sit down
on a rock and look back out through the frame at that
visiting doctor talking with the residents" (112). Hidden
safely within this artwork, he is free to observe and to act
in ways not otherwise allowed within the hospital. Writing
the novel affords him similar freedom.

Bromden has effectively populated his stage with these
two enormous actors and various supporting players. The
drama that ensues between them reenacts the crucial
interactions of the family nexus that in part led him to see

himself as a small, worthless being. McMurphy and Ratched

127

exchange challenges and McMurphy, for a time, believes in
his ability to be victorious. After McMurphy is boomeranged
in his expectations, much as Bromden had been throughout his
childhood and adolescence, he resorts to the tact,
undertaken by Bromden and his father before him, of playing
it safe. The image of the victimized Taber still vivid in
his memory, Bromden must fear the fate his creation may
face. At first, McMurphy’s caginess seems an adequate
defensive strategy to both McMurphy and Bromden, until
Bromden successfully boomerangs McMurphy out of his
complacency with three successive mysteries.

The character of McMurphy, as Bromden has initially
written him, is very simple--a man, for whom reality has a
clearly defined, two-sided character. Winners win, losers
lose. If he talks loud and long enough, he believes he can
worm his way out of almost any situation. When the choice
appears to be between acting up and remaining in the
hospital indefinitely or behaving according to the dictates
of Ratched and regaining his freedom in a short period of
time, the decision comes easily to McMurphy. But three
"facts" begin to work on McMurphy. First, his withdrawal
from the challenge to Ratched leads to Cheswick’s drowning
himself rather than face the humiliation he felt at standing
up for something on his own. Second, Sefelt’s epileptic fit
uncovers a choice that only puzzles McMurphy--between the
horrors of the fit or the side-effects of Dilantin. And

third, and most importantly, McMurphy discovers that most of

128

the other patients are there voluntarily. Their fear of the
world and Ratched, their essential rabbit-ness which he had
kidded about, has led them to make choices that McMurphy is
at great pains to fathom. Scanlon ponders Sefelt’s decision
not to take Dilantin which led to his seizure and
Fredrickson’s decision to take his own and Sefelt’s dosages
which rots his gums, saying "’Damned if you do and damned if
you don’t. Puts a man in one confounded hing, I’d say’"
(155). To which McMurphy thoughtfully, yet confusedly
responds, "’Yeah, I see what you mean,’ looking down into
Sefelt’s gathering face. His face has commenced to take on
that same haggard, puzzled look of pressure that the face on
the floor has" (155).

Bromden’s McMurphy soon reasserts himself by putting
his fist through the glass in the Nurses’ Station and
chooses a path that is equally puzzling in its complexity.
No longer faced with simple solutions and forced to live
with seemingly antithetical ideas, McMurphy finds his
choices are a caginess which is a death in life or a
potentially life-threatening confrontation with the nurse.

Leeds uncovers an interesting bit of foreshadowing
which occurs in Bromden’s story that throws light on this
"choice" of McMurphy’s. When Bromden comes out of the fog
enough to actually see out of the window of the ward into
the real world which lies just outside, he sees a dog
"sniffing digger squirrel holes" and hears "Canadian honkers

going south for the winter" (142). The dog also hears the

129

geese overhead and moves off in the direction of the sound
and toward the highway. Leeds observes:
A car comes out of a turn, and Bromden sees the
"dog and the car making for the same spot of
pavement"[143]. . . . [A]nd just before McMurphy
announces his decision [to escalate the war with
Ratched] by breaking the window of the nurses’
station, Bromden hears a sound in his head "like
tires screeching down a pavement" [172]. The
implicit parallel is clear: McMurphy and the dog
. . . move inexorably toward their head-on
collisions with massive machines--the Combine and
the car. (30)
As mentioned above, Bromden also portrays McMurphy as an
ignorant dog sniffing "at a hole he don’t know what’s down"
(169), indicating McMurphy’s inability to see his own
impending end. When Bromden writes his own escape, he
follows that same "direction I remembered seeing the dog go"
(272), but carries enough knowledge with him to circumvent
the end that the dog and McMurphy faced.

Bromden’s turning point comes when his own creation
seems to take on a life of his own. Hampered by his self-
imposed paralysis, Bromden is living the life of the "damned
if you don’t." His isolation, made tangible by the fog, has
been an island of safety, but also of inaction. He
empathizes with the suffering of patients such as Billy
Bibbit and old Pete.

I can see all that, and be hurt by it, the way I
was hurt by seeing things in the Army, in the war.
The way I was hurt by seeing what happened to Papa
and the tribe. I thought I’d got over seeing
those things and fretting over them. There’s no
sense in it. There’s nothing to be done. (121).
The fog has helped him to avoid seeing the hurt around him

and his deaf and dumb act has allowed him to abstain from

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human contact. In his mind, "as soon as a man goes to help
somebody, he leaves himself wide open. He hee to be cagey"
(121). He recalls that during the war, he had wanted to go
to a "buddy of mine tied to a tree fifty yards from me,
screaming for water, his face blistered in the sun" (121-
22). Had he taken the chance and come out in the open, the
enemy would have "cut me in half" (122). And recalling the
last hunting trip he took with his father, when the old
Chief was too drunk to sleep straight, he complains that
"[t]here’s nothing you can do about a happening out of the
past like that" (122).

These two memories reinforce Bromden’s commitment to
staying in the fog "for good" as he protests that McMurphy
is "still trying to pull people out of the fog. Why don’t
he leave me be?" (123). However, after the puppet-like
machinations which McMurphy exerts on Bromden’s arm (which
Bromden admits he raised himself), McMurphy’s return to the
fray when he breaks the Nurses’ Station window, and
Bromden’s recollection of the initial reasons for his
feigned deaf and dumb act, the fog has dissipated
completely, and Bromden laughs and thanks McMurphy for the
chewing gum. Bromden speaks with McMurphy, trying to
explain to himself by writing a dialogue with his created
character about why he’s been cagey for so long. Finally,
with the conversation ended and McMurphy lying in bed with
his back toward Bromden, Bromden feels the need to touch his

creation and thereby reestablish contact. Even Bromden has

131

difficulty understanding why he feels this urge.
I wanted to reach over and touch the place where
he was tattooed, to see if he was still alive.
He’s layin’ awful quiet, I told myself, I out to
touch him to see if he’s still alive. . . .
That’s a lie. I know he’s still alive. That
ain’t the reason I want to touch him.
I want to touch him because he’s a man.
That’s a lie too. There’s other men around. I
could touch them.
I want to touch him because I’m one of these
queers!
But that’s a lie too. That’s one fear hiding
behind another. If I was one of these queers I’d
want to do other things with him. I just want to
touch him because he’s who he is. (188)
McMurphy has taken on traits all his own, that seem separate
from his creator, and exude a human quality noticeably
tangible (like the fog once was) to Bromden. He nearly
believes that he can touch his creation, that his hand could
make an imprint on the flesh of his imagined production.
But Bromden never gets to see whether or not his hand would
fall through the ghost-like image of McMurphy, at least not
until he wrestles the lobotomized and lifeless husk of
McMurphy into death.

As McMurphy moves inexorably ahead toward his fateful
end, the character of Broom as written by Bromden moves
toward recovery of his self and respectful acceptance of his
Indian blood. In the crucial scene of his coming out of the
fog of his EST treatment when he and McMurphy are punished
for fighting the orderlies, Bromden demonstrates his growing
strength and endurance. For the first time he fights off
the fog that usually follows the treatments: "How many

hours have I been out? It’s fogging a little, but I won’t

132
slip off and hide in it. No . . . never again . . ." (241:
ellipses are the author’s) On this one occasion, instead of
surrendering to the fog and his ambivalent feelings of
safety/loneliness, Bromden makes a concerted effort to
return to sensibility and visibility. He virtually wills
himself out of the fog for once and for all. "I worked at
it. I’d never worked at coming out of it before" (241).
Part of his reason for struggling to consciousness resides
in his interest as character and author in what will happen
next. Moreover, his successful escape from the fog becomes
a victory against the Combine, for he "knew this time I had
them beat" (241).
Noteworthy as well in this scene is the memory of his
grandmother’s Indian burial. In order to bury her properly,
Bromden, his father, and his Uncle Running-and-Jumping Wolf
had first to dig her from her earthen grave and then set her
"high in a pine tree bed" (241). Jack De Bellis’ insights
into the significance of this memory to Bromden’s
therapeutic healing are worth noting:
The recollection appears to affect Bromden’s
actions, for his flight from the ward . . .
symbolically liberates his stunted, imprisoned
father [jailed for the unorthodox burial of the
grandmother]. The recovery of the past had
enabled Chief Bromden to recover the father
dormant within him. ("Alone No More" 73)

As De Bellis (and Hunt 32) observes, this portrait of the

traditional Indian grandmother is set in direct contrast

with the stereotypical drunken Indian--Bromden’s father--and

the parody of a vanishing Native American--Bromden himself.

133

"The individual," Joseph Church says,
in an environment alien or hostile to his style of
life may find his behavior and his self-image
shifting as he takes on the coloration of his
surroundings. In trying to resist the process of
adaptation [or as Bromden puts it, being "adjusted
to surroundings" (40)], the individual may be
driven to extremes, until he becomes a caricature
of what he is trying to stand for. (106)
The recollection of his grandmother and her human dignity
serves Bromden as a means of cultural empowerment and
hastens his own recovery from confused caricature to
authentic self. During the process of shaping his novel,
Bromden has rewritten his past; through recovering the
memories of his past, he also recovers from his racial self-

loathing and seeming madness.

Contrary to the reading of McMurphy as Bromden’s
romanticized vision of what a hero should be, Bromden’s
creation should not be seen as epitomizing human qualities
which Bromden admires or thinks he should acquire. In
creating McMurphy--as a surrogate in the battle with the
Combine--Bromden is not looking for the enduring qualities
of a steadfast hero, but the deviousness, egotism, and raw
energy (regardless of morality) necessary to defeat and
silence the arch-enemy, Ratched. He purposely makes
McMurphy stronger and more full of himself than either Taber
or his father could ever be, not because these are qualities
he desires for himself, but because they are essential if
the battle is to be won. In terms of the "peckin’ party" or

a cock fight, if you want to win the bet, it’s wisest to

134
place your money on the meanest, most single-minded, vicious
hen or rooster of the bunch. McMurphy is the cock who
fights hardest when first blood is drawn. The critics who
suppose Bromden, or Kesey for that matter, wholly agrees
with McMurphy’s attitudes toward women, admires McMurphy’s
dishonesty, holds McMurphy’s selective morality and violent
tactics in esteem, or thereafter will follow the example of
McMurphy in his dealings with other human beings ignore the
fact that Bromden (and Kesey) merely equip McMurphy with the
traits necessary to match the machinations of Ratched and
the Combine.

In his chapter on Quckoo’s Nest, Wallace wisely
dispenses with this idea of Bromden’s romantic hero and
acknowledges that Bromden’s passage to authenticity requires
that he forgo following McMurphy’s example:

The Chief lives on as a distinct individual, not
merely as a reincarnation of McMurphy as some
critics have suggested. The Chief, for example,
never adopts McMurphy’s attitude toward violence
and sex, nor does he reflect the machismo values
of his hero. Bromden creates in McMurphy an
extremity of total freedom as a balance to the
nurse’s extremity of total control, in an effort
to locate the mean. (112)
Instead, these forces--under Bromden’s careful guidance--in
effect negate one another. McMurphy’s attack on Ratched
after Billy’s suicide not only removes her desexed facade
(the empress truly has no clothes) but renders her
voiceless. Bromden discusses the power of McMurphy in his

assault on the nurse not as the product of McMurphy alone,

but of the collective consciousness of the ward inhabitants.

135
We couldn’t stop him because we were the ones
making him do it. It wasn’t the nurse that was
forcing him, it was our need that was making him
push himself slowly up from sitting, his big hands
driving down on the leather chair arms, pushing
him up, rising and standing like one of those
motion picture zombies, obeying orders beamed at
him from forty masters. (267)
In actuality, Bromden draws on the memory of his father and
Taber and other victims of the controlling and destructive
forces he identifies as the Combine as well as the
collective strength of his fellow patients to assault and
overthrow its emblem, Nurse Ratched. Bromden directs this
energy to reveal finally Ratched’s human femaleness hidden
behind her mechanically precise exterior and to grasp her
throat in order to stifle ultimately her controlling voice.
This final battle marks the last the reader sees of
both Ratched and McMurphy as they have been drawn by Bromden
during the course of the book. They are both permanently
deflated and reduced. When Ratched returns to the ward, "in
spite of its [her new uniform] being smaller and tighter and
more starched than her old uniforms, it could no longer
conceal the fact that she was a woman" (268). Like the
Wizard after Dorothy pulled aside the curtain, Ratched can
no longer hide behind her elaborate mechanism of humiliation
and threat, no matter how foreboding it once seemed. More
importantly, she is unable to speak, and, as she writes her
responses to the inquiries about McMurphy, Bromden observes
her reduction as "her more than ever white hand skittered on

the pad like one of those arcade gypsies that scratch out

fortunes for a penny" (268). Harding, no longer believing

136

in her, tears up the paper, throws the pieces at her, and
"she flinched and raised her hand to protect the bruised
side of her face" (268), further indicating that she is a
weak and human creature like the rest on the ward. "She
couldn’t rule with her old power any more, not by writing
things on pieces of paper" (269). Ironically, Ratched’s
loss of voice which indicates her loss of power both
coincides with Bromden’s return to speech on the ward and
demonstrates itself in the very same way that Bromden, as
author of this novel, illustrates his assumption of power--
"by writing things on pieces of paper."

Harding was correct in refusing to believe her written
prophecy of McMurphy’s return to the ward, for the
lobotomized "crummy sideshow fake" that subsequently arrives
labeled "McMurphy" lacks the essence of Bromden’s creation.
Bromden cannot allow this bruised, lobotomized, and silenced
“example of what can happen if you buck the system" (270) to
continue in its dehumanized "adjusted" state as Taber had.
Fiedler, like some other readers, describes Bromden’s
suffocation of McMurphy as "a caricature of the act of love"
(182) as Bromden lies "full length on top of" McMurphy’s
body until "the thrashing stopped" (270). Similarly, one
may see this struggle not merely as an image of the sex act
but also of the birthing process. Bromden, in his written
act of mercy killing, severs his umbilical cord to become an
independent agent. Whether perceived as a birth or a sex

scene, the intimacy of the "embrace" is important because it

137
fulfills Bromden’s desire to touch McMurphy as well as

indicating the fulfillment of his maturation process. "The
experience of relationship brings," as Gilligan maintains,
“an end to isolation . . . . [I]ntimacy is the
transformative experience for men through which adolescent
identity turns into the generativity of love and work" (163-
64).

When Bromden writes the escape of his Broom character,
he first has Broom grab McMurphy’s emblematic cap and
attempt to try it on. "It was too small, and I was ashamed
of trying to wear it" (271). Leeds correctly explains the
shame Bromden feels as stemming from his knowledge that
"McMurphy has taught him that one must find one’s own
identity" (42).

Moreover, whether this scene of the mercy killing of
McMurphy is perceived as the birth or the reproductive act
(or both), although Bromden kills McMurphy, the act is life-
affirming, and, perhaps more importantly, it completes the
process upon which Bromden has embarked--severing his ties
to his mother and father. He has rewritten the dysfunction
of his childhood family, and, as Peter G. Beidler observes,
"at the end Chief Broom does what every normal adolescent
does: After rejecting the mother . . . and after murdering
the father, he runs away from home" ("Ken Kesey’s Indian
Narrator" 19). Although Bromden writes his namesake
character’s escape as the finale to his orphaning himself

from these surrogate parents, in actuality, he has written

138

himself to the point at which we find the invisible man at
in his Prologue. Bromden, like the invisible man, is fully
cognizant of the hole he is in and of his complicity in its
formation. His creative process of rejecting the mother and
killing the father renders him able, for the first time, to
fly the cuckoo’s nest. The writing process--telling "the
truth even if it didn’t happen" (13)--has cleared the fog,
brought him acceptance and appreciation of his racial
identity, and allowed him to form himself authentically.

As noted above, Bromden initially attempted, as
illustrated in his alleged entry into the painting on the
wall, not to reveal himself but to maintain his invisibility
through his withdrawn, spectator role of writer. He must
have thought of writing as just another way of being cagey.
However, the effort of exerting control over his fictional
characters pulls him from the fog into visibility. His
created character of Broom is as much compelled to take an
active, participant role in resolving the situations of the
novel as is McMurphy. Writing itself becomes a life-
affirming act as he directs the created alter ego, Broom,
into the self-sustaining act of suffocating McMurphy. His
newly formed self-assuredness, born of the sense of control
he has exerted upon his characters and wrested from the
Combine, has empowered him with the potential for a return
to the world outside his hole. Writing himself into freedom
from those mechanistic forces that once rendered him

invisible and mute, forcefully demonstrated by his having

139

the character of Broom throw the control panel through the
window, allows him to make the escape--not into a painting,
not hiding behind a mop handle, not into hallucinations and
fog, but into the world outside--which he has only imagined
in his novel. Bromden’s artistic therapy allows him to
order his experience and achieve autonomous control over his
own life as he rejects the total control of Ratched and the
Combine and the anarchy of McMurphy.

De Bellis discusses in general terms the difficult
dilemma which he believes all Americans face and the way
that dilemma affects Bromden’s choices in American society:

Although it might not be impossible for a person
or society to hold contradictory aims at the same
time, to do so invites anxiety and confusion.
Despite an implicit acceptance of materialistic
values, America has insisted on professing
spiritual attitudes. The effect of this has been
to create a plethora of oppositions, of which the
ones most relevant to Kesey’s novel are technology
ye. man, rational ye. irrational, intellect ye.
feeling, society ye. nature, law ye. ritual, and
the divided self ye. the integrated self. the
first halves of the pairings represent values
implicit in American life, while the second halves
represent values only ostensibly believed in.

. . . Only by coming to terms with these
antitheses can he [Bromden] achieve freedom,
wholeness, and love. ("Alone No More" 72)

Like the invisible man’s need to reconcile seemingly
incontrovertible and irreconcilable absolute values and
truths, Bromden must harmonize the antithetical forces De
Bellis mentions--embodied in his novel’s protagonist and
antagonist--in order to reintegrate himself into a whole,
participating human being.

Britton et al. suggest that "[M]an constructs a

140

representation of the world as he has experienced it in
engen_he_ene;eee_in_ih, [hence] an alternative kind of
behavior is open to him" (79; emphasis is the authors’).
Like the invisible man and Janie, the process of ordering
his experience affords Bromden a newly opened world of

possibilities.

