This thought struck me after class, as many do, regarding the narrator and his identity or lack there of. During class, someone said they had a problem with, and I paraphrase, knowing the character or identifying with him. They said we know very little about him, and that his past is filled with people whose names we do not know; we only know them by generic classifications, such as grandfather, mother, father, etc.
I feel the same way. It is hard, as we are asked questions during our discussions, to identify why the narrator would do this, that, or the other because we don’t know him. There is very little for us to look at in order to make a judgement regarding how we think the character would respond in a given situation. Thus, it is hard for us to say what is he wants or really feels. He’s almost a blank slate, filling up with odds and ends as the novel unfolds, giving us the sense that–maybe, hopefully–we can have a clearer picture once the slate is full.
I began wondering if there was a parallel between his lack of identity and the notion someone else brought up about the narrator serving as a type of “everyman.” Since the narrator seems to exist only in the context of the story, meaning he lacks a type of back-story or history and we learn what happens to him as it happens, has Ellison made him an everyman or a type of reflection?
What I mean to say is this: has Ellison left the reader free to project their history onto the narrator? Since (I feel) it is hard to predict how he might act, and I’ve felt that several times throughout the novel, and since he seems to act so passively in many instances until he has no choice but to react, are we left with a blank slate that we fill with our experiences and even prejudices; are we left to internalize everything that happens?
Just a thought.
