Notes from 10/27


What did I do to be so black and blue." Louis Armstrong song. It demonstrates the importance of music throughout "Invisible Man."





In "Dead Man" we have to wonder whether William Blake is dead from the start, dead when he is shot in the chest, or only dead at the very end in the canoe. The underlying myth is that of the American innocent, naivity, American obsession with firearms, and capitalist bounty hunters.


The Stockholm syndrome is everpresent when Blake begins to sympathize and even adopt the customs of his "captor," Nobody. Also, Bill Blake is abducted by William Blake and he eventually becomes William Blake in a particularly graphic scene where he shoots a sherrif and asks, "Hace you read my poetry?"


The main ideas within "Dead Man"


Death


What it means to be American


Circling back, notice scenes toward the beginning and the end of the movie that seem very familiar


Also important:


"Poetry is a destructive force."


"Poetry is the subject of the poem."


"All things resemble each other."





"The Bear"- note the importance of primal rhythms, Ike's struggle with his own heritage as a white man aka destroyer.


Who really owns the land, neither the white man or the Native American. The land belongs to the animals.


"Invisible Man"- important referenced texts include The Bible as well as "Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man"


Note: What is going on within that scene of the strange operation in the first third of the book?


Labotomy?


Electroshock therapy?


Possible castration?

The novel is a classic picaresque novel. It is presented as a series of munerous small gripping pieces.
***************The following info was not discussed in class***************************
This is done for the sake of keeping the novel intersting and fast paced, which was a relief considering how short of a time we had to read it. However I would like to point out the more literal aspect of the novel's consruction, its use of flash bulb memories.
Flashbulb memories are memories that are graphically captured within the human memory much like a flashbulb picture would be, thus the name.
Such memories would include things like an image of an airline hitting a World Trade Center tower. These memories are actually not better remembered than regular memories however typically such memories are reinforced by the media replaying these events. This reinforcement would not be relevent in relation to the text however I still feel as though the main character's life seems to be presented in a series of graphic flashbulb memories. I felt it worth noting that these memories do have a psychological name.

What is the importance of the imvisible man's briefcase? It carries all the stuff from his adventures. This is realted to the scene wherein the two older people are evicted out onto the street and their life's contents are expelled there as well.

Some important mytholigical notes:

Brear Rabbit, the invisible man's relation to a hibernating bear

Rinehart, a trickster figure and doppelganger

The blues, Ralph Ellison was first a trumpet player. He then discovered that the blues could be played in literature as well and became a novelist.

Flyting- a verbal battle

Importance of transcendtalism and self reliance