Donald M. Kartiganer, in his recent essay on the divided
protagonist, writes of first person narrators, each
ostensibly writing of the exploits of another central
character, who "are like neuroses loose in time, discontent
with their own determining traumas and searching for others
through which to remember an identity. But the observers do
not so much adopt the actors as recast them into the figures
they need them to be" (153). Although in this brief essay
his focus is on inactive narrators who chronicle the
exploits of active, and quite essentially alien, characters
(in such works as Kierkegaard’s Fea; eng Trembling,
Fitzgerald’s The 9293: eatshy, Conrad’s hee;h_efi_heyhneee,
and Faulkner’s hhselem, Absaloml), Kartiganer’s observation
that these storytellers write and in the process read the
exploits of their observed characters seems particularly
applicable to the fiction writing Bromden. The comment that
"[rJeading repeats itself forward, as reader and text find
themselves and their stories again, in each other, for the
first time" (176) applies to this reading of the active

McMurphy as a fictional creation of the inactive narrating

141
Bromden. As Hunt realizes, Bromden’s novel
comes in a form which requires that the events
alluded to be ordered with a coherence sufficient
to explain or yield their meanings to the narrator
himself. Thus the story told is given its
structure by the need of the narrator to find the
truth in it. (27)
Bromden’s reading of his story is equally important to the
writing of it. " ss i a 0 he ' ' 55"
write Britton et al. "is explaining the matter to oneself
(28; emphasis is the authors’).

Like the invisible man and Janie, Bromden had first to
remove himself from the scene in order to comment
effectively upon it and upon himself. Hidden for a long
time in both the fog and his own complicity, he empowers
himself by writing himself to strength and cultural and
self-authenticity. Church’s comments about the spectator
allowing one to see things "in a broader context than the
participant can tolerate" appropriately applies to Bromden’s
narration as it does to the invisible man’s. It may also
explain somewhat how Bromden overcomes some of the pain of
his storytelling. Bromden’s method is different, though, in
that his writing is fictitious. A hallucinating patient in
a psychiatric hospital, Bromden’s journey to wholeness
follows an unusual path. D. W. Harding distinguishes
between those who are able to move easily from reality to
fantasy and back again and those who are unable to see such
a division clearly. Harding says that we may allow our

fantasies

to develop very great vividness although we still

142
remain only onlookers, never letting our real
situation be far beyond the margins of attention
and always being able at the least necessity to
switch back to where we really are; or they may
reach the extreme vividness, obliterating
everything else, that the dream possesses, and
then, whether as daydreamers or psychotics, we
have abandoned the role of onlooker and given
ourselves up to delusional and perhaps
hallucinated participation. ("Psychological
Processes" 137)
The writing process helps bring Bromden out of his
delusional participation as he embraces the spectator role
and in turn develops a more healthful participation. Once
he unleashes the "floodwaters" of the truth that didn’t
happen, he affords himself the opportunity of utilizing
language and the craft of storytelling as a therapeutic
process. He takes possession of his life as he brings order
to the chaos around him.

Thus far, we have seen three narrators attain self- and
cultural identity through the act and process of writing
their stories. Doubly oppressed for her sex and her race,
Janie discovers her self as "her soul crawled out from its
hiding place" and she assumes her rightful place in the
community as she attained a personal voice. The invisible
man and Chief Bromden discover first the racial roots of
their invisibility, their complicity in the suppression of
their voices and identities, and by the end of each story--
one an autobiographical account, the other a fictional
rendering of the "truth"--are ready, it seems, to emerge

from their holes. All three then, in simple terms, by

assuming authorship, also assume authority, over their

143

selves and their lives.

In the next chapter, we will observe Leslie Marmon
Silko’s character, Tayo. Like each of these characters, his
racial identity has led to his alienation. Bromden and Tayo
share a variety of similarities, most noticeable being their
half-Indian blood and invisible state. But unlike the other
narrator/characters, Tayo’s story is told by a third person
narrator, not Tayo himself. His path to authority and
authenticity does not include authorship. However, within
the framework of the third person narrative, Tayo, upon
completing his ceremony, must tell the story of it to the
elders of his tribe. Only then can he complete the process
of his own healing and attain wholeness once again. His
storytelling connects him with the orality of his Indian
culture and, like the writings of Janie, the invisible man,
and Bromden, allows him to give shape to his form as he

superimposes order on a chaotic and alien world.

NOTES

1 A sampling of the critics reveals a number of these
striking appraisals of McMurphy. Tony Tanner suggests that
McMurphy is both an authentic rebel hero and a "zombie" who
is compelled to action by the fantasies of the other
patients (374-75). Leslie A. Fiedler proposes a mythic
reading of gnehgg’s flesh, portraying the novel as "the old,
old fable of the White outcast and the noble Red Man joined
together against home and mother, against the female world
of civilization" in a new setting of a madhouse "located in
the American West" (177). According to John Wilson Foster,
McMurphy is transformed from hustler to "a true rebel,
someone who implicitly and totally rejects the whole thrust

144

of the society that martyrs him" (116). In his discussion
of McMurphy and Heller’s Yossarian as politicians, Jerome
Klinkowitz characterizes McMurphy as "the first fictional
hero to practice the key strategy of sixties leadership:

8 t sc ous es of the eo 1e" (23; emphasis is
the author’s) and as a "larger than life" hero (25).

For William C. Baurecht, "[t]he tale is a resurrection
myth" which leaves "St. Bromden" to take on the role of "a
teacher of the gospel" (283), while James F. Knapp bluntly
says that McMurphy "quite simply learns to be Christ" (409)
and Bruce E. Wallis notes McMurphy’s "acceptance of the
inevitability and the necessity of his own crucifixion"
(54). John Wilson Foster also discusses the Christ imagery,
finding McMurphy a parody of Christ (124-26), and Richard B.
Hauck sees McMurphy as a "comic Christ" (501-2). Stephen L.
Tanner, "Salvation through Laughter," calls McMurphy a
savior who brings salvation by teaching the other patients
to laugh (128), and Nicolaus Mills similarly discusses
McMurphy’s model of laughter (82-90). Raymond M. Olderman
identifies the waste land imagery of mechanization and
sterility in the novel and concludes that McMurphy is the
Grail Knight who cures the Fisher King by restoring his
manhood (35-51), while Carol Pearson argues against
Olderman’s viewpoint, seeing the work as a romantic myth in
which McMurphy is the Fool to Ratched’s role as the Old King
and Bromden eventually emerges as the Hero (91-98).

Terry G. Sherwood complains about the comic book
portrayal of the book’s hero (as well as other characters),
as "[w]e are left with a somewhat sentimentalized over-
simplification of moral problems" (395). Critical of the
novel’s demeaning portrayal of women, Leslie Horst condemns
Qnekee’s Nes; for justifying hatred toward women (17).
Similarly faulting Kesey for a book "written from the point
of view that man’s problems are caused by woman who refuses
to allow him to play the domineering role which nature
intended him to play" (224), Robert Forrey claims that
Kesey’s novel portrays the "arrogantly masculine" traits "of
drinking, whoring, hunting, and gambling" as idealized
virtues (223). In part a response to Terence Martin,
another critic who views McMurphy as growing into a hero,
Forrey’s essay is understandable in light of Martin’s own
sexist (and rather gleeful) characterization of McMurphy as
"the advocate of our manhood" (54). Kingsley Widmer
acknowledges the novel’s "obsessional male chauvinism" and
raises objections "to the compulsive and arbitrary sexual
divisions of evil," but sees McMurphy as a "rebel-saint" in
heroic resistance against totalitarian institutional order

(130)2

Edward Stone 200.

Joseph J. Waldmeir, in Pratt 418.

See Beverly Grunwald 10 for the original context of
Kesey’s comment.

In a similar vein, Foster admits that "an enduring
irony of the novel is that we are forced to rely totally for

145

our information upon the hallucinations of a patient in a
mental hospital" (128), but devotes the bulk of his essay to
the demise of McMurphy in his struggle with the forces of
the Combine, not to determining the validity and
authegticity of Bromden’s narration.

Tony Tanner notes that McMurphy’s outrage results
from his understanding "how Big Nurse has reduced the men to
puppe s, mechanically obeying her rules" (373).

In his dissertation on Ellison’s writings, Hartmut K.
Selke also notices this connection between lnvisihle Men and
Qnehoo’e flesh, pointing out the explicitness of Harding’s
statement in contrast with the implicit comments in
Ellison’s novel. Selke correctly contends that a lobotomy
can "2e described as a psychological castration" (155).

See also Grunwald 10.

9 See especially Hunt 27-32 and Herrenkohl 44.

1° Mills admits that Bromden’s "often confusing"
narration "represents a breakthrough rather than a
breakdown" (83), while Pearson consents that writing the
novel serves as the next step for Bromden toward recovery
(97) .

11 In a final footnote to his essay on the influence of
the comic book on Kesey’s novel and his "art," Sherwood
takes Fiedler to task for suggesting that McMurphy is
attracted to Bromden’s madness and concludes that "Fiedler’s
argument could have been strengthened had he recognized the
ambiguity of Bromden’s whereabouts at the book’s end and
asserted that ell events in the book are hallucinations"
(396: emphasis is the author’s). Unfortunately, Sherwood
does ngt bother to follow his own advice.

When restrained and treated with shock in the
factory hospital, the invisible man also "fell to plotting
ways g; short-circuiting the machine" (237).

Stephen L. Tanner, Ken Kesey, notes the
foreshadowing found in this section: "The case of Ruckly is
presented early to suggest what could happen to McMurphy. .
. . And the case of Mr. Taber is referred to several times
as a foreshadowing parallel to McMurphy" (34). However,
Ruckly, considered a "failure" by the hospital, figures less
prominently as a model for McMurphy than the technological
"success"--Taber. The presence of Ruckly helps trigger
Bromden’s memory of the absent Taber which in turn serves as
catalyit for Bromden’s hopeful fantasy of McMurphy.

Ironically, the film which Kesey refused to see may
in part portray a ward which is closer to "reality" in its
basis. Seen as it is objectively, and not through the fog
of Bromden’s necessity, the ward of the film is managed by a
toned-down and humanized Ratched, whose misguided
understanding of her patients leads to well-intentioned, not
premeditated, cruelties. However, the Jack
Nicholson/McMurphy of the film version is a more harsh,
devilish figure than Bromden created to oppose his imagined
evil nurse, instead of the meek Taber figure on whom the
McMurphy of the novel was modeled.

146

15 The film version further compromises Bromden’s
vision of Ratched as the mechanical instrument of the
Combine in providing her with the rather innocuous first
name 2; Mildred.

Both lnyisible Man and Qne Fley Over the Cuckoo’s
flesh hide a story within a story. The invisible man is the
protagonist of the narrator’s story, while, taken in the
larger context, the narrator serves as the protagonist of
Ellison’s novel. So, too, even though McMurphy functions as
the central character of Bromden’s written fiction, the
protagonist of Kesey’s novel is Bromden.

Chapter Four
Tayo’s Struggle for the Ending to His Story:

"It Never Has Been Easy"

In her first novel, gezeneny, Leslie Marmon Silko introduces
another invisible man--her protagonist Tayo--to American
literature. Silko tells Tayo’s story through a third-
person, partially-omniscient narrator who presents events in
a complex narrative, bound not by time, but by free
association. Usually, the consciousness that influences the
direction of the narrative is Tayo’s. Occasionally, the
narration reflects the thoughts of other characters, but
Tayo’s perspective predominates through the bulk of the
novel. Events trigger memories, images elicit remembered
images, and dreams move into his waking state. Although
more complex than Kesey’s book, Silko’s similarly mixes
times in her depiction of Tayo’s confused and fragmentary
consciousness. Charles R. Larson characterizes this
narrative structure as "elliptical, developed through
flashbacks and spatial juxtapositions, abrupt changes in
time and point of view" (150). In addition, Silko’s
narrative is interspersed with fragments of Indian lore,
songs, and chants which mirror and foreshadow events and

images as they occur in the course of the narrative.

147

148

The present time of the story concerns Tayo, who, like
Bromden, is half white and half American Indian,1 a veteran
of World War II who, upon his return to the States, is
placed in the psychiatric ward of a Veterans Hospital. Here
he realizes, in hindsight, that he has been hollow,
invisible, and unable to speak for himself. Hollowness is a
familiar feeling to Tayo. He experienced it when he broke
his promise to his Uncle Josiah to help with the newly
purchased Mexian cattle by allowing Rocky to persuade him to
enlist in the Army with him. And that sensation triggered
the memory of his feelings at the death of his mother.

He remembered it from the nights after they had
buried his mother, when he stuffed the bed covers
around his stomach and close to his heart, hugging
the blankets into the empty space of loss, regret
for things which could not be changed. (73)

Unable now to alter recent occurrences, Tayo finds
himself in a setting similar to that found in the invisible
man’s factory hospital; he is surrounded by whiteness. The
reason for his invisibility, as Tayo sees it, is something
he is unaware of until he leaves the hospital.

For a long time he had been white smoke. He did
not realize that until he left the hospital,
because white smoke had no consciousness of
itself. It faded into the white world of their
bed sheets and wall: it was sucked away by the
words of doctors who tried to talk to the
invisible scattered smoke. . . . They saw his
outline but they did not realize it was hollow
inside. . . . He inhabited a gray winter fog on a
distant elk mountain where hunters are lost
indefinitely and their own bones mark the
boundaries. (14-15)

A more recent hollowness has affected Tayo, thereby

increasing his feeling of emptiness. This stems from the

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death of his cousin Rocky--a casualty of war--and a hollow
noise, not actually heard by Tayo but imagined--the sound of
a rifle butt jabbed into the skull of the either dead or
nearly dead Rocky by a Japanese soldier.
Tayo never heard the sound, because he was
screaming. Later on, he regretted that he had not
listened, because it became an uncertainty, loose
inside his head, wandering into his imagination,
so that any hollow crushing sound he heard--
children smashing gourds along the irrigation
ditch or a tire truck running over a piece of dry
wood--any of these sounds took him back to that
moment. Screaming, with mud in his mouth and in
his eyes, screaming until the others dragged him
away before the Japs killed him too. (44)

He had promised Rocky’s mother, Auntie, to see to it
that Rocky returned safely from the war (73). He promptly
made this promise to Auntie after breaking his vow to Uncle
Josiah to stay home and help tend the cattle. While Tayo
and Rocky were overseas, Josiah, searching for the cattle
which had wandered off, was thrown from his horse and died.
Tayo’s sorrow over the deaths of these two people to whom he
felt closest is compounded by his guilt for not keeping
either of his two promises. With Rocky’s death, Tayo loses
his will to move forward without Rocky: "He had never
planned to go any farther than Rocky went" and was willing
to die in that instant (44). In fact, the hollow,
invisible, fogged-in Tayo seems to have done just that; he
remains determined to be dead, to move ahead no further now
that Rocky has died.

In his invisibility, Tayo feels safe from painful

memories of his lost loved ones and his failures. However,

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Tayo’s protective fog leaves him, like Bromden, feeling
"awfully alone." A persistent, questioning doctor
eventually manages to pull him from the fog. In a telling
exchange with the doctor, Tayo hears a voice speak to the
doctor about himself, a voice he fails to recognize as his
own.
The sun was dissolving the fog, and one day Tayo
heard a voice answer the doctor. The voice was
saying, "He can’t talk to you. He is invisible.
His words are formed with an invisible tongue,
they have no sound."

He reached into his mouth and felt his own
tongue; it was dry and dead, the carcass of a tiny
rodent.

"It is easy to remain invisible here, isn’t it,
Tayo?"

"It was until you came. It was all white, all
the color of the smoke, the fog.

"I am sending you home, Tayo. . . ."

"He can’t go. He cries all the time.
Sometimes he vomits when he cries."

"Why does he cry, Tayo?"

"He cries because they are dead and everything
is dying." (15-16)

Tayo does not play the deaf-mute game that Bromden does, yet
he, too, experiences a brief loss of voice in that he seems
dispossessed of his own. Although he speaks to the doctor,
Tayo hears his voice as someone else’s.

Discharged from the hospital, Tayo discovers that "his
body had density again and the world was visible and he
realized why he was there [outside the train station in Los
Angeles, or perhaps just alive] and he remembered Rocky and
he started to cry" (15). The fog and his invisibility
allowed him, as white smoke, to protect himself from the
painful memories of Rocky’s death. His lack of a tangible

shape and an audible voice have afforded him a certain

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protective anonymity. But, suddenly, on the streets of Los
Angeles, he rediscovers his name.
There was a cardboard name tag on the handle of
the suitcase he carried; he could feel it with the
tips of his fingers. His name was on the tag and
his serial number too. It had been a long time
since he had thought about having a name. (16)

An invisible being has no need of a voice or a name; in
order to re-enter the visible world he will need both. But,
in a weakened state, he fears that the hollow, invisible
feeling may return.

[H]e was sweating, and sounds were becoming
outlines again, vague and hollow in his ears, and
he knew he was going to become invisible right
there. It was too late to ask for help, and he
waited to die the way smoke dies, drifting away in
currents of air, twisting in thin swirls, fading
until it exists no more. (16-17)
In actuality, Tayo has fainted on the street. As happened
to the invisible man when he lay on the street after his
release from the hospital, passers-by come to Tayo’s aid.
When he hears Japanese voices, he thinks for a moment he is
back in the jungles again. In spite of his fear of the
voices which haunt him, he wrestles his way out of the fog.
He fought to come to the surface, and he expected
a rifle barrel to be shoved into his face when he
opened his eyes. It was all worse than he had
ever dreamed: to have drifted all those months in
white smoke, only to wake up again in the prison
camp. But he did not want to be invisible when he
died, so he pulled himself loose, one last time.
(17)
Like Bromden’s willful struggle to escape the EST fog that
one last time, Tayo’s determination to at least die as a
visible being brings him back to the real world of the Los

Angeles train depot. The voices he had heard are explained

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when he is told that Japanese-Americans are no longer kept
in interment camps and live in the city once again. After
all, it’s been six years since the war ended.

One might see Tayo as the just escaped (or released)
Bromden or as the invisible man newly issued from his hole
beneath the city; however, Tayo has not as yet had a story
to tell, at least not one of healing. Although he wills
himself to visibility, he has not yet given substance to his
form as both the invisible man and Bromden had through their
writing of their tales. Tayo’s therapeutic tale is only
beginning.

Having returned to the Laguna Reservation in New Mexico
in a deep depression, Tayo suffers sleepless "humid dreams
of black night" (5) and hears voices:

Sometimes the Japanese voices came first, angry
and loud . . . and then he could hear the shift in
his dreaming . . . and the voices would become
Laguna voices, and he could hear Uncle Josiah
calling to him, Josiah bringing him the fever
medicine when he had been sick a long time ago.
But before Josiah could come, the fever voices
would drift and whirl and emerge again--Japanese
soldiers shouting orders to him, suffocating damp
voices that drifted out in the jungle steam, and
he heard the women’s voices then; they faded in
and out until he was frantic because he thought
the Laguna words were his mother’s, but when he
was about to make out the meaning of the words,
the voice suddenly broke into a language he could
not understand: and it was then that all the
voices were drowned by the music--loud, loud music
from a big juke box, its flashing red and blue
lights pulling the darkness closer. (6)

Unable to sleep, Tayo "could get no rest as long as the
memories were tangled with the present" (6). Tayo’s

"ceremony" will entail untangling the memories, sensations,

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and images of the past from the present.
He could feel it inside his skull--the tension of
little threads being pulled and how it was with
tangled things, things tied together, and as he

tried to pull them apart and rewind them into
their places, they snagged and tangled even more.

