Sandra K. Friday
Who is more invisible than Ralph Ellison’s invisible man in his novel by that same title published in 1952? It is fitting that Elizabeth Catlett’s sculpture to Ralph Ellison installed in 2001, on Riverside Drive and 150th Street in Manhattan, where he lived for forty years, is a twelve-foot high bronze monolith with the profile of Ellison cut out of the center. One can stand on Riverside Drive and look up 150th Street, right through Ralph Ellison, as he strides downtown. One must know his highly acclaimed and equally criticized, semi-autobiographical novel,
The Invisible Man
, to comprehend the gravity of Catlett’s sculpture. Two paragraphs in his Prologue express the essence of what it meant to Ellison to be a black man in the first half of the 20th Century in America.
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. . . That invisibility to which I refer occurs because of a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those with whom I come in contact. A matter of the construction of their inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality. . . . It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves. Then too, you’re constantly being bumped against by those of poor vision. Or again, you often doubt if you really exist.
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. . . It’s when you feel like this that, out of resentment, you begin to bump people back. And let me confess, you feel that way most of the time. You ache with the need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world, that you’re a part of all the sound and anguish, and you strike out with your fists, you curse and you swear to make them recognize you. And, alas, it is seldom successful.
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One night I accidentally bumped into a man, and perhaps because of the near darkness, he saw me and called me an insulting name. I sprang at him, seized his coat lapels and demanded that he apologize. He was a tall blonde man, and as my face came close to his he looked insolently out of his blue eyes and cursed me, his breath hot in my face as he struggled. I pulled his chin down sharp upon the crown of his head, butting him as I had seen the West Indians do, and felt his flesh tear and the blood gush out, and I yelled, “Apologize! Apologize!” But he continued to curse and struggle, and I butted him again and again until he went down heavily, on his knees, profusely bleeding. I kicked him repeatedly in a frenzy because he still uttered insults through his lips which were frothy with blood. . . . And in my outrage I got out my knife and prepared to slit his throat, right there beneath the lamplight in the deserted street. . . when it occurred to me that the man had not
seen
me, actually; that he, as far as he knew, was in the midst of a walking nightmare! And I stopped the blade, slicing the air as I pushed him away, letting him fall back to the street. . . . It unnerved me. I was both disgusted and ashamed. . . . Then I was amused: Something in this man’s thick head had sprung out and beaten him within an inch of his life. . . . I ran away into the dark, laughing so hard I feared I might rupture myself. The next day I saw his picture in the
Daily News
, beneath a caption stating that he had been “mugged.” Poor fool, poor blind fool, I thought with sincere compassion, mugged by an invisible man! 3
There is considerable evidence that what it means to be a Black man in the
second
half of the 20th Century and indeed into the 21st is not so different from Ellison’s account. These two paragraphs have in them the basic elements of a short story: a plot, a conflict, a character who changes or grows in understanding, and a lesson or universal theme. In fact it is rich with these elements. (See Lesson plan # 1.)
Native Americans marginalized in their own land
The Native American is not just invisible in the eye of the political, social, and economic beholder - - white, patriarchal America; the Native American and his/her culture has been greatly diminished in the land, as the result of systematic and institutionalized racism. The poem
Without Title: for my Father who lived without
ceremony
by Diane Glancy whose father is part Cherokee manifests the dichotomy between the Native American whose broken spirit longs for the buffalo hunt in the wild, while he toils daily in a city meat packing plant so he can provide for his family. Juxtaposing the buffalo with the stockyard cattle, and the aerial on his old car with the bowstring are powerful images of a man who has surrendered the ways of his people. She wraps up this lament with:
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I remember the silence of his lost power,
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The red buffalo painted on his chest.
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Oh, I couldn’t see it
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But it was there, and in the night I heard
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His buffalo grunts like a snore.4
Visual art remains even when Native Americans have left the land
Two pieces of visual art come to mind that represent the Native American culture on the edge of eradication:
The Song of the Talking Wire
, painted by Henry Farny in 1904, and
The End of the Trail
, sculpted by James Earl Fraser in 1915. Coming off the poem about a dispossessed buffalo hunter, it seems logical to first view Farny’s painting of a lone Native American hunter, wrapped in a buffalo hide, in the dead of winter, leaning against one of a whole row of telegraph poles that cut across the barren landscape, dividing the painting and the landscape vertically in two. The snow-covered plain and the sky, imbued with shades of orange at sunset, divide the painting horizontally. Also visible with a buffalo skull in the foreground, are two horses carrying deer killed by the hunter who is leaning against a telegraph pole, cradling a rifle in his arms, presumably listening to the singing or clicking of the talking wire, which for him might represent his ability to
hear the voices of the spirits
, or, he may be leaning against the telegraph pole in a posture of surrender to the advancing white population. The first interpretation empowers him in his culture, and the second, yielding to progress introduced by the white man, is a metaphor for the dispossession of his people. The rifle is also symbolic of the white man’s influence. It is the weapon by which the Native American in the painting has killed the deer that will provide food for his people, but it also can be seen as the weapon that ultimately will bring death to hundreds of thousands of his people at the hands of the white man. Whether the lone figure is
listening
in empowerment or
leaning
in subjugation is a discussion I plan to have with my students, but there can be no mistake about the fact of the poles insinuating themselves across the future of the landscape. (See Lesson Plan # 3.)
