Chapter 10

Erica Whitehead

The narrator spends his last night at Mary's and wakes up early the next morning to the sound of someone above him banging on the steam pipes. It is cold and there is no heat. The chorus of banging picks up, as others awaken, annoyed by the banging. Invisible Man's head is splitting from the drinking the night before, and he starts furiously on the pipes himself. Out of control, he grabs a cast-iron bank, shaped in the form of a "very black red-lipped and wide-mouthed Negro" and starts banging away. The head breaks, and the bank scatters its coins across the room. Mary hears him from outside and asks what is going on. He quickly sweeps the coins and broken metal into a pile, wraps them in a newspaper, and stuffs it in his overcoat pocket for later disposal.

Invisible Man has coffee with Mary, who seems unshakeably serene in the midst of all the noise. Invisible Man pulls out a hundred-dollar bill and hands it to her in payment of his back rent, and she is overjoyed. She is proud she will be able to pay the bills everyone has been bothering her about. Did he win the money playing the numbers, she asks? Yes, he answers, relieved to find a simple explanation. He is not supposed to let her know he is leaving, nor that he is involved with the Brotherhood. She is so pleased about the money she seems totally unconcerned about what he is doing; so he is able to get his prized briefcase and leave. Again, circumstances force him to leave a place where he feels safe. He must abandon this part of his life although he does not wish to. As he goes out, he hears Mary singing the blues as she always does. It seems to reassure her and bring her peace of mind.

A few blocks down the street, he tries to throw the broken bank into a garbage can, but a woman stops him, yelling at him that she does not want any trash from "field niggers" in her garbage can. So he returns and takes the bank back. A few more blocks down the street, he just leaves it in the snow, hoping no one will notice, but someone picks it up and returns it to him, accusing him of being some kind of criminal making an illegal "drop." So he finally gives up and puts it in his briefcase, figuring that he will dispose of it later.

The chapter ends with his arrival at his new home, a clean three-room apartment in a neutral, racially mixed neighborhood on the upper East Side. It is neat, orderly, and well maintained, just like the organization he has joined. He spends the remainder of the day in the apartment studying the pamphlets the Brotherhood has given him and preparing to make his first speech at a rally in Harlem that evening.

The bank seems to be the primary symbol in this chapter. Invisible Man just cannot seem to get rid of it, like many parts of himself. The fact that he places it in his briefcase tells us, his readers, that it helps in some way to define him, along with all the papers he has accumulated so far. He is also once again expelled from his lifestyle when he decides to leave Mary’s.

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