(7)
In order to cure himself of his confusion and despair--what
he believes is his deserved madness--he must find the
appropriate places for these tangled threads. The reader,
too, must first work through the tangled strands of time in
order to understand the novel and its complex narrative
structure.

By following one of the strands back to its source, the
reader learns that Tayo was an unwanted, abandoned child.
The bastard offspring of a Pueblo Indian prostitute who
abandoned him to her unsympathetic sister, Tayo lives with a
constant sense of estrangement. His half-Indian, half-white
heritage as well as his illegitimacy make him a continuing
embarrassment to Auntie with whom Tayo comes to a tacit
understanding concerning his place within this foster,
although non-fostering, family. Auntie’s sincere affection
goes to her son, Rocky, alone; he is her hope for success in
the white world. Tayo is to be kept at a distance, a
perpetual outsider, never expected to quite measure up to
Rocky.

In the presence of other members of the family, "the
agreement was suspended, and she [Auntie] pretended to treat
him the same as she treated Rocky, but they both knew it was

only temporary" (67). Alone with the two boys, "she kept

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Rocky close to her" and would give Rocky small playthings:
She was careful that Rocky did not share these
things with Tayo, but that they kept a distance
between themselves and him. But she would not let
Tayo go outside or play in another room alone.
She wanted him close enough to feel excluded, to
be aware of the distance between them. (67)
Auntie attempts to explain "the distance she kept
between him and herself" (69) by telling Tayo, when he is a
mere child, a scandalous story about his mother, Laura.
Auntie once saw Tayo’s mother walking down the trail toward
home just before dawn "’completely naked except for her
high-heel shoes’" (70). Auntie "swallowed hard" before
beginning the story "to clear the pain from her throat, and
his own throat hurt too, because without him there would
have not been so much shame and disgrace for the family"
(70). All through Tayo’s childhood he is made painfully
aware that Auntie considers him the primary source of her
shame and a burdensome outcast to the family. Auntie had
furthered Tayo’s sense of abandonment and estrangement by
taking from him his only photograph of his mother.
The source of Auntie’s pride and hope is her son Rocky.
The star high school football athlete, Rocky is expected to
attend college and continue as an outstanding athlete.
Rocky "understood what he had to do to win in the white
outside world" (51) and begins to reject the Indian ways in
deference to the desires of his white teachers and coach:
"They told him, ’Nothing can stop you now except one thing:
don’t let the people at home hold you back’" (51). Auntie

accepts this change:

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Auntie never scolded him. . . . She wanted him to
be a success. She could see what white people
wanted in an Indian, and she believed this way was
his only chance. She saw it as her only chance
too, after all the village gossip about her
family. When Rocky was a success, no one would
dare to say anything against them any more. (51)
Auntie hopes that Rocky’s expected triumph in the white
world will expiate her shame. However, Rocky’s death means
that Auntie will never realize her dreams of Rocky’s
anticipated achievement, and his death has even greater
impact on Tayo, considering Rocky’s privileged status in
Auntie’s eyes as a full blood Pueblo Indian.
Tayo is cognizant that his white blood makes him
different from others on the Pueblo, whether demonstrated in
his treatment by his Indian peers such as Emo or the way
white men look at him, knowing he is the bastard of one of
their fellows:
Emo had hated him since the time they had been in
grade school together, and the only reason for
this hate what that Tayo was part white. . . .
Since he could remember, he had known Auntie’s
shame for what his mother had done, and Auntie’s
shame for him. He remembered how the white men
who were building the new highway through the
Laguna had pointed at him. They had elbowed each
other and winked. (57)

An outsider in his home and on the Reservation and unwanted

in the white world (except in time of war), Tayo finds

himself without a home or an identity in either culture.

In light of the guilt and isolation Tayo feels as a
result of Auntie’s cold rejection of him on account of his
half-Indian, half-white heritage, Tayo’s failure to keep his

promise to Josiah of helping with the cattle seems

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understandable. Rocky enlists because he realizes that the
Army during war time offers the nearest equivalent of
equality to an Indian; the Army recruiter tells the boys,
"’Anyone can fight for America, . . . even you boys’" (64)
The fact that Rocky told the recruiter that Tayo was his
brother, instead of his cousin, helped Rocky persuade Tayo
to join.

Tayo had never called him "brother" before; "Auntie had
always been careful Rocky didn’t call Tayo ’brother,’ and
when other people mistakenly called them brothers she was
quick to correct the error" (65). Rocky’s use of the word
creates a rarely felt sense of kinship and belonging in
Tayo, making him "light on his feet, happy that he would be
with Rocky, traveling the world in the Army, together, as
brothers" (72). But the elation doesn’t last long, when,
upon returning home from the recruiter, Tayo remembers that
Rocky’s legitimacy allows him certain privileges which
Tayo’s illegitimacy does not: "The understanding had always
been that Rocky [not Tayo] would be the one to leave home,
go to college or join the Army" (72). Josiah, however,
doesn’t seem to mind the broken promise and even intercedes
with Auntie on Tayo’s behalf in suggesting that she permit
him to go. Unfortunately, Tayo’s hastily made promise to
Auntie that he will look after Rocky and bring him home
safely from the war is another he is unable to keep.

While fighting in the Pacific, Tayo has other

experiences which render his despair complete. Before

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Rocky’s death, Tayo was among those soldiers ordered to
execute, by firing squad, a group of Japanese soldiers.

Tayo was unable to pull the trigger, but as the Japanese
soldiers fall, he sees Josiah among the victims. "[H]e
watched his uncle fall, and he hney it was Josiah; and even
after Rocky started shaking him by the shoulders and telling

him to stop crying, it was still Josiah lying there" (8).

 

Even after they take him to the body, roll it over so Tayo
can see the hard evidence before him--the Japanese uniform,
the unmistakable features so unlike Josiah’s--"Tayo started
screaming because it wasn’t a Jap, it was Josiah, eyes
shrinking back into the skull and all their shining black
light glazed over by death" (8). The sergeant and the medic
determine that Tayo suffers from battle fatigue and malarial
fever, and Rocky continues to press his logic on Tayo,
reiterating the facts that Josiah is miles away while they
are in the jungle doing what they are supposed to do.
Nevertheless, although "he could hear Rocky’s words, and he
could follow the logic of what Rocky said, . . . he could
not feel anything except a swelling in his belly" (9).

When Tayo returns home, he discovers that Uncle Josiah
has died while searching for the Mexican cattle, which are
still lost. It’s never made quite clear in the text whether
or not Tayo’s vision of Josiah coincided with Josiah’s
death. However, the close bond Tayo shared with Josiah
would seem to indicate the possibility that Tayo had

intuited Josiah’s death. Regardless, Tayo suffers enormous

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despair at the loss of Josiah and Rocky.

In his weakened state, Tayo frequently feels helpless
in the face of the forces at work against him. In addition
to his feeling of hollowness, he has grown "tired of
fighting off the dreams and the voices: . . . tired of
guarding himself against places and things which evoked the
memories" (26). Josiah had once said "that only humans had
to endure anything, because only humans resisted what they
saw outside themselves," while animals "did not resist. But
. . . became part of the wind" (27). He wishes Josiah were
with him, if only just long enough to tell him how he felt,
"how he’d almost been convinced he was brittle red clay,
slipping away with the wind, a little more each day" (27).
Unable to become the wind and unable, he thinks, to endure,
he comes to the simple conclusion that "[i]t took a great
deal of energy to be a human being" (25). Indeed, this
image of the red clay eroding by the force of the wind may
be taken as a metaphor for the plight of the Laguna people.
Their race and their culture, too, are slowly slipping away
with time. The loss of story--the oral tradition of passing
myths and legends (and all their attendant truths) from
generation to generation--makes it more and more difficult
to be human beings.

Silko’s novel portrays storytelling not only as a means
of organizing experience--as Britton indicates is the
function of language--but as a means of survival as well.

As she has written,

159

This novel is essentially about the powers
inherent in the process of storytelling. . . . The
chanting or telling of ancient stories to effect
certain cures or protect from illness and harm
have always been part of the Pueblo’s curing
ceremonies. I feel the power that the stories
still have to bring us together, especially when
there is loss and grief. My book tells the story
of an Indian family, but it is also involved with
the search for a ceremony to deal with despair,
the most virulent of all diseases--the despair
which accounts for the suicide, alcoholism, and
the violence which occur in so many Indian
communities today. (qtd. in Seyersted, Leelie

Winks 26)
Interspersed amidst the already complex narrative of Tayo’s
story are pieces of Indian lore, of oral tradition, which
express the power and importance of storytelling in peoples’
lives. As Silko has said, "the breaks [in the novel] would
be the parts that ideally you would hear rather than read"
("A Leslie Marmon Silko Interview" 98). The second of the
three "breaks" with which the novel begins characterizes
stories as means of endurance, not "just entertainment":
They are all we have, you see,
all we have to fight off
illness and death.

You don’t have anything
if you don’t have the stories (2).

Without stories, the people "would be defenseless";
therefore, their enemies "try to destroy the stories" (2).
Tayo understands the power of stories. During the
attempt to carry the wounded Rocky on a makeshift blanket
stretcher to the Japanese prison camp, Tayo used the
storyteller’s art to keep them moving ahead.
He made a story for all of them, a story to give

them strength. The words of the story poured out
of his mouth as if they had substance, pebbles and

160

stone extending to hold the corporal [who held the

other end of the blanket] up, to keep his knees

from buckling, to keep his hands from letting go

of the blanket. (12)
But this power is something Tayo feels he has abused, for as
he tried to bolster their strength with the story, so too he
cursed the incessant rain which poured upon them.

He damned the rain until the words were a chant .

. . . He wanted the words to make a cloudless blue

sky . . . . The words gathered inside him and gave

him strength. (12)
Tayo’s feelings of illegitimacy as an inhabitant of Auntie’s
home and the Reservation, his sorrow for the loss of Rocky
and Josiah and his conviction that he is responsible for
both deaths and the lost cattle are even further compounded
by his belief that the six years of drought which have
decimated the Laguna Pueblo are also his fault: "Wherever
he looked, Tayo could see the consequences of his praying"
(14).

Tayo also knows that such a notion of story is
unacceptable in the white world which surrounds him. The
teachers at the Indian school "taught him not to believe in
that kind of ’nonsense’" (19). Rocky in particular was one
who shunned the old ways and the stories as unscientific,
superstitious nonsense. When Uncle Josiah scoffed at the
information he read in a book on cattle and suggested that
he and the boys write their own book, Rocky scornfully
replied,

"Those books are written by scientists. They know
everything there is to know about beef cattle.

That’s the trouble with the way people around here
have always done things--they never knew what they

161
were doing." (76)
Rocky believed in "books and scientific knowledge" (76) and
was often embarrassed by the nonsensical foolishness of his
own people.

However, for others in this family, storytelling makes
one strong in the face of adversity. Grandma, for instance,
unlike Auntie, doesn’t care what others say about her or the
family members, because she often knows a "better" story
about the person spreading the rumors. "The story was all
that counted. If she had a better one about them, then it
didn’t matter what they said" (89). And when Uncle Josiah
discovers Tayo in the kitchen killing flies, proud of his
accomplishment because his teacher said that flies "’are bad
and carry sickness,’" Josiah reminds him of the old story in
which

"the mother of the people got angry at them for
the way they were behaving. . . . The animals
disappeared, the plants disappeared, and no rain
came for a long time. It was the green-bottle fly
who went to her, asking forgiveness for the
people. Since that time the people have been
grateful for what the fly did for us." (101)
Years later, as Tayo cursed the rain, he also cursed the
flies that
had crawled over [the deceased] Rocky; they had
enraged him. He had cursed their sticky feet and
wet mouths, and when he could reach them he had
smashed them between his hands. (102)
This brief lapse of memory as to the importance of the fly
has added, in Tayo’s mind, to his culpability for the
drought which has stricken the land.

Silko underscores the importance of this story of Fly’s

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saving the people and the procession of careful steps
(ritual and ceremony) which led to the return of the rains,
animals, and plants to the land by interspersing the tale in
increments throughout Tayo’s own process of recovery. Corn
Mother, upset that the two attendants to her altar neglect
it when they become infatuated with Ck’o’yo magic, takes
away the rainclouds (and plants and animals) and says let
them live off magic (46-49). The people need to ask Corn
Mother for forgiveness and Hummingbird tells them where she
has gone--three worlds below where everything is green and
growing (53-54). Hummingbird tells them to send a messenger
to the fourth world and instructs them to put corn flour and
water in a covered jar (71-72). On the fourth day, a green
fly comes from the jar, and Fly and Hummingbird travel to
the fourth world (82). Once they arrive, Corn Mother
stipulates that first old Buzzard must purify the town (105-
106), and, when they find Buzzard, he wants tobacco from
them--"(You see it wasn’t easy)" (113). Fly and Hummingbird
return to the people who have no tobacco, then return to the
fourth world to inquire of Corn Mother where they can find
it, and she, in turn, sends them to Caterpillar (151-52).

So they fly to Caterpillar-~"(See, these things were
complicated. . . .)"--who gives them the tobacco they
require (180). Finally, Hummingbird and Fly take the
tobacco to old Buzzard--"’We got it but it/sure wasn’t very
easy’"--who agrees to purify the town. He goes East, South,

West, and then North (255-56).

163

The storm clouds returned
the grass and plants started growing again.
There was food
and the people were happy again.
So she told them
"Stay out of trouble
from now on.

It isn’t very easy
to fix up things again." (256)

Again and again, the reader is told that arriving at
the end of the story has never been easy to achieve. Tayo’s
process of recovery, his ceremony, is similarly a
complicated affair; it, too, is not easy. There is a
comparable magic or witchery at work in the world which
places impediments in the way of one’s path toward finding
the ending of the story. Tayo’s weakened state, his
hollowness, his sense of estrangement--growing naturally
from his abandonment as a child to the alienating
environment of this foster family and complicated by his
awareness that he is an outsider in the white world as well-
-all lead him to doubt his ability to complete the ceremony
and to disbelieve his importance to his people.

At home again, Tayo is poignantly aware that he, not
Rocky, should have died. In fact, he believes that Rocky is
still more alive than he:

It didn’t take Tayo long to see the accident of
time and space: Rocky was the one who was alive,
buying Grandma her heater with the round dial on

the front [paid for with Rocky’s life insurance];
Rocky was there in the college game scores on the
sports page of the Albugnergne Journal. It was
him, Tayo, who had died, but somehow there had
been a mistake with the corpses, and somehow his
was still unburied. (28)

164
When his family sends him to the Navajo and Mexican medicine
man Betonie in Gallup, Tayo believes that his fears of
abandonment have finally been realized: "They didn’t want
him around. They blamed him. And now they had sent him
here, and this would be the end of him" (122)
Tayo often wishes he could return to the hospital and
his invisibility, thinking that the hospital is the
appropriate place for a corpse like himself instead of
pretending to be an acceptable substitute for Rocky and
Josiah. He tells Betonie,
"I was invisible. But I wasn’t afraid there. I
didn’t feel things sneaking up behind me. I
didn’t cry for Rocky or Josiah. There were no
voices and no dreams. Maybe I belong back in that
place." (123)

Betonie advises him that if he is set on giving up and

dying, why not do it the way others of his tribe have:
"But if you are going to do that, you might as
well go down there [into the Indian ghetto in
Gallup], with the rest of them, sleeping in the
mud, vomiting cheap wine, rolling over women. Die
that way and get it over with. . . . In that
hospital they don’t bury the dead, they keep them
in rooms and talk to them." (123)

Tayo is tempted to give up, to surrender to his
impotence as an individual struggling against madness and
despair. The guilt which torments him stems from his
presumed separation from the world that surrounds him. He
believes fervently in his responsibility for Josiah’s death,
who he says "’died because there was no one to help him

search for the cattle after they were stolen’" (124). Tayo

complains that he didn’t do anything, and Betonie tries to

165

explain that the story as yet remains unfinished: "’You’ve
been doing something all along. All this time, and now you
are at an important place in this story’" (124). All
Betonie’s talk of completing the story and his warning that
others "’will try to stop you from completing the ceremony’"
(125) enrages Tayo, who counters with "’I don’t know
anything about ceremonies or these things you talk about. .
. . I just need help’" (125). That’s the sort of thing the
white doctors told him in the hospital--"that he had to
think only of himself, and not about others, that he would
never get well as long as he used words like ’we’ and ’us’"
(125). Although he mouths the words in his argument with
Betonie, speaking of himself as an individual in need of a
cure and disconnected from the world at large, Tayo knows,
and realizes he has always known, that "medicine didn’t work
that way, because the world didn’t work that way. His
sickness was only part of something larger, and his cure
would be found only in something great and inclusive of
everything" (125-26). Betonie frightens Tayo with his
insistence that Tayo take control of his own process of
healing.

Unlike Ku’oosh, the first medicine man Tayo meets with,
Betonie’s methods and ideas are unorthodox. Betonie’s (and
Silko’s) sense of ceremony is not one of static ritual, but
one of continual change. Betonie feels it necessary to
distinguish his sense of ceremony from the fixed set of

rituals of something like the popular--to Indian and white

166

alike--Gallup Ceremonial.
"At one time, the ceremonies as they had been
performed were enough for the way the world was
then. But after the white people came, elements
in this world began to shift; and it became
necessary to create new ceremonies. I have made
changes in the rituals." (126)
Betonie realizes that "’things which don’t shift and grow
are dead things’" (126). In spite of Tayo’s desperate
clinging to stories and ceremonies remaining as they are and
his desire to replace the truths which he feels with the
schoolbook and hospital truths he thinks he hnews, he
understands that story, like ceremony, is ever changing:
"Everywhere he looked, he saw a world made of stories, the
long ago, time immemorial stories, as old Grandma called
them. It was a world alive, always changing and moving"
(95).
In speaking of the structure of the narrative and the
content of the novel, Larson observes that
in one sense Ceremony has no conventional
beginning and end. It would be possible to begin
reading the novel at almost any page and continue
from there since the images are circular, related
to one another by imaginative association. Like
these interwoven images, the subject of Qeneneny
is the "continuing process," the
interconnectedness of everything in our universe
and our lives. The form of Silko’s novel, then,
replicates its meaning. (152)
Although the images are circular and recursive, and Larson
is correct in pointing out how the process of the book
mirrors the ongoing process of Tayo’s ceremony and story,
the novel begins, like Tayo’s consciousness, as a tangled

skein. Until Tayo begins to set the pattern aright, to

167
restore order to his chaotic world, Tayo (and Silko) will
remain unable to bring the story to closure.

