I have posted below my final paper. I hope you all enjoy it and maybe my presentation will make a little bit more sense to you once you read my final piece.....
Soul Searching:
A Deeper Look into the Invisible Characters of Our Time
Life is one of the hardest equations a person can attempt to solve. It can take a year, or eighty years, but it is one of the most difficult problems to try and sort out. Whatever the case, life is something that every person goes through, as well as struggles throughout to find out who they really are. As a twenty-year-old college student, I have asked myself many times what my purpose on this earth is, as well as who I am, and I have yet to find the answer. One thing that is for sure, I am not alone in this situation by any means. True identities are incredibly hard to come by, especially in a world where society pushes people to conform to such common interests. People continue to search for their individual soul everyday, no matter what age. We are all ‘invisible’ people amongst one another, who are trying to figure out who we are and what we are doing. I have come to the understanding, that the theme of my American Literature class, and of the everyday lives that we as people, is exactly that word – invisible.
In the great American novel Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison, the story of finding one’s true self takes place. Here, the unnamed character (who does go by the Invisible Man throughout the book), strides through his awkward stage of life not knowing exactly what is happening to him, and not knowing how to take it all in. He functions in what is called a ‘bildungsroman’, encountering multiple everyday life experiences that somehow, though he may not know it, lead to the development of his inner self (Carey 59). This novel is centered only on the Invisible Man, and all of the unfortunate things that happen to him, which in the end only help him in his discovery of his inner self. This was a hard concept for me to grasp, because I did not quite understand how ‘finding out who one is’ can be related to the word ‘invisible’. However, the meanings all came together for me towards the end of the book.
As the Invisible Man continues through all of his encounters, he keeps one thing in his arms. This comforting object is his briefcase he won, containing all of his most prized possessions. Even though he was involved in a riot, chased by Ras’ men, and was almost burned in attempt to save the actual briefcase, it is a vital part of his life to him. He holds onto this because all of the things that he has gone through are what is most important to him – they make up what and who he is – and the briefcase has gone with the Invisible Man throughout his endeavors. Through his briefcase, he is able to create his own identity. His identity is what makes him invisible, for no one can actually see who he is. There is not one other person in this world that went though what the Invisible Man went through, making his identity invisible to others, but not to him, which in the end is something everyone strives for.
This idea of being invisible is seen throughout some of the greatest novels of our time. One of those novels is Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. Huck is as invisible a character we as readers can get. However, he is invisible in a different way. Huckleberry Finn thinks that he knows who he is, but we as the reader are quite aware that he does not. Throughout the beginning of the story, we see that Huck feels that he is extremely superior over Miss Watson’s black slave, Jim. But once Huck runs into Jim, while both of them were attempting to escape from their lifestyles, his attitude toward Jim begins to slightly altar (Twain, 1994). Huck begins to see Jim in a different light, and soon realizes that it is wrong for people to be treated the way that slaves were dealt with. However, this is a intrapersonal conflict for him, as he knows that thinking of this is in a way ‘sinning’, and going against everything he was ever taught. We see that Huck has always been one that, deep inside, knew what was right in the situation he was put in. It was just a matter of time before he not only escaped from his father and his structured society, but from himself to his invisibility.
Confused characters are something we often see in novels, and Huckleberry Finn was definitely no exception. What I mean by escaping from himself to his invisibility is that he became an individual. At that point in time, he used all of these previous experiences to shape himself as a person. Huckleberry Finn becomes ‘invisible’ right before our eyes.
Another way in which we see a person struggling to find their true identity is in the movie “The Wizard of Oz”. Dorothy, a farm girl who grew up on her aunt and uncle’s ranch, is taken into the fantasy Land of Oz. Here, it is said that she needs to get to the Emerald City in order to get ‘home’. That raises the question of what really home is. Sure one would argue that it is that big brick structure with windows and bedrooms and a kitchen, but I would argue that home is something completely different than an object.
