Rational Egoism and Altruism as the Foundation for a Better Future

Any discussion of a better, safer world involves, sooner or later the conflicting concepts of altruism and egoism. One of the best ways to understand this conflict is comparing the views of Ayn Rand in the "Ethics of Emergency" and Peter Singer in "The Singer Solution to World Poverty".

While both authors support their views with strong arguments and complex scenarios, it is difficult to take one side over the other. The two reduce the concepts or ethics to a matter of choosing between two goals: self-preservation (Ayn Rand) and species-preservation (Peter Singer). 

In real life, these two goals do not and should exclude one another. On the contrary, in most of the cases, they complement one another. Man should not have to choose between his life and those of others, but rather learn and focus on how to live his own life in such a way as to positively influence other lives.

Ayn Rand's Ethics of Emergency

"Ethics of Emergencies" was included in the 1964 collection of papers and essays belonging to Nathaniel Branden and Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism. As its title suggests, it discusses the fact that man's ethical principles are based on emergency situations. The author uses the classic scenario of the "lifeboat" as representative for an emergency and promotes the survival of the fittest. 

According to Rand, in emergency situations, it is perfectly natural, moral for one person to sacrifice another one in order to save themselves. The scenario imposes that the person in question choose between their life and the life of someone else on the boat, reduces life to a matter of killing or being killed and man's condition to that of a murderer or a victim. Man is expected to learn a lesson and choose between becoming a murderer and sacrificing his life for a higher purpose.

The problem with Ayn Rand's theory is that daily life emergencies generally do not involve killing or being killed, nor do they involve a conflict of interests. Trying to create an analogy between the lifeboat scenario and real life is impossible, simply because there are numerous situations in which man can make choices that are beneficial for themselves and for the others at the same time. By accepting the idea of a life dominated by conflicts of interest, man will end up creating unnecessary conflicts, sacrificing himself unnecessarily or trampling on other people's interests even when he has nothing to gain.

The author describes emergencies as situations in which human life becomes impossible. The person that survives the lifeboat scenario does so only by removing themselves from the emergency situation. The shore equals water, food, medical help and, implicitly, an end of the emergency. During the emergency, however, people lives are in danger.

Then, what if all people found themselves in such emergency situations at least once in their life, and followed the moral path described be the author? What if the person one is supposed to sacrifice in order to reach shore is a surgeon, the member of a bomb squad that could save thousands of lives or the president of the country? Thousands of people would have to die. Saving those people would be ethical for them, but unethical for the person sacrificed.

The message the essay succeeds to send is not the one intended by the author, that, in case of emergency, people have right of life and death over others, but that emergencies should not be taken too seriously. People should focus not on surviving such situations, but on avoiding them or ending them sooner, they should work together to find solutions rather than sacrifice one another.

"The Singer Solution to World Poverty"

In "The Singer Solution to World Poverty", Peter Singer presents the hypothetical case of a man named Bob who has invested all his savings in an uninsured Bugatti, a car that he parks on the side of a railroad before going for a walk. He notices a child in the distance, playing on the tracks, in front of a runaway train. 

Bob has to choose between his car and the life of the child. He could use the nearby stitch and divert the incoming train onto the siding, but, since that would mean seeing his precious car damaged, he chooses to allow the death of the child.

The author makes it clear that Bob's choice was mistaken, and most people would probably agree that he should have saved the child. The car is a symbol of luxury, of the things that people work hard for but could and should live without, as they are less valuable than human life. 

People have the chance to save lives every day, by giving up on things they do not necessarily need and donating them or their value to charity. Many of them, however, just like the protagonist, treasure their own comfort and preferences more than they treasure the lives of starving or handicapped children, for example. According to the author, these people do not live up to their moral obligations.

While Peter Singer's illustration of an emergency situation and the alternatives he offers may seem closer to real life and more acceptable than those of Ayn Rand, there are still many details that leave room for debate. For example, Bob is the only person present at the scene, while anyone (millions of other people) can contribute to the salvation of starving or handicapped children, to name a cause.