Virginia Randall offers a distinction between the
"technique of mental fragmentation" used in the beginning of
the novel to reflect "the brokenness of Tayo’s spirit" and
the later "’interweaving’ of time past and time present" as
Tayo works through his "healing ceremony" (qtd. in "A
Discussion of genenony" 66). In a similar vein, Robert C.
Bell notes that

[t]he sense of fragmentation yields finally to the
force of the connectedness of the past with the
present and to the future. We need the narrative
digressions and dislocations to see the larger
pattern, to understand the story. Indeed they ere
the story. And they aren’t really digressions or
dislocations. (55)

Unfortunately, Tayo has for years accepted the
schoolbook and white world notions of individualism and
cause and effect which merely acknowledges the single skein
of the individual. Otherwise, he would not mistake the
drought as the effect of his cursing the rains instead of
part of a larger process. But his sense of self and
conception of the world straddles both the Indian and white
cultures. Tayo is torn between the notion that the
individual is of primary importance and that he is part of a
much larger whole. When Ku’oosh earlier came to see Tayo,
he spoke of the fragility of the world:

The word he chose to express "fragile" was filled
with the intricacies of a continuing process, and
with a strength inherent in spider webs woven

across paths through sand hills where early in the

morning the sun becomes entangled in each filament
of web. It took a long time to explain the

168

fragility and intricacy because no word exists
alone, and the reason for choosing each work had
to be explained with a story about why it must be
said this certain way. That was the
responsibility that went with being human, old
Ku’oosh said, the story behind each word must be
told so there could be no mistake in the meaning
of what had been said; and this demanded great
patience and love. (35-36)

This intricate pattern and continuing process is supported
by many stories; behind each word lies a story. Tayo lacks
the patience to hear "the meaning of what had been said"
because he is certain that he is at fault for the disorder
in the world.

Tayo had earlier participated in the Scalp Ceremony, a
traditional healing ritual for those who have killed their
enemies in battle or touched dead bodies, but in this "white
people’s war" a soldier might not even know whether or not
he had taken another man’s life. Tayo thinks that Ku’oosh
could have no comprehension of the horrible war which he
fought:

In the old way of warfare, you couldn’t kill
another human being in battle without knowing it,
without seeing the result. . . . But the old man
would not have believed white warfare--killing
across distances without knowing who or how many
had died. It was all too alien to comprehend, the
mortars and big guns; and even if he could have
taken the old man to see the target areas, even if
he could have led him through the fallen jungle
trees and muddy craters of torn earth to show him
the dead, the old man would not have believed
anything so monstrous. Ku’oosh would have looked
at the dismembered corpses and the atomic heat-
flash outlines, where human bodies had evaporated,
and the old man would have said something close
and terrible had killed these people. Not even
oldtime witches killed like that. (36-37)

Although Tayo doubts that he has himself killed anyone, he

169
believes "he had done things far worse, and the effects were
everywhere in the cloudless sky, on the dry brown hills,
shrinking skin and hide taught over sharp bone" (36). While
Ku’oosh says that Tayo’s recovery is important "’[n]ot only
for your sake but for this fragile world’" (36), Tayo hears
in this talk of fragility an indictment of his own
complicity in the drought and deaths of his loved ones.
The old man only made him certain of something he
had feared all along, something in the old
stories. It took only one person to tear away the
delicate strands of the web, spilling the rays of
the sun into the sand, and the fragile world would
be injured. Once there had been a man who cursed
the rain clouds, a man of monstrous dreams. Tayo
screamed, and curled his body against the pain.
(39)

The quilt and anguish that wrack Tayo are born of his
clinging to his singular, though confused, identity, whereas
Betonie and Ku’oosh attempt to get him to see his place
within the overall design of things. He perceives the
drought as a bad thing, something caused by his weakness and
now bringing devastation to the Laguna. "’[D]on’t be so
quick,’" Betonie warns him, "’to call something good or bad.
There are balances and harmonies always shifting, always
necessary to maintain. . . . . It is a matter of
transitions, you see; the changing, the becoming must be
cared for closely’" (130). Instead of accepting the drought
as part of a natural cycle, a continuing process, perhaps
even a reflection of an imbalance or disharmony, Tayo’s

sense of himself as an abandoned, unwanted outsider leads

him to believe he is a lone instrument rending the fragile

170

web of the world. And so, when the medicine men suggest
that Tayo assist in restoring the balance, Tayo responds as
if he has been accused of causing the problem in the first
place. At the same time that he throws his hands up in
anger at Betonie’s suggestion that somehow he can help by
completing a ceremony of some sort, he feels that he alone
has caused the ruin his people face. Always self-effacing,
he denies his place in the pattern but not in its
destruction.

Tayo was supposed to help Josiah with the cattle, but
he went off to war and now the cattle are lost and Josiah
has died. Tayo was supposed to bring Rocky back safely, but
Rocky died overseas and Tayo had the audacity to survive and
return without enduring physical harm. He cursed the rain
(and the flies), and the rain has ceased for six years. The
responsibility Tayo has heaped upon his own mind and spirit
render him paralyzed and feeling hollow. That’s why when
they send him to Betonie,

[h]e wanted to fade until he was as flat as his
own hand looked, flat like a drawing in the sand
which did not speak or move, waiting for the wind
to come swirling along the ground and blow the
lines away. (106)

What has horrified Tayo most is his witnessing what
Betonie terms "witchery." Tayo is not the only returning
Indian for whom the Scalp Ceremony has been ineffectual.
Others have seen "the dismembered corpses and the atomic

heat-flash outlines, where human bodies had evaporated"

(37) .

171
The Scalp Ceremony lay to rest the Japanese souls
in the green humid jungles . . . . But there was
something else now, as Betonie said: it was
everything they had seen--the cities, the tall
buildings, the noise and the lights, the power of
their weapons and machines. They were never the
same after that: they had seen what the white
people had made from the stolen land. (169)

Like Bromden’s Combine, the witchery which the novel
refers to is a dehumanizing, mechanistic force which has
been loosed upon the world. Silko has called the term "a
sort of metaphor for the destroyers or the counter force,
that force which counters vitality and birth" ("A
Conversation with Leslie Marmon Silko" 32). For many of the
reservation Indians, the war provided the first opportunity
to see what happened to the land that had been stolen from
them, and once in their army uniforms they experienced, if
only briefly, the respect of the whites. Witchery is that
which leads to the separation of the individual from the
community and from the world and stands in opposition to the
interconnected and interwoven pattern of all life.

In a long story from Betonie--another of Silko’s oral
breaks in the narrative--Tayo hears how "white people,"
created by Indians, "are only tools that the witchery
manipulates" (132). These white skinned people are brought

to life by a story of witchery, a chant which points them

toward fearful isolation, destruction, and death:

 

he row aw r m he a t
then hhey grow away from hhe sun
phen they grew awav from the plants and animals.

 

They see no life
When they look
phey see only objects=
The wople is a dead thing for them

172

 

t ee and ve 3 re a ve
the mountains and etones are 0not elive.
The gee; ane bear are ohjects
They see no life.

They fear

W
They destrov what they fear.
They flea; phemselves. (135;

emphasis is the author’s)

 

Such witchery of disassociation and fear resides in a
medicine which treats the effects of what is termed battle
fatigue, because "the cause of battle fatigue was a mystery,
even to" the army doctors (31), instead of a holistic
medicine which takes into account the whole person in
relation to the world.3 The failure of the treatment
offered at the hospital and the Scalp Ceremony at home
propels the Indians toward another "medicine" and product of
witchery, alcohol.
The other surviving veterans who have returned to the
reservation spend much of their time in drunken stupors.
The Scalp Ceremony is unable to help Emo, Harley, Leroy, and
Pinkie because "they had seen what the white people had made
from the stolen land" (169).
Every day they had to look at the land, from
horizon to horizon, and everyday the loss was with
them; it was the dead unburied, and the mourning
of the lost going on forever. So they tried to
sink the loss in booze, and silence their grief
with war stories about their courage, defending
the land they had already lost. (169)
The Indians who roam the riverbed in Gallup "were educated

only enough to know they wanted to leave the reservation"

(115). They soon discover that there aren’t enough jobs and,

173

even if they do find jobs, are "the first ones to get laid
off because white people in Gallup already knew they
wouldn’t ask any questions or get angry" (115). But these
veterans who have returned to the Reservation, after having
worn the uniform and fought for the country, experienced a
freedom in the white world they will never be able to know
again. Per Seyersted observes that "[w]orst off . . . are
those who for a time had been . . . integrated into the main
society, the veterans who had been praised as patriotic
Americans, only to be demoted to their previous status"
(Leelie happen Silko 26). So they sit in bars, spending
their government checks on alcohol in an attempt to retrieve
"the good times" (42).
Tayo spends some of his time with these childhood
friends of his, but he angers them when he speaks of the
reality they all came home to. He tries to get them to
admit that the
"[f]irst time you walked down the street in Gallup
or Albuquerque, you knew. . . . The war was over,
the uniform was gone. All of a sudden that man at
the store waits on you last, makes you wait until
all the white people bought what they wanted. And
the white lady at the bus depot, she’s real
careful now not to touch your hand when she counts
out your change" (42).

He realizes that
they blamed themselves for losing the feeling just
like they blamed themselves for losing the land
the white people took. They never thought to
blame white people for any of it. . . . They never
saw that it was the white people who gave them
that feeling and it was white people who took it

away again when the war was over. (43)

Emo and the others try to hold on to their past spent

174
away from the Reservation by telling stories of the way the
uniforms they wore earned them a place in white society.
Silko even converts one of Emo’s stories of "grabbin’ white
pussy" into the form of a witch chant:
I sat down close to the blonde
and told them my name.
I used Mattuci’s name that night--this Wop
in our unit.
The fat girl had a car.
I sat in the middle, grabbing titties
with both hands
all the way to Long Beach. (58)

Just as Tayo used the power of the story to keep the
stretcher aloft as they carried Rocky through the rain-
drenched jungle, Emo tries to retain this lost feeling by
manipulating his story into a powerful ceremony of its own.

The response of the others indicate their pleasure, but
also some recognition of their loss. The description of
Pinkie laughing and "holding his belly" at the end of this
story is offered in contrast to the explanation of ceremony
with which the novel begins: "And in the belly of this
story/the rituals and the ceremony/are still growing" (2).
In the case of Emo’s story and the laughter with which it is
met, the belly is hollow. As in a false pregnancy or a
still birth, the belly which bears these stories is devoid
of life. Earlier Tayo noticed the hollowness of Harley’s
laughter: "Somehow Harley didn’t seem to feel anything at
all, and he masked it with smart talk and laughter" (23).
Filling the belly with alcohol creates a false fullness.

"Liquor was medicine for the anger that made them hurt, for

175
the pain of the loss, medicine for tight bellies and choked-

up throats" (40). But this medicine provides no cure for
these displaced Indians. Like the medicine offered at the
Veterans Hospital, alcohol only affords a temporary
forgetfulness, not a cure.

When Tayo fights Emo and nearly kills him, he directs
his rage toward Emo’s tight belly. He watches Emo’s "belly
quiver" and lunges toward this target with a broken beer
bottle. "He should have hated Emo; he should have hated the
Jap soldiers who killed Rocky. The space to carry hate was
located deep inside, below his lungs and behind his belly;
but it was empty" (63). Tayo’s hollowness is a space to be
filled, not with the false medicine of liquor, but with an
understanding of the pattern of interconnectedness which
joins all things. The drought and the barrenness of the
land stems not from Tayo’s curse but from this barrenness of
the bellies of Indians and whites alike.

In addition to being a response to Emo’s continually
voiced hatred of Tayo because he is half white, an important
catalyst for Tayo’s assault on Emo comes from the memories
triggered by the sound made by Emo’s Bull Durham sack of
souvenir Japanese teeth.4 When Emo rattles the teeth in the
sack they make a hollow sound, like that imagined sound of
the rifle crushing Rocky’s skull. Tayo "was sweating,
trying to fight off the nausea that surged at him whenever
he heard the rattle in the little bag" (55). Their

continued empty boasting, telling tales of their exploits as

176

Indians in uniform, increases Tayo’s hollowness and rage
until it spills out. For a moment he believes that killing
Emo would cure him of the voices and images that plague his
skull.

Eventually, Tayo comes to realize that this hollowness
grows out of a disconnection from others. When he finds the
Mexican cattle fenced in on Floyd Lee’s land, he hesitates
to suppose them stolen because Lee is white. "He had a
crazy desire to believe that there had been some mistake,
that Floyd Lee had gotten them innocently, maybe buying them
from the real thieves" (190-91). Like the invisible man,
Tayo believes in the rightness of whiteness, but in this
instance he begins to see that "he had learned the lie by
heart . . . [that] only brown-skinned people were thieves;
white people didn’t steal, because they always had the money
to buy whatever they wanted" (191). He recognizes that this
lie works as much against the whites as it does the Indians,
that the lie is the product of witchery:

If the white people never looked beyond the lie,
to see that theirs was a nation built on stolen
land, they would never be able to understand how
they had been used by the witchery; they would
never know that they were still being manipulated
by those who knew how to stir the ingredients
together: white thievery and injustice boiling up
the anger and hatred that would finally destroy
the world: the starving against the fat, the
colored against the white. The destroyers had
only to set it into motion, and sit back to count
the casualties. But it was more than a body
count; the lies devoured white hearts, and for
more than two hundred years white people had
worked to fill their emptiness; they tried to glut

the hollowness with patriotic wars and with great
technology and the wealth it brought. (191)

177

Living the ceremony of retrieving the lost cattle
begins to effect its cure as Tayo’s concentration on the
task at hand temporary obliterates his memory of "the events
of the past days and past years" (192). The cure commences
as he realizes that the "cattle wouldn’t be lost any more,
scattered through his dreams, driven by his hesitation to
admit they had been stolen, that the land . . . had been
stolen from them. The anticipation of what he might find
was strung tight in his belly; suddenly the tension snapped"
(192). A peaceful silence fills his belly as Tayo comes to
understand his place within a timeless and harmonious
present.

The silence was inside, in his belly; there was no
longer any hurry. The ride into the mountain had
branched into all directions of time. He knew
then why the oldtimers could only speak of
yesterday and tomorrow in terms of the present
moment: the only certainty; and this present
sense of being was qualified with bare hints of
yesterday or tomorrow, by saying, "I go up to the
mountain yesterday or I go up to the mountain
tomorrow." (192)

In spite of this feeling of a cure taking place through
the process of retrieving the cattle, Tayo still has his
doubts and, after cutting through the fence, thinks perhaps
he should repair the wire strands and beat a hasty retreat
before he is discovered. But he feels the tension loosen
within him as the disordered design of the witchery begins
to yield: "It was changing, unraveling like the yarn of a
dark heavy blanket wrapped around a corpse, the dusty rotted

strands of darkness unwinding, giving way to the air; its

smothering pressure was lifting from the bones of his skull"

178

(198). Even when the two ranch hands come upon him, thrown
from his horse and prone on his back, he becomes "aware of
the center beneath him. . . . It was pulling him back close
to the earth, where the core was cool and silent as mountain
stone, and even with the noise and pain in his head he knew
how it would be: a returning rather than a separation"
(201). This magnetic pull of what we might properly call
the belly of earth "felt more familiar to him than any
embrace he could remember" (201). For the abandoned,
unwanted, unloved Tayo, this warm embrace from mother earth
marks an important union.

The pattern of the world begins to emerge in Tayo’s
mind and understanding. After all, the novel begins with
the story of Thought-Woman, also known as the spider, who,
with her sisters, created the world. Hence the fragile web
which holds all life together. There are even suggestions
in the text that T’seh, the woman who helps Tayo in his
quest for the cattle and for understanding, may in fact be
A’moo’ooh, the She-Elk of the old stories, or perhaps
Thought-Woman herself, interceding on Tayo’s behalf in order
to reestablish the harmonies set awry by the witchery.
Although, uncomfortable as I am with the notion of timeless
spirits made flesh, I tend to agree with Jarold Ramsey’s
suspicion that T’seh is actually Betonie’s granddaughter
(193).

As the pattern becomes increasingly visible and real to

Tayo, so too does the presence of those who, as Betonie and

179

T’seh warned him, seek to destroy him and keep him from
finishing his story. He comes to a uranium mine shaft, 300
miles northeast of Trinity Site where the first atomic bomb
was detonated and 100 miles southwest of Los Alamos where it
was created. The site of this mine shaft is a mountain
which, as Seyersted notes, "is sacred to the Pueblo and
Navajo people" (Leelie harmen Silke 11). In this sacred,
and now devastated place, Tayo feels connectedness with all
who find themselves victim of the horrific witchery which
can destroy with such awesome power.
From the jungles of his dreaming he recognized why
the Japanese voices had merged with the Laguna
voices, with Josiah’s voice and Rocky’s voice; the
lines of cultures and worlds were drawn in flat
dark lines on fine light sand, converging in the
middle of witchery’s final ceremonial sand
painting. From that time on, human beings were
one clan again, united by the fate the destroyers
planned for all of them, for all living things;
united by a circle of death that devoured people
in cities twelve thousand miles away, victims who
had never known these mesas, who had never seen
the delicate colors of the rocks which boiled up
their slaughter. (246)
He feels in this place that the ceremony is completed.
"He cried the relief he felt at finally seeing the pattern,
the way all the stories fit together--the old stories, the
war stories, their stories--to become the story that was
still being told" (246). The reason he has heard all these
converging voices and seemed to shift through fragments of
experiences and times, was not that he was insane, but that
he was perceiving rightly the interconnectedness which

others had denied was present in the world. Within the

timeless, fragile web of life, threatened by mechanistic

180
witchery, the face of Josiah is understandably

interchangeable with the face of a Japanese soldier.
Although there are many miles between these sites of uranium
mining and the atomic bomb’s initial detonation and the
location of the bomb’s first use as it was intended, the
events themselves are intricately interrelated. "He was not
crazy; he had never been crazy. He had only seen and heard
the world as it always was: no boundaries, only transitions
through all distance and time" (246).5

In this place where times converge and the pattern
seems clear, Tayo comes to understand not merely his
singular identity as an "I," but more importantly his place
and position in relation to the larger pattern in which he
is inextricably interwoven. Tayo had always felt himself to
be an outsider--an unwanted spectator--to his family and the
Laguna community. The time spent in the Army, away from the
Laguna, only reinforced his sense of estrangement, as did
his other separations--the time spent in the hospital as
white smoke and his "abandonment" into Betonie’s care in
Gallup. But his living of the story in order to heal
himself has required an immersion--a participation begun
unwillingly--in his home and culture. His struggle to
participate fully in his culture and in society is met with
the possibility of a much broader participation. But still
he must face his toughest challenge--Emo and the destroyers.