Similarly, there can be no mistake about the meaning in the dispossessed Native American slumped over his weary horse in the 1915 sculpture,
The End of the Trail
. James Earle Fraser hoped that his sculpture, standing eighteen feet tall, would be cast in bronze and placed on a high vantage point overlooking San Francisco Bay. But various circumstances prevented this from happening. Instead the plaster sculpture, after winning a Gold Medal at San Francisco’s Panama-Pacific Exposition for which it was sculpted, and after sitting outside in a park for about fifty years, was restored and has become the focal point of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. While there can be no mistake that the sculpture is a metaphor for the history of the Native American, some interpret it as a memorial to the Native American culture while others see it as a large-scale reminder of defeat. It might be an interesting exercise to explore whether the
defeat
is that of the Native American or that of the white power structure that systematically eradicated him and his people. Either way, it represents our American culture.
The effects of relentless racism on two Native American brothers in a short story
The Native Americans that survived the onslaught that occurred, as Euro-Americans fanned out to claim and settle the West, were herded onto reservations where, ostensibly, they could maintain their culture but where, politically and racially, they could be contained and isolated from the Euro-Americans who judged them barbarians. As in the judgment brought down by the United States Supreme Court on Brown Verses the Board of Education,
separate is not equal
, the reservations were nothing more than refugee camps where the patriarchal, white political power structure could effectively and systematically sweep the remnants of a people under a rug. A short story,
The Killing of a State Cop
by Simon Ortiz, describes the evils of racism perpetrated on two Native American brothers who live on one of these reservations in New Mexico.
The conflict in the story pits a twenty-something year old Native American, Felipe, who was a marine in the Korean War, against a Mexican American state trooper, Luis Baca, who has a history of harassing Felipe and his younger brother, Antonio. The story is told by a teenage Native American boy as he listens to Felipe recount to him why, within the last day or two, he was driven to shoot and kill the state trooper, and why he regrets what he has done and why he knows he will get caught. Felipe’s brother, Antonio, is not the main shooter, but he does help kill the trooper, and Felipe says that he knows, even though he is on the run, he will get caught too. So, at the outset, we know the outcome. The story is based on an actual event in 1952 when a Native American murdered a Mexican American trooper who was victimizing him.
The story, set on and near and on an Indian reservation in New Mexico, manifests how racism and prejudice can drive a man over the edge of sensibility and, in particular, how a Native American, one who fought for his country as a marine, can be alienated and marginalized, and can be driven to kill the perpetrator. Baca wasn’t the only individual to racially harass Felipe as he relates in the story, but he was the one who verbally and physically persisted relentlessly until Felipe, who, to add to the motivation, had been drinking, takes his .30-30 from behind the seat of his truck and brutally silences Baca, for once and for all. Baca who is the victimizer becomes the victim and Felipe who is the victim becomes the victimizer. The trooper who initially pursues Felipe from town onto the reservation, hunting him down, becomes the hunted as Felipe lies in wait for him up a steep, bumpy dirt road.
The teenager telling the story admits, at the outset that “Felipe wasn’t a bad guy.” 5 But, as the boy listens to Felipe, it is clear that
bad things
had happened to him regarding racial discrimination, even when he was in his marine uniform, and just as Baca hates him because he is an “Indio,” he has grown to despise Baca, and says, “Geesus, I hate Mexicans.”6
My fourth lesson plan features this story, examining the plot which includes the conflict, how the character of Felipe changes, beginning with the effect the abuse and racism have on him, crescendoing to the murder, and tracing his regret after he kills Baca, even though he insists, “He deserved to die, the bastard.” 7 In examining the plot, we must track the crossover where Felipe and Baca change places as victimizer/victim and hunter/hunted. Students will also be asked to consider what lessons or theme the author was trying to convey? It would be interesting to do some research into the real-life story on which this story is based. In 1952 two Native American brothers brutally murdered a Mexican state trooper. To do the story justice we will look at it as a representation of American culture, just as we look at: the poem
Without Title,
and the painting
Song of the Talking Wire
, and the sculpture
The End of the Trail
.