The author accepts the possibility for others to have be present, but argues that their presence does not exempt the protagonist from responsibility. According to him, for man, knowing that others would not do anything to help those in need means being sure that his efforts will save lives, and having the moral obligation to actually save them.

Singer's perception of moral obligation is interesting and easy to agree with at first sight, but, in real life, situations like the one he describes are unlikely, even impossible. People will rarely or never invest their lifetime savings the way Bob did and neglect them. Also, they are and should never be forced to choose between their most valuable assets and saving a life. According to him, people should work hard, not for their own benefit, but to help others.

While the intention is, indeed, noble and laudable, where does it leave motivation? Would people be able to invest the same effort knowing that the results of their work would be enjoyed by someone else? Most of them struggle to offer their loved ones access to a better life. 

Would they be as motivated having to see their loved ones settle with the basics and giving the rest to charity? There is also the question of how one's donations will get to the children whose lives need to be saved. It is a well known fact that not all the money donated to charity actually ends up supporting the cause they were meant for.

While Peter Singer's perception of morality is easier to cope with than that of Ayn Rand, the situation he uses to support it is unrealistic and subjective. He uses children as the symbol of poverty, because they represent a cause that would impress anyone. However, poverty is often used in reference to people living on social welfare, often of their own choice. Would it be fair for the working class to support such people? Is it not fair for those who work harder to enjoy higher satisfaction?

Conclusion

The two theories presented are in obvious conflict. One argues in favor or self-preservation at all cost and entitles man to sacrifice others in order to save himself. The other one encourages man to sacrifice himself in order to save others. However, both visions stress the importance of making a decision and assuming it. Man is free to decide whether to sacrifice or be sacrificed, to kill or be killed, to save or to condemn. Whatever decision he makes, it is better than running away from responsibility.

However, both theories use extreme situations, unlikely to occur in real life, as examples, and they are extreme. Life is not a matter of killing or being killed, condemning or being condemned. People can work together to find solutions, they can enjoy the results of their work and still help others. 

Neither the rational egoism presented by Ayn Rand nor the altruism suggested by Singer as a solution to poverty is a viable ethic model. A balance between the two is the most desirable, as it would mean having the courage to fight for one's ideals and looking after the others at the same time, it would enable self-preservation and species-preservation altogether.

Religious Pluralism and Anomie: How Tolerance Leads to Social Isolation

Human beings have always been social creatures. Often, religious organizations represent the fundamental level at which a society operates and instills the values of that society in its members. As Girard noted, religious ritual and sacrifice has played an important role in the prevention of violence in all human societies, both prehistoric and contemporary (45).

In the discussion of human culture throughout history, there has always been a marked difference between the social norms that highly religious, rural societies adopt and those of more secular, urban societies. While urban societies are noted for their ability to produce technological progress and advancement, they often isolate their members socially and spiritually in a way that rural societies do not. 

Religious pluralism has long been adopted as a means of allowing the members of urban societies to peacefully coexist with one another, but the approach often backfires by causing an even greater sense of isolation than ever before.

           One of the major elements that separates urban culture from rural or folk culture is the social significance and purpose of religion. According to Strinati, the adoption of a multiculturalism and religious pluralism by a populace that inhabits an urban environment leads to social condition called “anomie”, which is defined as a condition of society that provides little moral guidance to individuals, thus resulting in a lack of social norms (8).

While religious pluralism and the tolerance that it engenders is necessary for the smooth functioning of an urban society, it is wholly absent from rural ones that have historically relied on religious absolutism in order to maintain order and fulfill the lives of its members by providing a clear moral compass and a feeling of belonging to a greater whole. 

As a result, urban culture distances itself from religion’s incipient purpose as conceived within the scope of the rural societies it was made to serve and becomes a point of contention and conflict, leading to the need of a more tolerant attitude from its members.