Like Brother Jack and Ras--two other destroyers--Emo

and his cronies are set on keeping the witchery of self

181

destruction and alienation alive in the world:
[T]he witchery would work so that the people would
be fooled into blaming only the whites and not the
witchery. It would work to make the people forget
the stories of the creation and continuation of
the five worlds; the old priests would be afraid
too, and cling to ritual without making new
ceremonies as they always had before. (249)
These characters, as had Tayo, tend to see things in
simplistic terms. Silko has observed that too often people
fall "into the habit of talking about black and white and
good and bad." The complaint that "[i]t’s all Whitey’s
fault" she terms
too simplistic, mind-less. In fact Tayo is warned
in the novel that they try to encourage people to
blame just certain groups, to focus in on just
certain people and blame them for everything.
Then you cant’ see what the counter people or the

counter forces are really doing. ("A Conversation
with Leslie Marmon Silko" 32).

As was the case in Invisible Man and ene Flew eve; phe
Qeekeeie_heeh, self-loathing and posing one group in
opposition to another becomes an effective means of
rendering that group impotent. As Kenneth Lincoln suggests,
"The Indians’ hatred of themselves and their oppressors
fuels ’witchery.’. . . It generates from an ominous sense of
nnreality and cultural dissociation that divides oppressed
peoples among themselves" (249). This belief in simplistic
oppositions of good or bad increases the isolation a person
experiences. It happened this way to the invisible man and
to Bromden. Silko has elsewhere addressed this self-
inflicted reinforcement of one’s isolation, noting

it’s especially easy to blame oneself and say,
"It’s only me, this evil, this bad is within me."

182

That’s too easy, to simple. And so is the
opposite, which is just to blame others--to say,
"It’s white people," or, "It’s those people, it’s
not me," and thereby withdraw in the same way.
Either way isolates us from other human beings.
("A Conversation with Leslie Marmon Silko 32)

At this point in the novel, Tayo has begun to move away
from this simple-minded view of the world and his self, but
Emo and the other, trapped in the ceremony of the witchery,
wear their hatred of the whites and themselves like they
once wore their military uniforms--as a false method of
feeling more human. Their own self-loathing carried to a
violent extreme, Emo, Pinkie, and Leroy torture and
eventually kill Harley--their "friend"--in an attempt to get
Tayo to surrender to them. The reader expects Tayo to jump
out of the hills and assault these three paradoxically self-
and white-hating Indians, finally putting an end to their
story, but Tayo remains hidden in the darkness. Had he
moved into their story, his own would have remained
unfinished.

It had been a close call. The witchery had almost
ended the story according to its plan; Tayo had
almost jammed the screwdriver into Emo’s skull the
way the witchery had wanted. . . . Their deadly
ritual for the autumn solstice would have been
completed by him. He would have been another
victim, a drunk Indian war veteran settling an old
feud; and the Army doctors would say that the
indications of this end had been there all along .
. . . The white people would shake their heads,
more proud than sad that it took a white man to
survive in their world and that these Indians
couldn’t seem to make it. At home the people
would blame liquor, the Army, and the war, but the
blame on the whites would never match the
vehemence the people would keep in their own
bellies, reserving the greatest bitterness and
blame for themselves, for one of themselves they
could not save. (253)

183

'This choice Tayo has to make--intercede on Harley’s
behalf by killing Emo and ending the story, or hold himself
back from entering the witchery and seeing his friend die--
is a difficult one; "it has never been easy" (254). Had he
concluded their story, he would have just been another
drunken Indian, unable to cope in the world, reinforcing
what the witchery has caused many to believe about Indians
and half-breeds. Carol Mitchell notes the importance of
Tayo’s being "able to watch the witches’ ritual without
being drawn into it and destroyed" (30). And the location
for this final witnessing of the witchery occurs, St.
Andrews notes, "in a highly symbolic place: where the
ancient creation myths . . . intersect with the nuclear age"
(92).

On two earlier occasions, prior to this final tempting
of Tayo by the destroyers to abandon his ceremony for their
own, Grandma and Robert had each told Tayo that Ku’oosh and
the other elders of the tribe had been expecting Tayo to
have something to tell them. Now that the ceremony is
complete--the cattle, the pattern, the rains are all
restored, and the witchery has returned to its belly--Tayo
travels to the kiva to bring his ceremony to closure by
telling the story of it to these tribal elders.

It took a long time to tell them the story; they
stopped him frequently with questions about the
location and the time of day; they asked about the
direction she [T’seh or A’moo’ooh] had come from

and the color of her eyes. (257)

The elders are pleased with this completion of the ceremony

184
which is really a continuation of a story that has long been
told and retold. Like the tale of Corn Mother, it continues
to live as long as it is shaped anew to fit a changing
world. As old Grandma says when Auntie tells them the
details of Pinkie’s death and Emo’s escape to California,
"’I guess I must be getting old . . . because these goings-
on around Laguna don’t get me excited any more. . . . It
seems like I already heard these stories before . . . only
thing is, the names sound different’" (260)

Ultimately, Tayo’s process focuses much attention on
the retrieval of the lost or stolen cattle. Josiah had
purchased them for their ability to survive the harsh Laguna
droughts and to eat dried up thistle and cactus instead of
soft grasses. He told Tayo, "See, I’m not going to make the
mistake other guys made, buying those Hereford, white-face
cattle" (75). Although sired by a Hereford, the Mexican
strain makes them hardy and strong and able to adapt to
extraordinary conditions. The narrator suggests that the
same is true of the novel’s human half-breeds: Tayo,
Betonie, and T’seh.6

Josiah spoke of the cattle and their attachment to the
land in much that same way that others might speak of the
Indian people or people of all races:

"Cattle are like any living thing. If you
separate them from the land for too long, keep
them in barns and corrals, they lose something.
Their stomachs get to where they can only eat
rolled oats and dry alfalfa. When you turn them
loose again, they go running all over. They are

scared because the land is unfamiliar, and they
are lost. They don’t stop being scared either,

185

even when they look quiet and they quit running.
Scared off animals die off easily." (74)

The fate of these displaced cattle is similar to the Indians
displaced by the white world or any racial, ethnic,
religious, or social group estranged into isolation and
disconnection. They’ve lost that association with the land;
turned loose (as soldiers in a war perhaps) they go running
in all directions; they tend to give up and die quite
easily. The Mexican cattle, however, are willful. They
always move toward the south, toward their original home.
That’s why Tayo is surprised to find them north of the
Laguna (forgetting that stolen cattle can be taken anywhere)
and why they are easy to retrieve; he merely cuts a hole in
the south fence and waits for their nature to do the rest.

Once the cattle are back in Tayo’s custody, and Tayo
begins himself to settle down into a sense of belonging his
ceremony begins to create for him, they stop moving south.
"They had finally worked the direction out of their systems
and had settled into the place" (225). This satisfaction
with place on the part of the cattle mirrors Tayo’s new
connection with his land and his people. Tayo has felt the
embrace of the earth and the touch of T’seh. Even Auntie
begins to treat him differently. Where previously she
seemed to take all her trials as embarrassments, now she
finds that she can wear them as emblems as her fortitude and
pride. "[N]ow the women at Church came to her privately . .
. to ask how she had managed all those years to face the

troubles . . . . ’I tell them, "It isn’t easy. It has never

186
been easy," I say’" (259).

As Silko has said, Tayo not only works through his
story to become an integrated being and a part of his family
and community but realizes and remembers his intimate
connection with humanity: "[O]nce he is reminded of this
and can find it again within himself, then the other things
he does are acts which reiterate this closeness" (Two
Interviews with Leslie Marmon Silko" 32). No longer
abandoned and alone, Tayo will always have his story and the
stories of the Laguna Pueblo which "help the individual feel

constantly a part of the group" (32).

Janie, the invisible man, and Chief Bromden arrived at their
sense of wholeness, cultural place, and possibilities
through the act of writing. For Janie and the invisible
man, their accounts are autobiographical in nature; for
Bromden, the resulting narrative takes the form of a fiction
grounded in experience, but altered to effect a process of
healing. Tayo, on the other hand, does not write his story,
but works his own therapeutic healing and returns to a sense
of wholeness, first by living through his own
ceremony/story, and finally reiterating the process by
telling the story to the tribal elders in a final ritual.
Silko’s narrative stresses the potency of the oral tradition
of Native American peoples.

Spoken language figures prominently in all four of

these works. Janie, kept silent and prohibited from

187
participating in the talk of the community, grows into

autonomy by first joining in the storytelling in Belle
Glade. Without that initial experimentation with the power
of language, it’s doubtful she could ever have achieved the
distance necessary to write her narrative and authentically
record the voices of her community. he' E s We

Wepehing Gog is in part an anthropological showcase of oral
folktales.

One of the invisible man’s primary motivations in his
often blind and bumbling quest for selfhood is his desire to
be a speech-maker. Often within a speech, the language
exerts its own power over him. He too is denied an oral
voice of his own, often censored and forced to speak in a
language which is acceptable to the various puppeteers who
manipulate his strings. Later, in his hole beneath the
city, he fashions a narrative of his exploits--the many ways
in which others kept him running. Through his writing
process, invisible to the reader, the invisible man
discovers the self-creating power of written language as
well.

Bromden determines early on in his childhood that what
he says is rarely, if ever, heeded. Even when he speaks the
language he believes will make him understood--his very best
schoolbook English--he is ignored. Determined to use his
invisibility as a defensive weapon, Bromden decides to cease
the pretense of even having a voice by remaining mute.

Unaware that this offers substantial "proof" of his

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incapacity to succeed in society, he even accepts
incarceration for a deficiency which he wore only as a
garment. Part of his therapeutic process of writing himself
to wholeness entails first creating an environment for the
fictionalized character of himself (Broom) which
necessitates his breaking his vow of silence and orally
participating in the struggle against the Combine.

Tayo similarly has accepted the value of schoolbook
language, believing English a more potent tool than his
ancestral language. Prior to Ku’oosh speaking the word for
"fragile" with its many attendant "intricacies of a
continuing process"--a clear demonstration of Ku’oosh’s
facility with language and meaning--Tayo is at first ashamed
to hear Ku’oosh speak: "His language was childish,
interspersed with English words, and he could feel shame
tightening in his throat" (34). In addition, Tayo scoffs at
the old stories, accepting, at least logically, his
teachers’ preference for science over superstitious stories
and ceremonies. However, Tayo also recognizes that the
English language has created a wedge between the Indian
people and their heritage. As the narrator puts it, once
more in terms of entanglement, "the feelings where twisted,
tangled roots, and all the names for the source of this
growth were buried under English words, out of reach. And
there would be no peace until the entanglement had been
unwound to the source" (69).

Tayo’s ceremony/story is in itself a process of

189
becoming, a living of the story. As Silko has stated,
When I say ’storytelling,’ I don’t just mean
sitting down and telling a once-upon—a-time kind
of story. I mean a whole way of seeing yourself,
the people around you, your life, the place of
your life in the bigger context, not just in terms
of nature and location, but in terms of what has
gone on before, what’s happened to other people.
("A Leslie Marmon Silko Interview with Kim Barnes"
86)
Moreover, the closure comes in telling the tale to the
elders of the tribe. In this regard, Tayo returns the story
to his people, and though this, like all the others, is a
story heard before, it has undergone many changes.7
It’s worth noting that Silko, in presenting the spoken
stories and chants which she interweaves into the fabric of
her narrative, draws not on the written versions--recorded
by the likes of Hurston’s anthropology teacher and mentor
Franz Boas and Elsie Clews Parsons--but rather on the oral
tales she learned as a child and adult.8 Interestingly,
Silko’s narrator, in reconstructing Tayo’s struggle for the
ending to his story, creates a written artifact of the
living ceremony and forces the reader to participate in it
as well.9 Kenneth Lincoln terms the novel "a word ceremony"
(237). In effect, Tayo’s story ends, but the reader’s
continues. The reader is called upon to fathom the
interconnections demonstrated in the world, so that the
ending of the novel becomes a beginning. "The last page of
the novel," writes James Ruppert, "is not the finish of the

fused story/reality. The ceremony continues and it is now

the responsibility of the reader to act" (85).

190
As readers of eepeneny, we have a tendency to single

out parts and measure their relationship to each other, to
look for major threads to separate and cut away from the
minor ones that snag them in order to talk about and analyze
the book. Like Tayo in recalling the tangled threads "from
old Grandma’s wicker sewing basket when he was a child," the
reader initially experiences these interwoven memories and
images as fragmented and confusing and is tempted to try "to
pull them apart and rewind them into their places" but this
only makes them snag and tangle "even more" (7). As Marion
W. Copeland says of Tayo’s attempts to separate the strands
of his tangled memories in order to "unknot them and rewind
them on the appropriate spools. Such would be the neat
linear solution of the white psychiatrists at the hospital"
(160-61).

This is one of the reasons that Qeremony is difficult
to teach or to analyze. It’s much greater that the mere sum
of its parts. The "breaks" in the novel aren’t ancillary
fragments that can be discarded or ignored. Just as the
past is the present, Tayo’s story and the story of Corn
Mother and Hummingbird and all of the others are intricately
interconnected. The web or fabric is all of one piece. If
you dismantle or unweave it, if you pull out one single
strand or thread, the entire unit will unravel and collapse.
In the end, Qezemeny is a ceremony not to be tampered with.
Each telling or rereading will keep it new and alive and

will reintroduce it to the present. But it can’t be broken

191

into components without suffering some intrinsic loss.
"Denying the world of neat plots," asserts Copeland,
"defines the novel; eepemony, as Silko’s reader begins to
sense, is not a novel at all. It is a healing process"
(161). Silko’s interweaving of the oral tradition of the
Indian culture with the written tradition of the
contemporary novelist, compels the reader to "hear" the

lyricism of both forms--oral and written, poetry and prose.

Each of these novels offers the promise of possibilities and
a sense of interconnectedness, not only for the narrators
and/or characters, but for their readers as well. Each work
follows a process that continues, if the reader so wishes,
beyond the end of the final printed page. Janie offers the
reader the concluding notion that "Love is lak de sea. It’s
a movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from
de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore"
(284). She leaves it to the readers to find their own
horizons. The invisible man supposes, in the last analysis,
that "on the lower frequencies, I speak for you" (568),
suggesting that his readers, too, share in his voiceless,
formless predicament. Silko’s narrator, the characters, and
the spoken stories tell the reader that posing oneself as a
visible being in a dehumanizing, mechanized world and
grasping the connections which interpenetrate all matter
have "never been easy" tasks, but each of us has the

potential to strive against the witchery which keeps us

192

isolated from humankind. And Bromden similarly suggests
that a reunion with one’s past and one’s people can be
accomplished in his final hopeful line: "I been away a long
time" (272).

On ell frequencies, these writers speak to the reader
with directness and candor. Each unfolds a process of
discovery and understanding and leaves the reader with the
task of taking up the challenge to integrate him- or herself
with the community and the world at large. Each novel poses
its central character in opposition to and in contrast with
a mechanism--characterized as an intrusive force such as the
Combine or wrongheaded witchery, epitomized in a
bureaucratic dehumanized Brotherhood, or merely illustrated
by a male-voiced domination and repression--which interferes
with love and human connections. Whether in oral or written
form, language is the means used by each of these characters
to fashion selves capable of uncovering and reestablishing
connections in the world. Moreover, these novels, as story
is characterized in the opening pages of Ceremon , "aren’t
just entertainment" (2). Language and storytelling are
potent means of creation and sustenance, or destruction and
confusion. "Language, which creates matter, defines
function, and specifies form," argues B. A. St. Andrews, "is
a potent force for curing or for cursing" (86).

Underlying these hopeful endings of the novels is the
threat of destruction and disorder to a world that fails to

honor and respect diversity, that shuts off members of the

193

culture from full participation, and only marginally
democratizes American institutions. In these works, the
main characters are pushed to the margins of society and
confined in narrowly prescribed roles, but they fortunately
manage to use the powerful tool of language. Their language
ability assists them in attaining cultural and self-
awareness and persuades them that integration with the
dominant society is possible.

I use the term "integration" here, not as a antonym of
racial segregation or as another term for assimilation. The
promise these characters bring with them to the dominant
culture which formerly excluded them can only result from a
fully realized, autonomous integripy. When education,
society’s means of informing and molding its citizenry,
falls to the task of coercion rather than nurturing
diversity of behavior and idea formation, it becomes a
prison of conformity which robs society of its richness of

voices and personalities.

NOTES

1 Bromden is half Columbia Indian from the Pacific
Northwest, while Tayo is of Pueblo Indian descent, from the
New Mexico Laguna. I do not mean to infer that all Native
Americans are alike any more than I would suggest that all
Europeans, Asians, Africans, and so forth would be. In
addition to the miles which separate their communities and
traditions, there are the distinctions of climate and
differing cultural histories. Moreover, Kesey makes no
attempt to explore the cultural identity of Bromden’s
people, while Silko--of Laguna Pueblo, Mexican, and white

194

ancestry herself--shares an understanding of someone of
Tayo’s mixed blood and has lived a life steeped in the
tradition of the Pueblo. However, Tayo and Bromden do share
the position any Native American finds him-or herself in--
that of being displaced by and isolated from the dominant
white culture of the United States. And their mixed
ancestry creates a crisis of identity for both. As Roberta
Rubenstein has observed, "[i]n a land in which Indian ethnic
groups have historically been so visibly segregated from the
rest of American culture, to be accepted by neither one nor
the other group is to be a victim of radically confused
identity" (193).

These comments are from the novel’s original dust
jackes.
Susan J. Scarberry points out that the "Native

American concept of ’medicine’ has a resonance far beyond
what any European definition of the term suggests. Since
’medicine’ also universally refers to substances used to
treat disease, several levels of meaning emerge when
’medicine’ is mentioned in Ce emon " (22). For an analysis
of the contrast between Western medicine--"stuck in the
dualisms of Cartesian thought"--and the multidimensional
process of healing in Amerindian culture as portrayed in
novel, see B. A. St. Andrews, "Healing the Witchery:

Medic ne in Silko’s eeyenony."

Silko uses Emo’s souvenir teeth to reinforce his role
as a witch or a tool of the witchery. She has said
elsewhere that "there are certain objects taken from dead
bodies that the counter forces use as their whole stock and
trade" ("A Conversation with Leslie Marmon Silko" 33).

Kunz provides an observation concerning Bromden’s
arrival at a similar sense of timelessness and lack of
boundaries and an evaluation of the contrasting "medicines"
offered in Quchee’e hes; which seem equally descriptive of
Tayo’s situational paradox as well. He writes, "east and
west are the same direction, past and future are now, insane
therapists reinforce madness with modern techniques while
patiegts cure themselves with primitive word magic" (33).

Peter G. Beidler, "Animals and Theme in geremony,"
suggests that "[i]t is not accident, incidentally, that the
cattle are crossbreeds which, like Tayo, seem to combine the
best eatures of two strains" (17-18).

Although Tayo’s struggle for identity seems to lack
the search for a name as undergone by Janie, the invisible
man, and Bromden, James Ruppert makes an observation
concerning Tayo’s need for an identifying role (and
attendant name) in his culture: "When Tayo enters the
story, . . . he is given an identity; he might be called
the-one-who-brings-back-the-rain. He felt that after the
war he had become white smoke, that he had no identity, but
in the unified story that the reader comes to understand as
containing the underlying pattern of significance, he did
have an identity. He was the blasphemer, the-one-who-drove-
the-rain-away" (82). I would add that the identity of

195

blasphemer is actually Tayo’s mistaken, self-imposed, and
believed deserved name reflecting his disconnection from the
land and his people. The drought results from imbalance and
dishagmony, not Tayo’s lone curse.

