“The American Scholar” 393Other examples of racial stereotyping in the
novel cause more anger and are related to more dire
consequences. On the street one day, the narrator
comes across Tod Clifton, a friend who has left
the Brotherhood and is now selling sambos, dolls
modeled on an offensive stereotype, to a sizable
crowd on the sidewalk. The narrator is both angry
and confused about why Clifton would choose to
make money by selling caricatures of blackness.
The sambos were representations of servile and
“happy” slaves, and they were sometimes invoked
to rationalize slavery. To the narrator, the sambos
that Clifton is selling represented the erasure of the
violent historical experience and legacy of slavery.
The narrator is angered by this kind of stereotyping,
which ignores and makes light of the experiences
of black Americans who were dehumanized by the
more powerful. He has a similar reaction to Mary’s
black-boy bank.
The Invisible Man’s changing identity takes
place alongside societal ideas about race, although
it is not only these notions that shape his identity.
The way he is treated by other characters and the
employment options that are available to him in
the novel are conditioned by social conceptions of
race. He is treated as a disposable commodity by Dr.
Bledsoe, Liberty Paints, and even members of the
Brotherhood, both because he is black and because
of individuals’ greed for power and the factory’s
greed for wealth. However, the narrator also chooses
to see blackness as an agent of possibility. He is
able to maintain his invisibility, a position that he
perceives to offer him infinite possibilities, at least
partially because he is black.
The differences between race and cultural iden-
tity are also important in the novel. For example,
while Harlem represents a relatively defined com-
munity, it is not a completely unified neighborhood
as there are tensions between southern and local
blacks. In this fictionalized representation of Har-
lem, there are also different methods of working
toward racial equality. Brother Tarp hangs a portrait
of Frederick Douglass in his office. Douglass’s
narrative oF the LiFe oF Frederick douGLass,
an aMerican sLave, written by hiMseLF was
one of the most influential and widely circulated
among abolitionists. In the early Battle Royal scene,
the speech that the narrator delivers is taken from
Booker T. Washington, a historical figure whom
some in the Brotherhood would have the narrator
aspire to become. In the speech, it is argued that
racial equality can be achieved through self-help,
by pulling up oneself by the bootstraps, and did
not demand that blacks gain equal political rights
immediately. Ras the Exhorter represents a more
militant view of gaining equality, arguing that vio-
lence is necessary, as is limiting group membership
to include only those from the black community.
Ellison treats race as a complex theme in Invis-
ible Man. This is an appropriate approach, consider-
ing that the novel was set in a time when multiple
and shifting ideas about race were part of the social
reality.
Megan KusterEMERSON, RALPH WALDO “The
American Scholar” (1837)
“The American Scholar” was one of the early
addresses Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) deliv-
ered at Harvard University. At this time, Emerson
was establishing himself as a lecturer, and he deliv-
ered this address to Harvard’s Phi Beta Kappa Soci-
ety on August 31, 1837. “The American Scholar”
includes many ideas that would become more prom-
inent throughout Emerson’s middle and later works.
The main idea behind “The American Scholar”
lies in Emerson’s symbolic notion of “Man Think-
ing.” Emerson sets out first to delineate “Man
Thinking” because the common notions of an edu-
cation and scholars have moved away from this
idea. Since he is addressing a university society, it
is important that Emerson make this distinction in
this particular environment. Much of what distin-
guishes “Man Thinking” from a thinking man cen-
ters on Emerson’s ideas of past and present, both of
which remain fundamental concerns in the address.
Emerson argues that the role of the intellectual con-
sists of a break from past ideas and an education in
nature, books, and action.
Richly filled with images of education, the
individual and society, and spirituality, “The
American Scholar” addresses a need for Emerson’s
America to promote and embrace the freedom