This, in turn, individualizes its members and creates a cultural and moral vacuum, leading to a lack of a sense of belonging that pervades its members' lives on a fundamental level and gives rise to the sense of social isolation widely seen in modern metropolitan societies. A metropolitan society is more susceptible to amoral behavior than a rural one, due to its members’ feelings of isolation, the lack of readily acceptable social norms, and the replacement of traditional cultural values with those advertised by mass media.

Coming to terms with the place of religion in a modern, urban society requires a nuanced understanding of religion’s purpose in rural societies and in folk culture. Exhaustive research of the social and religious significance of ritual and sacrifice in ancient cultures, as well as those few remaining rural societies that have rejected industrialization has shown that religion’s primary effect in historical societies has been to prevent violence (Girard 35).

This is evidenced by the few examples of tribal societies that have defined themselves culturally without religion and found themselves destroyed by internal conflict, reciprocal violence, and often bloody family feuds that last entire generations (Girard 110). In historical cases when alternative religions have been introduced to these tribal cultures, those that adopted the new religion entirely benefitted from the same prevention of violence that they had with their previous system, as evidenced by Dupuis’ study of early Christian missionary work (38).

This would seem to indicate that religion, when introduced to a large, metropolitan culture, should have the same effect of preventing violence and encouraging moral certitude amongst its members. However, the constant state of religious conflict that most modern societies exhibit easily proves that this is not the case.

         It is at this point that the term anomie enters the discussion. The main difference between people who are part of a rural society and who traditionally live according to values passed down by folk culture and members of an urban, industrial society is in the quality of social norms as exhibited by the culture in question. In a rural society, social norms are concrete and absolute, having been passed down generation by generation, often for centuries at a time.

People who are raised in such a culture tend to have very clear ideas about their values, their purpose in life, and the importance of religion as a fundamental element thereof. These values exist and gain most of their strength due to the fact that every member of the society in question participates in the religious experience together (Chaves 261). 

As soon as multiple religious viewpoints begin to contend for importance within the context of such a society, social order is threatened. The sense of social order that is threatened by this new perspective is exactly that same sense that, once removed from the population’s social consciousness, results in anomie among its members.

         It is well-known that metropolitan societies that exhibit a highly tolerant, multicultural approach also tend to exhibit a high level of anomie among their members. This is part of the reason why inhabitants of large metropolitan centers, like New York City, tend to put so much cultural significance on material possessions, pop culture and an attitude of radical acceptance for all but the very lowest strands of society.

In these kinds of societies, socio-economic influence takes precedence over cultural belonging and people begin to accept material gain as replacing spiritual advancement or understanding. As Carr and Hauser note, social studies made have found that highly religious societies benefit from a decreased importance on socio-economic status among their members (69), from which we can assume that the inverse must be true – as any New Yorker will readily admit. 

In an urban society with a very high population density, the idea that religious absolutism gives way to overtly accepting religious pluralism in an attempt to reduce the violence that religion was originally intended to prevent from happening in the first place.

          It is evident that a metropolitan area that is home to multiple religious cultures with strong, evangelical beliefs will give rise to conflict. This has been the case in nearly every situation of this kind throughout history, and, in each case, the adoption of a pluralist viewpoint by the majority of the populace has been the sole precursor to peace.

Pluralism can take a number of forms: it should come to no surprise that New York City is home to the highest number of followers of the radically pluralist Baha’i faith. That example only shows a single face of the societal solution practiced in these cases; that of the social norm of tolerance widely practiced in the United States and in other multicultural societies. 

This tolerance allows people to believe that their own religious beliefs can be equally valid with those of others, even despite making mutually exclusive claims to religious truth. This, in turn, leads people to focus less on developing their own sense of spirituality, and more on developing a social identity that fits well with the society they are a part of, while allowing them to express themselves liberally enough to counteract the crippling effects of anomie.

       If an individual chooses to develop themselves spiritually in a highly industrialized, metropolitan society, they often find themselves categorized or even denigrated by the rest of their surrounding peers. The lack of norms of such a society leads each individual to have to expend time and energy to make sense of the differing cultural, spiritual and religious views of those around them. This has a two-fold effect on their sense of isolation: it increases their isolation relative to the society as a whole, but decreases it within their personal network of other like-minded individuals.

