Summary
The theme of racial inequality is portrayed in the beginning of the novel and continues until the concluding chapters. Just as Invisible Man must learn to comply with the Jim Crow laws when he lives in the South, he finds that his journey north to Harlem brings him even more experiences of injustice. The theme of unfair treatment by police officers towards people of the black race is one that appears regularly.
Examples and quotations from the book
- One night Invisible Man is walking along the street, and he sees three white police officers sitting on top of three black horses. He explains what he sees, "I shivered, looking toward the street...three mounted policemen loomed...grasping their horses by their bridles...Three white men and three black horses...And as I turned to leave, one of the horses violently tossed its head and I saw the gauntleted fist yanked down" (337). In this scene the author uses the policemen and their horses to symbolize black people's position in society. The policemen have complete control over their horses, and their power is shown when the horse is restrained by the gauntleted fist of the policemen. Just as the horses are controlled by the policemen, black people like Invisible Man are also oppressed.
- Invisible Man sees his friend Tod Clifton shot and killed by a policeman, and he realizes that the policeman does not even acknowledge Tod as a human being. Invisible Man is asked to speak at Tod's funeral, and he tells the crowd how he feels, "He's dead...and except to a few young girls it doesn't matter" (455). Invisible Man knows that a man has been murdered, but because he is black, the police do not even give him a second thought. Invisible Man continues to voice this injustice to the crowd when he says, "He was shot for a simple mistake of judgement...He thought he was a man and that men were not meant to be pushed around...But the cop had an itching finger and an eager ear for a word that rhymed with 'trigger', and when Clifton fell he found it" (457).
The Black Fight for Justice in the 1930s
The mistreatment of blacks in Invisible Man can be seen as a mirror of the unequal system of justice that blacks were forced to endure in the 1930s. Here are a few famous examples of blacks' fighting for a more equal society during that time.
- The Scottsboro Case: In 1931 two white girls accused nine black boys from Scottsboro of rape. Although the evidence was doubtful, the boys were convicted by an all-white jury. The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) decided to defend the case. Although each boy was sentenced to 99 years in prison, by 1950 the NAACP had managed to have them all released.
- Protesting the Lynching Law: In 1934 a main goal of the NAACP was protesting for a federal antilynching law. A large group of demonstrators gathered along the Mall in Washington D.C. and protested by lining up and wearing nooses around their necks. The demonstrators succeeded, and the passage of the anti-lynching law was a large step in the advancement of the rights of colored people.
- Fight for Fair Working Conditions: In 1933 the NAACP discovered that blacks had been hired to build flood control levees along the Mississippi River. These workers were being forced to work twelve hours a day, every day with no holidays or overtime pay. The NAACP went to Congress and succeeded in improving the conditions of flood-control workers everywhere.