Thoughts of Simon

As we’ve been watching the narrator progress throughout the story, he has had several major changes in ideology. From his naïve and submissive beginnings, to the very aware and active person he has started to become, he has gone through an intense series of transformations in how he thinks and acts. Now we have mostly been focused on his individual beliefs and haven’t really been assigning them to any type of category. Looking back on it now, many of his beliefs fit into specific categories that were very prevalent at the time and could be another commentary by Ellison on the state of the world.  Now some of these ideologies are more obvious than others, but they’re still there. Starting off the book we get one of the more hidden forms of the ideologies, though it is possible to see the correlation between the ideas. The narrator starts off in his college with the figure of Bledsoe constantly looming over everything. Bledsoe controls everything, and nobody seems to have a say ...

Looking back on the college in Invisible Man, more and more oddities seem to stand out. From the weird religious feeling surrounding the Founder to the complete disregard for education, the entire institution seems completely backwards. For example, when one usually thinks of a college, one will think of an institution focused on learning and based around the needs of the students. While in Bledsoe’s college, the focus is instead on the white patrons that come and visit, as well as Bledsoe himself. When one really thinks about it, the college itself is just a con used to boost the status and wealth of first the Founder, and now Bledsoe.  Think about it, whenever the Founder is mentioned it is with a religious reverence. Even the old white men were seen crying about his death. It was also mentioned that everyone knew who he was, and he traveled around the country in a private train car surrounded by rich people. Whenever he would show up for one of his rallies, it would be comp...