While this has the powerful effect of giving the individual a sense of belonging, as well as a clearly defined set of social norms to adhere to, it also distances them from those who are not a part of that organization, who do not agree with its values, and who feel offended by the elitism that it seems to entail from their perspective. 

This provides the perfect groundwork for violent conflict, as has been seen in a multitude of societies throughout history and in contemporary culture whenever it is present. The establishment of hate groups and religious intolerance is bred by the lack of total societal participation in the values, rituals and belief systems of a select few.

          When these organizations manage to peacefully coexist with one another, they only do so through the disestablishment of social norms. In a society in which social norms are either absent or very nearly so, individualism reigns supreme, and anomie runs rampant. The people who find themselves spiritually unsatisfied by this condition are generally left to look in other places for their much-needed cultural support.

When this happens, they are left with the lowest common denominator available to each and every member of the metropolitan society in question: mass media. Mainstream television, film, and radio become the only viable sources of cultural belonging, and actually attempt to take the place of religious thought by offering all of the things that, in a rural society, religion would be able to provide.

These include a sense of cultural belonging, a moral compass by which the individual is encouraged to live their life, and a set of values that represent the culture in question. In an entirely individualist society, mass media and the pop culture that it represents turns into the most powerful factors in the spiritual development of an individual. This leads to the adoption of dangerously unbalanced values, since the mass media is created with the intent of creating consumers, not individuals (Strinati 148).

            The dangerously unbalanced system of values propagated by mass media in the place of a system informed by a traditional culture leads to increasing secularization. Individuals who once adopted pluralist ideals in an effort to be a functional member of a multicultural society are encouraged further down the road to atheism, until they no longer associate themselves with any religion at all.

Those that do are largely going through the motions in order to compensate for their inescapable feelings of anomie rather than for the cultivation of a spiritual self or the discovery of a religious truth that can benefit their lives. This creates a precedent that devalues religion in the face of other, more distracting daily affairs.

Once this system of values has been adopted by an entire populace, it begins to establish itself in much the same way that early religions did in the tribal societies that they were born in, but without providing the social benefits that those religions offered their followers. To the contrary, instead of engendering peace by affirming the place of the individual in society and their responsibility to it, mass media encourages the individual to rise above society and use it for their own benefit.

Instead of promoting the feeling of spiritual contentment that having a family gives an individual, mass media exclusively portrays family in one of two ways: a highly dysfunctional network of relationships from which every member wishes to separate, or the foundation of a comedy at which everyone else can laugh.

            Unfortunately, returning to the religious absolutism of early historical societies is out of the question. Once religious pluralism has taken hold, it needs to be upheld for as long as its peacekeeping values remain, at face value, evident. 

       Those individuals who feel systematically oppressed by pop culture and who fail to find belonging in religious solace are left to create highly deviant alternative cultures that often follow equally deviant religious doctrines. It is for this reason that Satanist communities rarely exist in a traditional rural setting, if they do at all.

They are largely confined to large cities, where they offer a means for individuals to escape the anomie that plagues them without having to give up their all-important individuality. The main problem with this is the widespread idea that adherence to religious doctrine eliminates individuality. Durkheim’s view of religion as the most fundamental social institution of mankind is made no clearer than in the instances such as these, where the lack of an appropriate replacement for that institution leads to deviance and amorality (38).

            While religious pluralism is often seen from a sociological viewpoint as performing a great good for metropolitan societies in helping them maintain order amongst a multicultural background that would surely devolve into massive reciprocal violence, it comes with a lack. That lack can be seen most clearly when compared to the relative abundance of spiritual belonging in rural and orthodox societies where the vast majority of individuals are adherents to a single religion.

On a certain fundamental level, it no longer even matters what that religion specifically is or what values it implies. Only the fact that each and every member of the society in question is on equal footing in a religious and spiritual sense is enough to create a sense of camaraderie that is sorely missing from the urban environment. 