In "A Conversation with Leslie Marmon Silko," she
speaks of her use of Laguna stories in her writings, saying
that "[t]here were some things that I heard and some things
that I knew, and I thought, well, you know, you’ve just got
to stick with it, with what you’ve heard, and with what you
have. I figured that anybody could go to the
anthropologists’ reports and look at them. I have looked at
them myself, but I’ve never sat down with them and said I’m
going to make a poem or a story out of this" (30). In the
same interview, Silko says she’s "always been leery of the
kinds of things that the ethnologists picked up," because
she knows that some of the sources are only telling
"outrageous lies" (30). Ramsey claims that "even a cursory
survey in Boas’s heresan Texts of the origin-myth episodes
as told by Laguna and other Keresan Pueblo people will
reveal the skill and tact with which Silko establishes and
maintains a mythic pre-text for the fictional story of Tayo"
(192)

9 Even though Tayo’s therapeutic recovery relies on the
oral use of language and story, Silko, in an interview with
Dexter Fisher, admits that the process of ygiting the novel
was itself a means of her own healing: "Writing the novel
was a ceremony for me to stay sane. . . . [M]y character is
very sick, and I was very sick when I was writing the novel.
I was having migraine headaches all the time and horrible
nausea that went on and on. I kept writing and all of a
sudden it occurred to me that he was very sick and I was
wondering if he was going to get well . . . and then I
realized that the one thing that was keeping me going at all
was writing. And as Tayo got better, I felt better" (20).

Chapter Five

Other Unseen Faces, Unheard Voices

Before concluding this study, I would like to explore
several additional works in which the dual motif of
invisibility and voicelessness and the struggle for identity
through storytelling occur with some prominence. In fiction
ranging from Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 short story,
"The Yellow Wallpaper," to Margaret Atwood’s futuristic
vision of America written in 1985, The fiendnaig’e Tele, the
major characters--many of whom are similarly the narrating
voices which shape the stories--use language to overcome
their isolation and disenfranchisement. The Hanenaid’s
Tele, in particular, warrants careful consideration as a
crucial 1980s text which, in addition to these elements
already discussed, addresses the storyteller’s loss of
authorial control over the final stages of her storytelling
and self-forming process. In effect, the "rescuers" of her
narrative question her authority and the authenticity of her
voice. Following this analysis of Atwood’s text and brief
descriptions of other works, I proffer some proposals for
empowering students with language as a means of making
meaning, ordering experience, and gaining identity.

In her dystopian vision of the future of North America,

196

197

Margaret Atwood addresses these same issues of invisibility,
voicelessness, and the self-creating and self-sustaining
power of narrative. Offred, the narrating character, living
in the Republic of Gilead sometime in the near future, finds
herself stripped of her familiar identity and social roles
as a worker, wife, and mother, trained in the discipline of
the Handmaid, and clad in the attire of that domestic and
social function.

The Republic of Gilead was formed in the wake of a
religious war which was waged in heated response to
homosexuality ("Gender Treachery" [57]); rampant pornography
("Pornomarts," "Feels on Wheels," and "Bun-Dle Buggies"
[225-261); heretical religious sects (Roman Catholics, Jews,
Baptists, and Quakers); the alleged immoral products of the
feminist movement such as abortion, divorce, and female
adultery; crimes of violence against women; and other
"sinful" behavior such as sunbathing and rock ’n roll. As
Aunt Lydia informs her charges--the Handmaids in training--
"[i]n the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are
being given freedom from" these aforementioned "evils" (33).
But as happens in most "perfect" societies, the new freedoms
have many costs.

"[E]xploding power plants, . . . the mutant strain of
syphilis no mold could touch," (144) and environmental
pollution--the air filled with "chemicals, rays, radiation,
the water . . .with toxic molecules" (143)--have adversely

affected the birth rate. Child bearing women are often

/

198

likely--"[t]he chances are one in four"--to give birth to
"Unbabies," "with a pinhead or a snout like a dog’s, or two
bodies, or a hole in its heart or no arms, or webbed hands
and feet" (143). Alarm about the "plummeting Caucasian
birth rates" (385), particularly the dearth of newborn white
males, leads the Republic to create a specialized class of
Handmaids to act as surrogate reproduction machines.

Offred is typical of these Handmaids. Divorced and
remarried, her second marriage is deemed immoral and, hence,
illegal; her child from that illegal liaison is confiscated:
and she is arrested and indoctrinated into the ritual of
monthly sexual couplings with her Commander. Ironically,
this legalized form of rape is termed the "Ceremony"; Gilead
prides itself on the virtual elimination of rape on the
streets but condones this method of coerced intercourse
through biblical precedent.1 The fact that Offred has borne
offspring previously makes her an ideal candidate as a
Handmaid; that she has a past as an independent woman of
intelligence and substance creates a problem for the Aunts
who are responsible for her indoctrination and for the
society that wishes her to forget her past freedoms and her
loves.

In this hierarchical society of clearly defined and
prescribed roles, the Handmaids are only one of the castes
which suffer under repressive governmental rule. Gilead
demands conformity from both sexes; each social group from

Commanders to Guardians has their functionary purposes

199

delineated and their behavior circumscribed, and they are
attired accordingly. The black-clad Commanders of the Faith
are white men of means whose homes are overseen by
Commanders’ Wives dressed in blue. When a Commander’s Wife
is unable to bear children (men are never to blame), the
Commander may take into his household a Handmaid (Caucasian,
of course) as a surrogate for the purposes of reproduction,
not intimacy. A Handmaid’s primary purpose is to be "a
worthy vessel" for her Commander’s seed: "What we prayed
for was emptiness, so we would be worthy to be filled: with
grace, with love, with self-denial, semen and babies" (251).
Denial of self is crucial in order to concede to the
requirements of a Handmaid’s role in the society.

One means of obliterating a person’s self and
controlling his or her behavior, as we have already seen, is
to take away that individual’s name and substitute another
identifying label. The narrator’s name, Offred, is a
patronymic which indicates that her Commander’s surname is
Fred and that she is assigned to his household for the
purpose of bearing his child. The reader never discovers
the narrator’s "real" name, the name she possessed in the
pre-Gileadean days, just as the invisible man withheld his
name from his readers. We might just as easily call him
Ofbledsoe or ijack, depending on which controlling
authority figure he is serving at the time. Offred’s
identifying name can change as abruptly, because, if she

fails to become pregnant, she will move on to another

200

Commander and become Of-somebody else. (Unless she fails
three times, in which case she can expect to be shipped off
to the Colonies as an "Unwoman" to clean up toxic waste or
some such hazardous task deemed appropriate for the
unnecessary elements of the social fabric.)

She elects to keep her own, forbidden name hidden; she
thinks of it as something precious, one of the few things
she owns:

I keep the knowledge of this name like something
hidden, some treasure I’ll come back to dig up,
one day. . . . This name has an aura around it,
like an amulet, some charm that’s survived from an
unimaginably distant past. (108)
This name recalls for her "what I once could do, how others
saw me" (126) and she reveals it only to Nick, toward the
end of the story, and feels by its revelation that
"therefore I am known" (347).

The Handmaids’ costume consists of a blood-red habit
"which defines" them (11). In order to cover and obscure
her female shape, "[t]he skirt is ankle-length, full,
gathered to a flat yoke that extends over the breasts"
(perhaps the sort of outfit Nurse Ratched would demand her
nurses wear), and "[t]he white wings too are prescribed
issue; they are to keep us from seeing but also from being
seen" (11). This uniform renders them invisible as women
and as individual faces. "Modesty is invisibility," Aunt
Lydia told them. "To be seen . . . is to be penetrated.

What you girls must be is impenetrable" (38). The Handmaids

are taught that rape is solely the fault of the woman (92-

201

93); in Gilead, the step from visual penetration to sexual
is considered a minor one.

Paradoxically, the high visibility of the bright red,
white-winged garment virtually renders Handmaids invisible
due to their number. With the uniform obscuring the
individual within, they seem to all look alike. Even the
Marthas, household servants, speak in Offred’s presence as
though she cannot hear them (64). And Offred realizes that
while the offspring she and her fellow Handmaids may produce
will appear in photographs in family albums and thereby
exist in history, Handmaids will not: "From the point of
view of future history . . . we’ll be invisible" (295).
This notion comes to her as she views a photograph of her
own child, now the child of someone else, and Offred feels
herself "obliterated for her. I am only a shadow now, far
back behind the glib surface of this photograph. A shadow
of a shadow" (296). Gilead, in robbing Offred of her
identity, a livelihood, and a family, and in mandating that
she wear this uniform of conformity, has rendered her
invisible, without form or substance.

Atwood’s imagined society oppresses these women further
by denying them any right to language. When Handmaids go
shopping, one of their other household tasks, performed
always in pairs, they are forbidden to speak in other than
prescribed phatic discourse. To the customary greeting,
"’Blessed be the fruit," a Handmaid must respond

accordingly, "May the Lord open" (25). If Offred and her

202

companion, Ofglen (regardless of who wears the uniform, the
name will remain the same), speak beyond the accepted empty
cordialities, they may be construed traitors and
blasphemers. Handmaids travel in pairs because they serve
as each other’s spies: "If either of us slips through the
net because of something that happens on one of our daily
walks, the other will be accountable" (26). Gilead
encourages its Handmaids to inform on another’s
transgressions.

Handmaids are similarly forbidden to read or write.
Even the shop signs have been converted from graphemic to
pictorial representation of the products sold there: "[T]he
lettering was painted out, when they decided that even the
names of shops were too much temptation for us. Now places
are known by their signs alone" (33). The monthly Ceremony
begins with the Commander unlocking the Bible from its
locked box and reading to his Wife and Handmaid the passage
on which Gilead bases this ritualized subrogation and rape.
Though Offred refers to these lines scornfully as the "moldy
old Rachel and Leah" story, she notes how hearing the
written word affects both her and the Commander’s Wife (also
forbidden to read): "We lean towards him a little, iron
filings to his magnet. He has something we don’t have, he
has the word" (114). Offred seems to feel her powerlessness
most strongly in having language--spoken, written, read, and
heard--forbidden to her. She hungers for communication and

meaning in language.

203

Later in the novel, the Commander invites (actually
coerces; a Handmaid is powerless to resist a Commander) to
come to his room late at night. A surreptitious meeting of
this sort violates the law, and Offred worries that he has
something intimate and sexual in mind:

It’s forbidden for us to be alone with the
Commanders. We are for breeding purposes: we
aren’t concubines, geisha girls, courtesans. . . .
There is supposed to be nothing entertaining about
us, no room is permitted for the flowering of
secret lusts . . . . We are two-legged wombs,
that’s all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices.
(176)
Offred discovers that he does have something illicit in
mind; he wants her to play Scrabble with him. Just being
alone with him is quite illegal. To request that she engage
in the illegal activity of a word game--something
"forbidden," "dangerous," "indecent," which "he can’t do
with his Wife"--strikes her as equivalent to an offer of
drugs (179).

Atwood must relish the dark humor of this seduction
scene as the Commander overpowers Offred with ingenuous,
forgotten words like the simple greeting "hello" and then
compromises and tantalizes her with the spelling and reading
of the Scrabble words.

We play two games. Larynx, I spell. Valance.

' . Zygeh_. I hold the glossy counters with
their smooth edges, finger the letters. The
feeling is voluptuous. This is freedom, an
eyeblink of it. Limp, I spell. Gonge. What a
luxury. The counters are like candies. (180;
emphases are the author’s)

The Scrabble games become a much more meaningful ceremony

than the monthly ritual which passes by that name. She

204

cherishes each prohibited word she forms and reads.

Eventually, the Commander offers her old copies of
forbidden women’s magazines, which once "suggested an
endless series of possibilities" to their readers (201), and
finally compromises her by taking her to a legally
sanctioned bordello, Jezebel’s. What the reader may at
first take for kindness on the part of the Commander,
ultimately reveals that he is "truly ignorant of the real
conditions under which" the Handmaids live (204). He puts
Offred in situations of jeopardy with never a thought for
her status as the one who would be blamed; the Commander’s
"illegal" acts would be allowed and forgiven him.

The tactile pleasure Offred takes in longingly
caressing the Scrabble letters has a similar counterpart
earlier in the novel when she discovers the Latin words,

" as s rborundu " (69; emphasis is the
author’s), carved in tiny print on the bottom of the
cupboard in her room. Offred relishes these unknown words
and tries to envision the writer who she believes was her
predecessor, the previous Offred:
It pleases me to think I’m communing with this
woman. . . . It pleases me to know that her taboo
message made it through, to at least one other
person, washed itself up on the wall of my

cupboard, was opened and read by me. Sometimes I
repeat the words to myself. They give me a small

joy. . . .
I wonder who she was or is, and what’s become

of her. (69-70)
These foreign words (this is well before she learns from the

Commander that they translate as the meaningful "Don’t let

205
the bastards grind you down") become a sort of mantric chant
for Offred. She clings to these words, again and again
pausing to pass her fingers lingeringly over this remaining
evidence of another woman’s existence and defiance, and
fashions an image of her as a role model.

Her pleasure at touching the forbidden letters of the
word game and the carved message with her fingertips and the
sensual satisfaction of shaping each word, whether
discovered or created, with her mouth and tongue, explain,
in part, the value of the shaping of her own narrative,
another "taboo message" that--like her predecessor’s--"made
it through." Although it would probably gratify her to know
that her narrative made it to a reader and allowed her the
sort of communion with others which she craves, the
fashioning of the tale was not itself an experience without
regret and pain.

Like the invisible man and Bromden, she anguishes over
this birthing process. Initially, her brooding pain stems
from the fact that she wishes it were a fictional account,
not the truth which eie happen. When she speaks of story,
she prefers a made-up form of entertainment.

I would like to believe this is a story I’m
telling. I need to believe it. I must believe
it. Those who can believe that such stories are
only stories have a better chance.

If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have
control over the ending. Then there will be an
ending, to the story, and real life will come
after it. I can pick up where I left off.

It isn’t a story I’m telling.

It’s also a story I’m telling, in my head, as I
go along. (52)

206

She remembers how World War II, even after watching a
documentary about the slaughter of the Jews in the ovens,
once seemed "only a story" to her, because "[i]f it’s only
a story, it becomes less frightening" (187).

Her lack of control over both her life and the ending
of the story often makes her wish she could leave off the
task of telling it. "I am trying not to tell stories, or at
any rate not this one" (66). Attempting to keep the
narrative as authentic as possible requires that Offred
relive the terrible memories of her life: the loss of her
husband and child, the horrible beating the Aunts gave her
friend Moira, the brutal hangings and the killings she
witnessed at the Salvagings and Particicutions, and the
guilt she feels over the pleasure she took on her midnight
trysts with the Commander’s chauffeur, Nick.

She apologizes to her reader for her brutal honesty:
"I’m sorry there is so much pain in this story. I’m sorry
it’s in fragments, like a body caught in crossfire or pulled
apart by force. But there is nothing I can do to change it"
(344). Often she admits the necessary weakening of the

story through its retelling:
This is e reconstruction. All of it is e

reeonstruction. It’s a reconstruction now, in my
head, as I lay flat on my single bed rehearsing
what I should or shouldn’t have said, what I
should or shouldn’t have done, how I should have
played it. (173; emphases are the author’s)

She desires some distance between herself and the
occurrences in her narrative.

Occasionally, because knowledge is kept from her, she

207
is forced to surmise parts of her story. For instance, she
offers three versions of what happened to her husband, Luke,
each of which she claims to believe in firmly. She believes
that he was shot, that he was captured and confined to a
prison somewhere, and that he was never caught and one day
will be reunited with her and their child.
The things I believe can’t all be true, though one
of them must be. But I believe in all of them,
all three versions of Luke, at one and the same
time. This contradictory way of believing seems
to me, right now, the only way I can believe
anything. Whatever the truth is, I will be ready
for it. (135)
Merely telling the story of Luke is a means of keeping him
alive.

Offred sometimes succumbs to the temptation to rewrite
parts of the story, as when she offers "a different story, a
better one. . . . the story of what happened to Moira"
(166). This reconstruction comes from a variety of sources,
partially from first hand knowledge, the rest "from Alma,
who heard it from Dolores, who heard it from Janine. Janine
heard it from Aunt Lydia" (166). Offred calls it a better
story because it entails Moira’s getting revenge against
Aunt Lydia and escaping. But the story as told seems more a
story the Handmaids desired to believe than the truth as it
actually happened. However, when Offred meets Moira at
Jezebel’s, Moira’s version accurately corresponds with the
retold version.

In relating the next installment in Moira’s tale,

Offred again confesses to a reconstruction:

208

This is what she says, whispers, more or less. I

can’t remember exactly, because I had no way of

writing it down. I’ve filled it out for her as

much as I can: we didn’t have much time so she

just gave the outlines. (316)
Offred would like to fashion a conclusion to Moira’s story
indicating what happened to her thereafter: "I’d like to
tell a story about how Moira escaped, for good this time. .
. . I’d like her to end with something daring and
spectacular, some outrage, something that would befit her
(325). Offred desires endings for her own and others’
stories rather than facing the harsh reality of their
situations. Unlike Tayo, her struggle is often egainsp the
ending of the story, an attempt to stave off the anticipated
displeasing conclusion.

In furnishing her final installment of Moira’s story,

she "tries to make it sound as much like her as I can" as a
means "of keeping her alive" (316). This is the most
important strength of Offred’s storytelling. While she is
unable to form herself through telling the story, she can
give substance to herself and others and keep them alive
this way. Just as Janie’s story keeps Tea Cake alive in
Janie’s heart and Tayo’s ceremony (the process of living the
story) restores Josiah and Rocky (and the traditional story)
to life, Offred’s narrative renders those people whom she
misses breathing and acting and living on in her memory and
in the artifact of her storytelling.

As a means of sustaining herself, Offred’s storytelling

requires a listener, because "if it’s a story, even in my

209
head, I must be telling it to someone. You don’t tell a

story only to yourself. There’s always someone else" (52).
Even though she doubts she will ever have a listener or that
her story will survive, she fashions someone to direct her
story to. She’ll "pretend you can hear me" even if she
believes "you can’t" (53). A listener is fundamental to the
story; without someone to hear her tale, she remains
invisible and mute, a space "between parentheses" (295). In
this sense, the telling of the story creates and sustains
the listener’s presence as much as it does her own. She
addresses the listener directly:
By telling you anything at all I’m at least
believing in you, I believe you’re there, I
believe you into being. Because I’m telling you
this story I will your existence. I tell
therefore you are. (344)
And therefore she exists as well.

