The eviction scene with the narrator is quite interesting, as despite the fact that he is feeling nostalgia for his life in the South, he reacts in a way that is completely different than he would have acted when he used to live in the South. He misses giving speeches and also thinks about his college. While feeling nostalgia, he also thinks about how his classmates would be stunned at seeing him with yams, which are symbols of Southern culture. He seems to look down on them for distancing themselves from things that they in fact enjoy. The speech is also really interesting in that what he says seems to be different than the subject of the speech in the first chapter and he gains the attention of everyone. His message seems to be that everyone shouldn't just stand and watch, and he manages to encourage the crowd.
This scene is part of a bigger picture like everything else in the book, and I think that is what makes this book interesting. Chapters in this book can almost be read as short stories, but the character telling them seems to change so much although the change is very gradual. He goes from being a totally subservient person in Chapter 1 where he would do whatever the whites told him to being the sarcastic, ironic, person who appears in the prologue, but throughout the book, he never changes drastically. He gradually becomes something different through episodes in his life. These key moments include reading Bledsoe's letter, fighting Brockway, and giving this speech at the eviction urging the blacks to fight back and not accept the circumstances after himself being so willing to accept whatever he was told to do back in the South.
I agree that the eviction scene is a fantastic example of the change in the Narrator. However, I think it is even more pivotal then you state. I think it is the punctual moment that separates the passive Narrator, into the active one that rebels against society. During his speech he mentions that he doesn't even know what was happening, he just knew that he felt he had to speak. At the end he is dazed and knew only that he was right to make the speech. This change is then further acknowledged by the fact that this speech results in him acquiring an entirely new identity.
ReplyDeleteThe speech really did trigger a chain reaction that set him on a completely different path than he intended, and he seems to be going along with it pretty well. I feel like the old narrator would have wanted to do everything in his power to just be the kind of person Bledsoe is (or at least who he thought he was). The new narrator seems to have very few regrets and is better in general at just going with the flow and quickly adapting to whatever life throws at him. Clearly he's grown to use sarcasm and irony to help deal with it, which I like a lot.
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