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In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie desires certain ideals from her life like love and camaraderie. However, what Janie wants from her own life differs from what other people think she needs, and Nanny and Joe Stark’s ideas of the “perfect life” for Janie are deeply unsatisfying for her. Only when Janie follows her own wishes does she truly reach fulfillment, happiness and independence in her life. Nanny wants Janie to settle down with Logan Killicks, because Logan “got a house bought and paid for and sixty acres uh land right on de big road [..] and dat’s de very prong all us black women gits hung on.” Dis love!” Her idea of love and contentment for Janie is what she never got to experience as a young woman, which is being provided for by a well-off husband. Both Nanny and her daughter had their children as the result of being raped, so Nanny didn’t initially have a support system and lacked the feeling of stability. As a result, she sets up Janie with Logan Killicks in order to g

  In Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, the motif of identity threads through the plot as the narrator struggles to understand himself and his perception of others. As he faces new environments and their unique obstacles during the story, The narrator’s idea of identity progressively becomes more faceted and complex, until he comes to a conclusion at the climax of the novel. However, what causes him to finally understand identity? To answer this question, I reflected on the role of another important motif in Invisible Man: ideology.  For the majority of the narrator’s journey, his relationship with the concept of identity is closely tied with whatever ideology his environment promotes. At the narrator’s college, Booker T Washington’s ideology of being deferential and humble to the white man represents the administrator’s views of black peoples’ role in society, which, therefore, the narrator believes as well. At this point in the novel, the narrator hasn’t deeply questioned his identity ye

A major theme of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man is the narrator’s identity. In the story, his self perception drastically evolves through the events and circumstances he faces. Initially, the narrator tries to hide his true feelings and opinions, and expresses his identity solely based on how he wants others, specifically white people, to perceive him. He aims to please, and he doesn’t question his identity and the treatment he receives from white people. After Bledsoe’s betrayal in Chapter 9, the narrator realizes his previous role in society was as a subservient pawn, and resolves to get revenge and trek his own path. However, when he joins the Brotherhood, the narrator once again has to assume an alternate identity and exist as simply a cog in the Brotherhood, despite its progressive ideology. At this point of the novel, though the narrator has escaped the South, he has not escaped his invisibility. At the beginning of Invisible Man, the narrator doesn’t fully understand the oppressi

When Invisible Man’s narrator retells the experiences of his past, the difference between the narrator’s current self and his past self is vast. The two of them have contrasting views of their life and aspirations. While the current narrator has discovered and accepted his “invisibility” as a black man in a racist society, in his retelling of his life, his past self does not realize his invisibility, and he believes he can make a change in the world. However, as the story progresses, the narrator starts to understand how the progress he believes himself to be making is not progress at all, but is exactly what is required of him to keep the oppressive society he lives in unchanged and balanced. In the first chapter of Invisible Man, after the narrator endures the nightmarish Battle Royale, he finally gets to read the speech he had come to the event for in the first place. In front of his town’s “leading white citizens,” he delivers his speech badly bruised and swallowing blood, still ho

Richard Wright’s Native Son follows Bigger, a 20 year old black man living in poverty in Chicago. As Bigger is thrown into a flurry of new circumstances, Wright intricately depicts Bigger’s thoughts in real time, and as readers, we see the rationale behind Bigger’s decisions and personality. Though Bigger commits serious crimes, he still is a humanized, complex, and understandable character, due to the oppression and discrimination he faces. However, one character living in a very similar situation to Bigger gets significantly less focus than him from the characters in Native Son , as well as within the book itself. Bessie, Bigger’s lover, and eventually the victim of rape and murder by Bigger, plays an insignificant role in Bigger’s mind, and, therefore, is rarely focused on throughout Native Son . Whether intentionally or not, Richard Wright spent minimal time developing Bessie’s character, and in the novel, she is depicted as simply a byproduct. Bessie lives a life akin to Bigger’s