Dorothy struggles to find her way home. She is an innocent, southern girl who was taken from her family, and has to find her way back. Ladies and gentlemen, Dorothy is about to encounter a bildungsroman. It is at this time in her life where she has to grow up and find her way not only back to Kansas, but find her way to herself. To me, Dorothy was always at home, she just needed to realize it. Home is Dorothy. Every person has a heart, in which everything that happens to a person throughout a life time is collected in that heart. By taking a good look inside of her heart, and allowing herself to realize that the experiences she bumped into were only creating her identity, she eventually ended up at the place she began at. However, when she came back from Oz, she was now invisible. She had created her identity which got her back to where she came from in the first place. Home is Dorothy’s invisibility.
If a person looks hard enough, they can see that there is a little bit of soul searching in every story that we read. In the story Daisy Miller, by Henry James, one might argue that Daisy is just a flirt, and a girl who is as conniving as they come. It is hard to conjure up this argument, for I see her as a lost little girl, trying to escape her label in attempt to find her true identity. Daisy Miller, though she may appear so on the outside, is anything but a flirt on the inside. Daisy goes from a handsome Italian, to an extremely nice Winterbourne, and not because she can, but because she is attempting to find out what she really wants in life, and in a sense that completes her. Daisy’s only difference is that she is not trying to discover her identity through her experiences, but she is attempting to unveil her inner self through people. Whatever the case, this is just a part of the bildungsroman. The said thing about Daisy’s case, is that she passed away before she had her chance to become invisible, but she was well on her way to reaching that invisibility and finding her true identity.
Humbert Humbert, in the novel Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov, was an incredibly invisible character. Humbert knew exactly who he was throughout his entire lifetime, and we were the only ones who had the privilege in seeing how his invisibility worked through his journal writing. Humbert lost his first love, Annabel, during his adolescence. Humbert never quite recovered from that experience. To him, this first love stuck with him throughout his entire life, and when he did encounter her doppelganger, Lolita, he loved her like he was still seventeen years old. Humbert was a lover of Annabel, and used this experience to achieve his identity through Lolita. Humbert Humbert was so invisible that I might as well not even have read the book! He was aware of what he was doing and understood who he was and why he needed Lolita – to complete his identity.
In the story The Invisible Man, it takes him a while to realize that he is an invisible person and accept that fact. Of course, this is a problem that not only the Invisible Man goes through, but every person in time encounters. One of the most central metaphors in this novel is that of the Invisible Man’s blindness to his many experiences before he allows himself to step out of the darkness (Carey 60). This creates a metaphor for people in the everyday world. This man, who states that he was once blind, but at the end of the story states that he is not blind anymore, says simply, “Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you” (Ellison 572). It becomes very clear that this man realizes that all of his experiences are definitely something that others experience in their everyday lives. Maybe not exactly his personal experiences, but each person in the world experiences what it is like to grow into themselves, as well as the need take off the blinders that are preventing people from seeing the truth within their hearts (Wiki 3).
It goes without saying that attempting to find the light in one’s life is one of the hardest things for a person to do. There are many things that people can be, such as innocent, naive, hardnosed, or grotesque. However, one cannot be any of these without being invisible, and understanding that being invisible is a good thing. By using all of our past experiences to shape who we become and ultimately are, we accept the fact that we are invisible. It is funny how lives can change through the realization of different humanistic aspects through literature. By being invisible, we recognize who we are and why we are exactly that without any person tell us different. Achieving an identity is the ultimate goal for characters in movies and books, as well as characters in life.
Our identity is invisible to every other individual but ourselves and that is why through novels such as the Invisible Man, Huckleberry Finn and Lolita, I now understand that in order to claim such an identity, I must allow myself to be invisible. To my roommate, to my sister, and to my teacher, I am invisible, because I have taken all of my past experiences in life and used them to shape my own identity. Only I know what has happened to me, allowing me to think what I want and how I want to, letting no outside influences effect the way I view myself and my individually. That is exactly what makes me ‘invisible’. Inevitably, if we allow ourselves to be, we all are an Invisible Man