Forbidden to write, Offred’s legacy is another oral
tale, this time recorded on audio cassettes. Told by the
Aunts that "Pen Is Envy" (a clever rewrite of Freudian
theory which equally depicts women’s status as Other in a
male-dominated social structure), the Handmaids are
prohibited from contact with any writing utensils. Her
series of cassettes form a story told, not written. The
artifact which the reader is able to hold in his or her hand
and to trace the words with a finger if desired is actually
a transcript of her words as spoken. A further

reconstruction, the arrangement of "the blocks of speech in

the order in which they appeared to go" was "based on some

210

guesswork" by Professors Wade and Pieixoto (383). This
revelation occurs in the "Historical Notes" which conclude
the novel.

Offred realizes that even if she could escape and
finally set her narrative down in written form, it would
still be a reconstruction "at yet another remove."

It’s impossible to say a thing exactly the way it

was, because what you say can never be exact, you

always have to leave something out, there are two

many parts, sides, crosscurrents, nuances. (173)
The narrative would be inexact, would in fact be a fiction
of sorts, but the reader would at least prefer her
inaccuracies to those of her usurping male editors.
Although they’ve rescued her from invisibility and
voicelessness to a certain extent, they criticize her
narrative for what it lacks and complain about the ways in
which a male-formed document would have provided more
precise answers to their many questions.

Professor Pieixoto’s comments indicate that although
the Republic of Gilead no longer exists, some of the
underlying attitudes toward women linger. For instance, the
selection of the title for the narrative, while "partly in
homage to the great Geoffrey Chaucer," was also made as a
pun "having to do with the archaic vulgar signification of
the word tail; that being, to some extent, the bone, as it
were, of contention" (381). This admission and the laughter
of the seminar participants which greets it indicate that

women are still viewed in sexist terms--vessels for receipt

of man’s seed. The Underground Femaleroad, the means of

211

escape of some of the Handmaids, has been "dubbed by some of
our historical wags ’The Underground Frailroad’" signifying
this culture’s persistence in believing woman to be the
weaker of the sexes (381). This remark is met with a
mixture of laughter and groans. Other attempts at "humor"
abound in this discussion of a society of genocide,
legitimized slavery of women, and totalitarian abuse of
human rights. The tone of Pieixoto’s talk is an odd mixture
of amusement and admiration. One would imagine that the
women in the audience must be squirming in their seats to
hear this society’s exploits discussed in such a gender-
biased manner.

Applause greets his refusal to condemn the outrageous
behavior of the Republic. He suggests "we must be cautious
about passing judgment upon the Gileadeans. . . . Gileadean
society was under a good deal of pressure, demographic and
otherwise, and was subject to factors from which we
ourselves are happily more free" (383). Should someone
present such a rationale for the atrocities of Nazi Germany,
from which Gilead borrowed certain tactics, the listeners
would be appalled. Pieixoto continues by praising Gilead
for "its genius" of synthesizing repressive means from other
historical governmental bodies (389). He cites Judd’s
opinion "that the best and most cost-effective way to
control women for reproductive purposes was through women
themselves" and Waterford’s notion "that the Aunts should

take names derived from commercial products available too

212
women in the immediate pre-Gilead period," and then
concludes with admiration in his voice: "It was a brilliant
stroke, and confirms us in our opinion that Waterford [who
they suspect was Offred’s Commander] was, in his prime, a
man of considerable ingenuity. So, in his own way, was
Judd" (391). This is like speaking of the ingenuity of
Goebbels or the brilliance of Goering. But the listeners
tolerate it from this man.

Pieixoto reserves his criticism not for this
totalitarian regime, but rather for flaws in the form of
Offred’s narrative. He sneeringly mentions the "whiff of
emotion recollected" found in the story and complains about
the gaps in historical knowledge which remain due to
Offred’s failure to report statistics and details.

Some of them could have been filled by our
anonymous author, had she had a different turn of
mind. She could have told us much about the
workings of the Gileadean empire had she the
instincts fo a reporter or a spy. What we would
not give, now, for even twenty pages or so of
print-out from Waterford’s private computer!
However, we must be grateful for any crumbs the
Goddess of History has designed to vouchsafe us.
(393)

Pieixoto and, it seems, the bulk of the seminar
participants have very little sympathy for what the narrator
went through in order to fashion a narrative of any kind.
They are interested in history, not he; story. Her attempts
to sustain herself through telling her story are of
inconsequential notice to these "readers." They wish that

her artifact had rather sustained Gileag through carefully

preserved documents and news accounts.

213
Unfortunately, and this is the greatest irony of

Atwood’s tapestry of irony, these are not the listeners
Offred had hoped to reach. Her suffering falls on
unsympathetic ears. Pieixoto’s reaction to her narrative is
similar to the way Richard Wright and other reviewers
responded to the text of Their Eyes Wepe Wetehing Gog in
1937, forcing it to remain invisible to reader’s eyes until
rescued by Hemenway and Alice Walker in the 1970s. Atwood’s
"Historical Notes" serve as a coda of criticism against an
academic establishment whose consistent posture is to
denigrate a woman’s personal narrative as inferior. A
narrative depicting woman’s attempts to survive in a hostile
and alien environment is deemed self-indulgent and
insufficiently intellectual. (A critical stance of this
sort similarly faults Anne Frank’s narrative for a failure
to faithfully render history.) Perhaps Atwood, at least,
reaches a more receptive readership for her tale about the
self-creation imminent in personal narrative than these
critics who attempt to usurp her voice (as the Brotherhood
supplanted the invisible man’s). Atwood crafted Pieixoto’s
comments in order that the reader would read between the

lines and see the hidden agenda.

Three other women’s works which address the sustaining power
of telling the story are Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s "The
Yellow Wallpaper," Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, and
Maxine Hong Kingston’s The_flenen_fle;;ie1. Gilman’s short

214

work and Morrison’s first novel, like Atwood’s tale,
conclude pessimistically. Both Pecola, the central
character of The fileesp Eye, and the unnamed narrator of
"The Yellow Wallpaper," end up, not with expressive voices
and realized identities, but in madness and silence.
Kingston’s work, an autobiographical narrative rather than
fiction, concludes on a more hopeful note, as the Asian-
American narrator begins to fashion her own ending to the
stories she has heard throughout her childhood and is
finally able to bridge the two cultures of China and the
United States through a facility in both of her languages.
Like es W e Watching God and The handmaig’s
Tele, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 short story, "The
Yellow Wallpaper," comparably depicts the special position
the writing process merits in a woman’s attempts to overcome
stereotypical behavioral roles. Gilman’s nameless narrator
has married a practical man, "a physician of high standing,"
who does not believe his wife is ill. Her brother, also a
doctor, concurs with John’s diagnosis that the narrator’s
affliction is nothing "but temporary nervous depression--a
slight hysterical tendency" (10). They believe that what is
best for her condition--something they are obviously unable
to fathom or diagnose with any precision--are "tonics, and
journeys, and air, and exercise," but she is "absolutely
forbidden to ’work’" (10). The work in which she wishes to
engage is the activity of writing, which she believes would

do her some good. Although she disagrees with their

215

proscription, she is powerless in the face of these
authoritive men. Husband John’s rationalism refutes her
symptoms and negates her voice.

Her narrative is fragmented, as is her psyche, because,
in order to write the story, she, like Offred, must do so
covertly. As she admits at the outset, "I did write for a
while in spite of them; but it eeee exhaust me a good deal--
having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy
opposition" (10). Each furtive attempt to write is
interrupted whenever she hears the sound of her husband’s,
brother’s, sister’s, or housekeeper’s approaching footsteps
on the stairs. Thwarted in her endeavor to form narrative,
she is forced by the clandestine nature of her writing
activity to conceal the written product, and hence her
emerging self, from view. Her writing must remain hidden
from all eyes in the same way that her real self must
continue to be invisible to them.

Her husband distrusts her perceptions, feelings, ideas,
and thoughts. When she surrenders to a feeling--something
beyond the realm of intellect and reasoning--John demands
that she exert "proper self-control" (11): John "says that
with my imaginative power and habit of story-making, a
nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of
excited fancies, and that I ought to use my will and good
sense to check the tendency. So I try" (15-16). Although
she attempts to control--to repress, in other words--

herself, the exertion, like writing on the sly, tires her.

216

Her feeling, thoughts, and ideas must remain confined if she
is to win John’s approval.

Like Offred’s stealth in telling her story on cassette
tapes, the narrator’s necessary surreptitiousness hinders
her efforts to pattern her disrupted narrative fragments
into a cohesive unit. The furtive figure she gradually
discovers in the yellow wallpaper, the pattern of which
initially alluded her, begins to become more real to her
than herself and the "real" world her husband lives in. In
fact, the woman trapped in paper is the self, the written
self, she suppresses and hides from view.2 Not allowed to
pattern her narrative, she becomes determined to "follow
that pointless pattern" in the wallpaper "to some sort of
conclusion" (19). Discerning two patterns in the wallpaper,
a front and a back, she discovers that the foremost one
moves because the "woman behind shakes it" (30).

She’s uncertain whether or not the woman confined
behind this pattern is alone: "Sometimes I think there are
a great many women behind" (30). This indicates her
suspicions that "a great many women" suffer confinement
similar to her own. Of this much she is definite--the one
she sees crawling about, shaking the pattern, is trying to
escape, but she gets caught in the pattern’s strangling
shape (30). Finally rid of her husband--out of town for the
evening--and the servants, the narrator continues her own
creeping along the floor until her reflected self escapes

the confines of the wallpaper. As indicated by the self in

217
the wall paper, her writing begins, in spite of its
fragmentary nature and her own confinement, to betray the
hint of an emerging pattern.

The inconclusive ending--the woman’s creeping along the
wall, even over the body of her fainted husband--suggests
that this woman, engaged in this seemingly bizarre behavior,
would likely be incarcerated as insane by her practical
husband. As suppressed as Janie’s self once was by Joe
Starks controlling "big voice," the narrator’s self,
suddenly spilling out in this conceived split of herself
into two identities, can only be construed by John as
insanity. Her final statement--"’I’ve got out at last,’
said I, ’in spite of you [her husband] and Jane’" (36)--
suggests that the woman in the pattern is the "I" of this
statement and Jane is the woman--the other self--who,
although furtively writing these fragments, shares, like the
invisible mutes Bromden and the invisible man, complicity in
her own suppression.3

While this escape of the "other" Jane from the
boundaries in which the male world confines her may indicate
the liberating power of language, she is unable to elude
that world itself which persists in its denial of both a
woman’s voice and her autonomous identity. Her husband, who
in his stifling "love" would never allow her to "stir
without special direction" (12), would likely respond to her
uncondoned behavior--when he wakes from his faint--with the

remedy that she must be controlled, since she is so

218
obviously unable to control herself. She has tried, by the
only means at her disposal, to form a self and outwit her
captors. Sadly, the society which honors her discarded self
and falls in a faint at the sight of the emerging self-
created woman will likely incarcerate and keep hidden this
"madwoman."4
Pecola similarly splits into two fragmented

personalities at the end of Morrison’s The hlnesh Eye and
spends the rest of her days in withdrawn madness. A young
black girl growing up in the 19405, Pecola searches in vain
for an adequate role model. Her family, the ironically
named Breedloves, are "poor and black" and live in a
storefront "because they believed they were ugly" (34). The
narrator explains the way Pecola used this ugliness: "She
hid behind hers. Concealed, veiled, eclipsed--peeping out
from behind the shroud very seldom, and then only to yearn
for the return of her mask" (31). An example of an
invisibility beyond her powers occurs when she goes to the
store for candy and the white man behind the counter "does
not see her, because for him there is nothing to see" (42).
She sees in his blue eyes the "total absence of human
recognition" and know this is not an isolated incident:

She has seen it lurking in the eyes of all white

people. So. The distaste must be for her, her

blackness . . . . And it is the blackness that

accounts for, that creates, the vacuum edged with

distaste in white eyes. (42).

She feels destined to exist and not be seen by others

because of her blackness and believed ugliness. "As long as

219

she looked the way she did, as long as she was ugly, she
would have to stay with these people," the Breedloves (39).

Like Bromden’s decision to stay invisible and mute in
response to his treatment by others, Pecola tries to make
herself disappear, but her efforts are in vain: "Try as she
might, she could never get her eyes to disappear" (39). In
light of her failure, she longs to replace her dark eyes
with Shirley Temple blue eyes, tokens she believes will earn
love for her, something the Breedloves’ brutal home sorely
lacks. She thinks that "if those eyes of hers were
different, . . . she herself would be different," and "[i]f
she looked different, beautiful, maybe [her father] Cholly
would be different, and [her mother] Mrs. Breedlove too"
(40). So every night "she prayed for blue eyes" and held
firm to "the binding conviction that only a miracle could
relieve her" (40).

Mrs. Breedlove shows more affection toward the blond,
blue-eyed child of the white people for whom she works than
toward her own daughter. Pecola’s father demonstrates his
twisted sense of love and anguish by raping Pecola twice.
Indeed, the abuses heaped upon her coerce her to believe in
a miracle of blue eyes, when Soaphead Church, the
maladjusted, self-proclaimed spiritualist, confuses Pecola
(and himself) into believing that her eyes have turned blue.
This "miracle" occurs immediately after Cholly’s rape and is
itself followed by Pecola’s split into two personalities.

Her fervent belief in her ugliness and invisibility leads to

220

her desire for blue eyes and beauty for which she must
suffer unbearable costs. She thought her different self
would earn friends and love and respect. Instead, pregnant
with her father’s child, she wanders through town, muttering
to herself, as if the brown-eyed Pecola remains the only
friend of the blue-eyed. "The damage done was total. She
spent her days . . . walking up and down, her head jerking
to the beat of a drummer only she could hear" (158).
Pecola’s story is told by her childhood friend,
Claudia, who presents information about the Breedloves
through a third-person narrative in fragments ironically
juxtaposed with pieces of the Dick and Jane basal reader,
these pieces also broken down into meaningless units. For
example, the portion which reads
HEREISHTHEFAMILYMOTHERFATHER
DICKANDJANETHEYLIVEINTHEGREE
NANDWHITEHOUSETHEYAREVERYH (34)
heads the chapter which reveals how unlike the false image
of the Dick and Jane family the Breedloves are. Meanwhile,
the sections which chronicle the life of Claudia’s family,
the MacTeers, are written in a more immediate first-person
voice, which reflects both personal involvement and the
distance of time, the language of both the participant and
the spectator.
The act of writing and the artifact which results--
Claudia’s narrative--indicate Claudia’s survival on this
wasteland where neither the marigold seeds planted in the

earth nor Cholly’s seed planted in Pecola’s womb endures.

221

Claudia’s telling of the tale manages to sustain the memory
of Pecola who was unable, in the end, to sustain herself.
Moreover, Claudia’s narrative indicates the survival of at
least one black girl from Lorain, Ohio. Her writing allows
her to make some sense of her past as she struggles to
understand her own complicity in the destruction of Pecola’s
mind. She concludes the novel:
I even think now that the land of the entire
country was hostile to marigolds [and black girls]
that year [1941]. This soil is bad for certain
kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not
nurture, certain fruit it will not bear, an when
the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce
and say the victim has no right to live. We are
wrong, of course, but it doesn’t matter. It’s too
late. At least on my edge of town, among the
garbage and the sunflowers of my town, it’s much,
much, much too late. (160)

Too late indeed for Pecola, but not for Claudia, who writes
in order to understand why, "[h]et since why is gifficulp ho
heneleI ene nus; pehe :efuge in how" (9; emphasis is the

author’s).

Maxine Hong Kingston’s memoir of survival, The Woman
fleenien, reveals similar difficulties which gender and race
pose against a woman’s attaining autonomy. Devalued in the
Chinese culture solely because of her sex, the narrator
grows up in a psychological environment shaped by repeated
maxims from her ancestral homeland which depict the role of
women from the Chinese point of view: "Girls are maggots in
the rice" and "When you raise girls, you’re raising children
for strangers" (51, 54). A Chinese family yearns for male

offspring. Males are honored, may own property, and take

222

wives and dowries, while females are a burden to their
families, mere worthless mouths to feed. "There is a
Chinese word for the female T--which is ’slave’" (56) To
the narrator, it seems the only hope left for a Chinese girl
is marriage or slavery. The latter is tantamount to the
former.

Her mother told her she "would grow up a wife and a
slave, but she taught me the song of the warrior woman, Fa
Mu Lan" (24). As her mother would "talk-story" each
evening, Kingston would drift off to sleep, unaware "where
the stories left off and the dreams began" (24). Rebellious
even as a child, she transformed herself in her fantasy into
Fa Mu Lan--"the girl who took her father’s place in battle"
(24). Trained as a warrior and swordswoman, the narrator
pictures herself fighting for the honor of her family in
ways closed to mere girls. In order to accomplish her many
deeds, this swordswoman must disguise herself as a man and
never reveal her true identity, for "Chinese executed women,
who disguised themselves as soldiers or students, no matter
how bravely they fought or how high they scored on the
examinations" (46).

In the "White Tigers" chapter which presents the
exploits of the narrating Fa Mu Lan, her parents, in
preparation for her entry into battle, "carve revenge" in
the form of "oaths and names" on her back (41). At the
conclusion of this chapter, the narrator admits the

similarity she shares with the warrior woman, for they both

223

have words on their backs. For the warrior, the words are
unseen, hidden, yet potent. They may be used as tools of
revenge. "The idioms," the narrator says,
for revenge are ’report a crime" and "report to
five families." The reporting is the vengeance--
not the beheading, not the gutting, but the words.
And I have so many words--"chink" words and "gook"
words too--that they do not fit on my skin. (63)
Like the woman warrior, she too has an unknown or foreign
language on her back--English. To survive and triumph, she
needs to learn to use it. The writing of the memoir, in
reporting the adventures of a young woman, makes her not a
swordswoman, but a wordswoman. Armed with language, she
becomes a potent force against those who would keep women
silent, confined to traditional roles.

Her brief first chapter--"No Name Woman"--demonstrates
this power of language. As a warning to her daughter who is
menstruating for the first time, the narrator’s mother told
her of a disgraced aunt who, pregnant by a man other than
her husband, jumped with her newborn baby into a well to
certain death. The family pretends that this woman never
existed, and Mother’s warning is clear: "’Don’t humiliate
us. You wouldn’t like to be forgotten as if you had never
been born’" (5).

However, the narrator responds to this "lesson" in ways
her mother never intended. She reads between the lines and
wonders why the woman was a disgrace, while the male who

seduced her was not. She feels that the woman’s husband--

who had been in America for two years while his wife stayed

224

in China with the family--should also have received some
blame for this tragedy. The narrator’s reading of this
fable turns it into a feminist lesson for growing up female
in a male-dominated world. Her chapter brings into view
this woman ancestor whom her family had rendered invisible,
erased from memory. Her writing, while unable to give the
aunt a name, rescues her from invisibility and transforms
her from a victim to a strong, sympathetic character, who
sacrifices herself for love and thereby protects her male
lover. Similarly, The_flenen_flerrier renders Kingston
visible.

The narrator similarly misinterprets another action of
her mother, but this time to her own disadvantage. When she
was an infant, her mother cut the frenum of her tongue. The
narrator has mixed feelings about this act:

Sometimes I felt very proud that my mother

committed such a powerful act upon me. At other

times I was terrified--the first thing my mother

did when she saw me was to cut my tongue. (190).
Her mother later informs her that the reason for the
loosening of the tongue was to make it easier for her to
speak English and "’to make you talk more, not less’" (235).
But the narrator seems to see this act as a violence in
keeping with the subjugation of women, tantamount to binding
the feet of a seven year old daughter.

This belief coupled with the uncomfortableness of being
Chinese in an American classroom led to her own loss of

voice. "When I went to kindergarten and had to speak

English for the first time, I became silent" (191). She

225

would speak Chinese at home, to her Chinese friends, and at
Chinese school; in American school, she would read aloud in
class "because we did not have to make up what to say"
(193), but beyond that she remained silent. After she
learned that "American-Chinese girls had to whisper to make
ourselves American-feminine" (200), she "found some voice,
however faltering" (200).

However, when a quiet friend of hers manages to remain
silent for twelve years, the narrator, in an ironic and
frightening reversal, verbally and physically assaults this
girl in the school lavatory, screaming at her to talk and to
quit playing dumb. She uses her language as a weapon, as a
tool of vengeance, as if she’s talking to her old silent
self as well as making up for the violence her mother
brought against her by cutting her frenum. She pulls the
girl’s hair, calls her stupid and dumb, tells the girl she’s
doing these things to her for her own good, pinches her
face, and tries to reason with her. After the girl’s sister
interrupts them, the narrator continues to advise, "’Your
family really ought to force her to speak’" (211). The
narrator pays for her assault by spending "the next eighteen
months sick in bed with a mysterious illness" (211). And
when her mother finally sends her off to school, she must
learn the "American-feminine" schoolgirl language all over
again.5

Kingston’s autobiography demonstrates the importance of

storytelling both through her mother’s talk-story--the

226

perpetual storytelling occurring in the home--and in
Kingston’s own efforts to shape and order the events of her
life. Although the label of "autobiography" attached to the
book indicates that Kingston is the "I" of the story, she
remains nameless in the book, for there she is in the
process of searching for an identity. She admits to her
inability to know whether or not the stories her mother
tells are truth, and her own book straddles the line between
fiction and nonfiction as well. What matters most is that
she manages to use the language in which she was formerly
reticent to speak and concludes her book by fashioning her
own ending to one of her mother’s stories.

Jane, Offred, Claudia, and Maxine Hong Kingston
struggle to shape and sustain themselves and others through
their first-person narratives.6 Jane is correct in fearing
that her efforts will "be misconstrued" (35). Offred
manages to reach a listener of sorts for her "telling" of
her story, but unfortunately the ordering of her fragments
remains in the hands of Professors Wade and Pieixoto and
their unsympathetic "guesswork." Claudia survives, but
Pecola, sadly, never gains either a voice or an identity.
Claudia at least helps to sustain Pecola in memory, just as
Kingston keeps her aunt’s memory and some of the talk-story
of her mother alive and Offred keeps Luke, her daughter, and

Moira alive.

Another unnamed narrator suffers a loss of voice as Kingston

227
had in Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird. This young boy’s
family, fearing for his fate in Nazi Germany, send him from
the city to a distant small city where they feel he will be
safe from harm. His caretaker dies soon thereafter and what
follows is a series of horrifying episodes as the boy
wanders Eastern Europe, tossed from one savage experience to
another. Because he is olive-skinned, dark-haired, and
black-eyed, he is shunned as a Gypsy, "whose place," in the
eyes of the Nazis, like that of the Jews, "was in ghettos
and extermination camps" (2).
His situation as a displaced and unwanted child--an
invisible state--and his dehumanizing experience culminate
in his losing of the ability to speak: "I tried to cry out,
but my tongue flapped helplessly in my open mouth. I had no
voice" (125). Perhaps his sheer terror at witnessing so
many unspeakable acts--this is, indeed, a terrifying book--
explains this sudden vocal impotence. His voicelessness is
soon followed by his believing, like the invisible man, in
his own worthlessness.
I realized why God would not listen to my prayers,
why I was hung from hooks, why Garbos beat me, why
I lost my speech. I was black. My hair and eyes
were as black as these Kalmuks’. [The Kalmuks
openly rape the village women on horseback,
passing them from horse to horse.] Evidently I
belonged with them in another world. Their could
be no mercy for such as me. Some dreadful Devil
had sentenced me to have black hair and black eyes
in common with this horde of savages. (160).

He believes himself irredeemably doomed to evilness because

his appearance has more in common with these savage brutes

than with the blond, blue-eyed villagers.

228
This young boy acquires an impressive insight into the

way oppression works when he realizes that the power of
those he calls "The Evil Ones" resides not merely in their
"powerful passion for hatred, greed, revenge, or torture"
but in their cleverness in channeling self-hatred to their
own designs: "The Evil Ones surely picked only those who
had already displayed a sufficient supply of inner hatred
and maliciousness" (136). What makes their cruelty even
more "ingenious" (to borrow a term from Professor Pieixoto)
is their ability to force others to act maliciously among
themselves: "[S]imply beating up an innocent man was worth
less than inciting him to hate others. But hatreds of large
groups of people must have been the most valuable of all"
(136). Thus a seven-year-old boy comes to understand the
power of Nazism.

In spite of the acuteness of his insights, he believes
in his own evilness, eventually derailing a train for fun
and defying death by lying on the railroad tracks while a
train speeds over his inert body for entertainment.
Eventually his voice--like Kosinski’s--returns during a
skiing accident years later. But the shaping of the novel,
the utterance of his own experience, indicates, again, the
self-creating power of narrative. The existence of the text
suggests the narrator’s ability to overcome the acceptance
of the stereotype of the evil of those with dark skin and
eyes.

Kosinski’s exploration of the potency of stereotypical

229
image-making takes quite a different turn in his later
novella, heing_There. In this book, the well-dressed and
white character of Chance projects an image which is well-
received by others in spite of his illiteracy, inexperience,
and lack of knowledge. His fortunate reception is, in large
part, because of the power of the television industry to
convert people into images completely divorced from their
true identities.

Morrison and Ellison write, briefly, about the adverse
power of the motion picture industry to influence self-
identity. The invisible man attends movies where he
identifies with the white cowboys instead of the Indians
(167); Pecola desperately desires those Shirley Temple blue
eyes; and Mrs. Breedlove, after she and Cholly had come
north to Lorain, began attending movies, where "she
succumbed to her earlier dreams" of "romantic love" and
"physical beauty"--"[p]robab1y the most destructive ideas in
the history of human thought" (97).

While attending a movie featuring Jean Harlow and Clark
Gable, with her hair fixed up like Harlow’s, Mrs. Breedlove
lost her tooth. Claudia’s narrative commentary transforms
this rotten tooth into a metaphor for the Breedlove
marriage:

But there must have been a speck, a brown speck
easily mistaken for food but which did not leave,
which sat on the enamel for months, and grew,
until it cut into the surface and then to the
brown putty underneath, finally eating away to the
root, but avoiding the nerves, so its presence was

not noticeable or uncomfortable. Then the
weakened roots, having grown accustomed to the

230

poison, responded one day to severe pressure,a nd

the tooth fell free, leaving a ragged stump

behind. But even before the little brown speck,

there must have been the conditions, the setting

that would allow it to exist in the first place.

(92-93).
For all Mrs. Breedlove’s notions of romantic love, her own
marriage is like a festering sore, a tooth rotting from the
inside out. The conditions that will lead to her and
Cholly’s relationship becoming a brutal battleground of
insults and physical attacks and to his twice raping Pecola
existed all along, even during these more pleasant times
when she was pregnant and she and Cholly were getting along
well.

The Breedloves might seem to be a healthy family at
this time in the novel but are in fact breeding within the
core of their relationship a festering wound which will
swallow them in violence. Similarly the images Hollywood
depicts of romantic love or of the simplistic notions of
cowboys and Indians equalling good guys versus bad guys are
unremittingly false surface images which mask the reality
beneath them. Hollywood deals in extrinsic, not intrinsic,
values which present a distorted view the world and people’s
possibilities. Pecola, Mrs. Breedlove, and the invisible
man get swept up by these images of beauty and justice, but
their belief in them indicates a sickness within them. The
invisible man’s identification with the cowboys, Pecola’s
desire to be Shirley Temple, and Mrs. Breedlove’s selection

of a Harlow-like hair style indicate their belief in the

notion of white as right. Even Bromden sometimes wonders if

231

he should be like the Indians portrayed on television.

In fact, movies and television shows hold up pictures
to most people of what they cannot be--white or male or
included in the social structure--as models. This notion of
the false surface quality of media images is explored in the
last of the works I want to discuss here, Jerzy Kosinski’s
heing_There. This novel addresses the ways in which
American society overlooks the interior, intrinsic values of
people, and instead settles for images and mere surfaces.

The mentally and socially deficient Chance, hidden from
view and confined in the Old Man’s home for many years, is
suddenly thrust into the world of the living. His education
consisted of training in gardening and watching the images
on his television. He knows very little else. Fortunately,
he is able to wear the Old Man’s expensive wardrobe which
luckily has come back in style. His physical appearance--
and it is important to remember that he is a white male--
along with the lessons he has learned from his many years of
watching television--which include maintaining eye contact
and repeating fragments of the statements of others in order
to show interest--make him--quite by chance--acceptable,
even admirable, in the very world that would be hostile to
any of the other characters previously discussed.

The Old Man informed him many years before that

[w]hile some could learn to read and write, Chance
would never be able to manage this. Nor would he
ever be able to understand much of what others
were saying to him or around him. . . . Although

his mother had been very pretty, her mind had been
as damaged as his: the soft soil of his brain,

232

the ground from which all his thoughts shot up,

had been ruined forever. . . . Chance would do

exactly what he was told or else he would be sent

to a special home for the insane where, the Old

Man said, he would be locked in a cell and

forgotten (7).
Although this information is couched in the third person
narrative, the omniscient narrator seems not to be merely
stating the facts but restating the message of the Old Man.
Whether Chance is really brain damaged remains in question,
just as the Old Man’s housing Chance but failing to keep
records on him does. The narrator hints that the Old Man is
actually Chance’s father, who bore him by a mistress and who
took over his upbringing, but determined to keep him hidden
and submissive. The threat of incarceration in a mental
institution and treating Chance as a mentally defective
child--regardless of his true capabilities--serve as
adequate means of rendering him a docile, unambitious, and
agreeable character.

By a rapid series of chance events, Chance is thrust
into the public eye, rumored to be a confidant of both the
influential Benjamin Rand and the President of the United
States. When Chance--newly christened Chauncey Gardiner
through a mishearing of his name--appears on television,
Kosinski offers one of his most virulent attacks on
television and the American public.

The people who watched him on their sets did not
know who actually faced them; how could they, if
they had never met him? Television reflected only
people’s surfaces; it also kept peeling their
images from their bodies until they were sucked

into the caverns of their viewers’ eyes, forever
beyond retrieval, to disappear. . . . Chance

233

became only an image for millions of real people.

They would never know how real he was, since his

thinking could not be televised. (54)
In a culture in which images, like those projected on
television screens across America and the world, take
preeminence over substance; where the images disappear "into
the caverns of their viewers’ eyes," Chance becomes--because
of his good looks, docile politeness, and amiable
agreeability--all things to all people. From the Russian
Ambassador, who believes Chance can read his native
language, to the President of the United States, who hears
in Chance’s literal comments about gardens, metaphoric
analyses of the economy, Chance’s many viewers, whether on
television or in person, invest him with the qualities they
desire him to possess.

When the KGB officers determine that Chance is a "blank
page" they don’t realize how accurately this description
fits him. They decide that his lack of a recorded past
indicates his participation in some sort of political
movement. This merely offers more proof that he is a blank
page which everyone he encounters or who sees him is able to
fill with what they imagine, need, desire, or hope him to
be.

When the novel concludes, Chance is about to become a
running mate of some important figure. The specific post he
would be running for is unclear; it could be lieutenant
governor or conceivably vice president. His greatest

quality as a politician seems to be his lack of background.

 

234

In light of recent revelations of candidates’ pasts which
have cost them their political roles, Kosinski’s cautionary
fable continues to be pertinent nearly twenty years after
its first publication.

Although the novel may seem markedly different from
those previously examined, Chance’s situation has
similarities with those of the other invisibles in that his
image and his name are not of his own creation. His words
as well are not his own for they are misconstrued and
appropriated. However, while the other characters have had
their images and voices appropriated or denied them in ways
that cost them entry into the predominant culture, the
similar superimposition of meaning to Chance’s words and the
charismatic value of his image earn him acceptance--indeed
enlistment--into the mainstream. In an ironic, mind-
boggling twist, this uneducated, illiterate television
viewer becomes an international hero, while these other
intelligent, motivated characters are relegated to the

fringes of the social structure.

However unsettling and disheartening the imposed
invisibility and mutedness of these characters may be, the
way out of these shared dilemmas is clearly delineated. As
demonstrated in most of these works, the means of
effectively creating autonomous, conscious, integrated
selves rests in the process of discovery and reflection

afforded through language, both spoken and written. As

235
Britton notes, "language is a highly organized, systematic
means of representing experience, and as such it assists us
to organize all other ways of representing" (21). When
deprived of this method of creating (articulating) a self
and a sense of the world, the likely result, as seen in "The
Yellow Wallpaper" and in Pecola’s experiences in The_hlneer
Eye, is the madness of a divided and confused self. Without
language facility, human beings lack the communion with
others, with their cultures, and their pasts which is
necessary to survive and succeed in this world.

In presenting this study, I have meant to show, in
part, the ways in which the lives and actions of these
characters intersect with the thoughts of Britton, Church,
Harding, and others on the vital importance of language in
gaining identity and voice. Obviously, these various
authors--of both fiction and theory--concur in their belief
in the patterning power of language, and their conviction
has importance for education as well as for literature.

In the classroom, whatever the subject being taught,
students people need abundant practice in the ordering power
of language in order to make meaning and to render the new
information they receive meaningful. As C. H. Knoblauch and
Lil Brannon observe,

Discourse enacts the world: its knowledge is not
"about" the world but is rather constitutive of
the world, the substance of experience, an
explanation for the self. Discourse represents,
not an accumulating of facts or even of arguments,
though it encompasses these. Essentially, it

represents the contexts of meaningfulness that
human beings create for themselves and inhabit.

236

Because discourse is manifold, the experiences it
generates, the world it articulates, are manifold
as well. And because it is a process, it
represents growth of mind, the expanding of
imagination and the maturing of intellect. (60)
Students who are denied full participation in the process of
making meaning through discourse, who are allowed to remain
mute ciphers or required to conform their discourse to
acceptable formulaic exercises, may leave school with a
distorted view of the world, ill-equipped to order their
experiences into meaningful, mature lives. Hence, Ann
Berthoff’s call for "a method of teaching that recognizes
human need and ability to shape, discriminate, select: the
mind’s power to form" (29).
Knoblauch and Brannon address further this issue of
conformity when they complain that
[eriting is often taught as though it were a
mechanical act of selecting prefabricated forms
for preconceived content; as though it were
nothing but a range of technical skills to be
delivered by masters to apprentices through
lecture, then memorized and practiced until
proficiency is achieved; as though human beings
lack verbal competence until teachers provide them
with it; as though the surface decorum of texts
were more valuable than quality of thought; indeed
even as though decorum were equivalent to
intellectual quality. (4)
On the one hand, this training of apprentices by masters
sounds quite like the invisible man’s training in the
scientific rationalism of the Brotherhood. Although his
eviction speech demonstrated his innate verbal skills, the
brothers were concerned with the decorum of his discourse
more than the content and power inherent in it. On the

other hand, this concern with the surface qualities rather

237
than the intrinsic value of discourse seems quite similar to
the stereotypical prejudgment each of these "indecorous"
characters faced as a result of their racial and/or gender
traits. Their substance overlooked, they struggled, at
first, to form themselves in the images dictated by their
"masters."
Fostering diversity--of individuals and their
discourse--should be the goal of education. Forms devoid of
substance, like images empty of meaningfulness, are
purposeless. Education of ell students requires the active
encouragement of their developing facility with language,
through assignments that allow them ample opportunity to
fashion their world by
writing about things that matter, writing to make
sense out of experience, writing to discover new
knowledge, writing to reach ethical judgments,
writing to examine the problems and complexities
of the world, writing in response to meaningful
reading. (Knoblauch and Brannon 167)

Only by advocating such growth will teachers equip students

with the tools necessary to overcome their invisibilities,

find their voices, and shape their lives.

The examples of Janie, the invisible man, Bromden,
Tayo, Offred, Claudia, Kingston, and Kosinski’s narrator
provide a literary model for the way extensive language
experience empowers students with the materials required for
forming authentic selves. Through much intense and fitful
struggle with the making of meaning, students, too, may

compose eloquent, meaningful, and self-sustaining discourse

of their own design.

238

NOTES

1 Other hypocritical stances taken by the Republic of
Gilead include outlawing abortion while allowing the
"shredding" of so-called Unbabies; espoused fundamentalist
belief in every word in the Bible, yet amending passages
(e.g., adding "Blessed are the silent" to the Sermon on the
Mount) when is fits the social aims of the society; and
ostensibly outlawing all forms of adultery, but allowing
state sanctioned houses of prostitution for Commanders and
others of the elite. Handmaids whose Commanders fail to
impregnate them may turn to Doctors for illicit intercourse
in hopes of bearing children and remaining in the household.
In the scene in which the Handmaids discuss this
possibility, Atwood portrays the clandestine nature of such
activity in images and tones of secrecy reminiscent of
obtaining a back-alley abortion.

Annette Kolodny similarly asserts that depriving the
narrator of the "linguistically-based interpretive
strategies" of reading and writing leads her "to experience
herself as a text which can neither get read nor recorded"
(457)

3 Elaine R. Hedges, in a footnote to her Afterword to
Gilman’s story suggests that this lone occurrence of the
name "Jane" could "conceivably be a printer’s error," or "it
could be that Gilman is referring here to the narrator
herself, to the narrator’s sense that she has gotten free of
both her husband and her "Jane" self: free, that is, of
herself as defined by marriage and society" (63).

Kolodny comments on the failure of male readers to
properly read Gilman’s text which in turn portrays a woman
discovering (and reading) her own "text" in the pattern of
the wallpaper (455-59). This misreading by men of a woman’s
text--often deemed hysterical rather than historical--
explains the difficulties Gilman experienced trying to
publish her story and the obstacles Offred’s narrative faces
in Atgood’s "Historical Notes."

A more thorough analysis of Kingston’s novel and the
issues of muteness and invisibility appears in Rubenstein.
See egpecially 164-189.

Although not discussed here, Alice Walker’s
epistolary novel, The eolor Purple, also presents a female
narrator who sustains herself and other through writing.
Celie’s process of writing her letters to God and to her
sister gives order and meaning to her own life and keeps her
sister, who she hasn’t heard from in years, alive in her
thoughts.

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