Instead of adopting religious and social stances solely for the purpose of reducing violent and immoral behavior, rural societies have long-standing cultural traditions that are impossible to extricate from their religious context. In a rural society, cultural and spiritual values gain a sense of importance that precludes the banalities of pop culture and leads to resistance to their encroachment whenever encountered.

          The religious beliefs of rural societies, while far more collective in their scope and empowered with a much greater ability to resist anomie, are not without their faults. Many social and religious critics pinpoint rural societies as being backwards in scope, standing in the way of progress, and indulging in immoral traditions. 

         While there are certainly enough individual examples of each of these situations being true in certain cases, they should be taken at face value as being the direct effect of having a small society free of the constraints of religious pluralism. It should be noted that all of these characteristics are equally observable in modern, urban societies and, while easily stereotypical of the “country-bumpkin” mentality, are not representative of the lives that individuals who form a part of this kind of society live. 

        In fact, rural societies can much more liberal and progressive than their metropolitan counterparts when aided by the social structure afforded by a church that is both trustworthy and relatively unhindered by repressive dogma and superstition. The ability for rural societies to achieve metropolitan levels of social progress, however, is not part of this discussion beyond the extent that it forms the first barrier to acceptance of these cultures when compared to urban societies.

The fact remains that individuals who are part of a rural society, or even those who currently live in metropolitan ones but were raised in a rural environment, have a much greater sense of belonging and an ability to follow the moral guidelines that their religious culture set out for them in a way that religious pluralism often hinders in a social context.

            The merits of religious pluralism are inarguable when understood for their purpose and scope in urban environments but are not widely necessary and, when necessary, need to be compensated for by something greater than pandering pop culture. In the 18-19^th centuries, this was achieved through nationalism, which, when not mixed into the religious fervor that it often accompanied, did an excellent job at providing a foundation for a cultural system of values that a great majority of people both rural and urban could benefit from.

National sentiments, however, led to greater global dilemmas by the time the 20^th century arrived, and led to the embroilment of the most civilized nations on earth at the time in a series of vicious wars. In a scrambling effort to fill the social, cultural, and spiritual gap left by the large-scale abandonment of nationalism on a global scale following both world wars, mass media set itself in place and took up the task by attempting to offer a sense of belonging that would resonate with the very lowest common denominator of each level of society. 

This, in turn, allowed for the idea of religious pluralism to gain widespread acceptance due to its promises of reducing violence and promoting tolerance– two values that have been given far greater importance in the second half of the 20^th century than they ever had previously.

            Where modern society goes wrong at the moment, now almost 100 years past the beginning of the first world war, is in the adoption of the lack of norms that religious pluralism encourages without also providing an accompanying set of moral guidelines by which people can live their lives. In the end, people are expected to come up with their own ideas about morality, to use their own means of measuring the effectiveness of their ideas, and to come to terms with their spiritual development on their own.

If such an empowered individual chooses to follow a singular religious path towards their enlightenment, it is only through the adoption of the norms offered by religion that they can reach their goal, and very few make that critical step. 

         What happens much more commonly, however, is that individuals adopt religious beliefs for social motives and begin taking small elements of different religions to form a highly personalized and unique spiritual identity that, despite having all the markings of a religion, fails to provide the most basic and fundamental human services that religion does. It is in the accepting of multiple mutually exclusive truths that religious pluralism offers the greatest peril for the spiritual development of the individual who indulges them.

            It is in this new half-hearted caste of spiritual-but-not-religious individuals who attempt to take the meaningful parts of each religious whole and fashion them into their own purpose-built religion that the greatest societal disadvantages are to be seen. These individuals, while doubtlessly empowered by their decisions, suffer from the inability to cooperate with their peers or to form a meaningful part of a religious body or network. 

          This elimination of collectivism effectively undermines whatever moral guidance they may have fashioned for themselves, and opens the doorway to any number of immoral activities that, instead of being seen as outlandish or out of the ordinary, are celebrated as new social norms in a situation where all the previous norms have already been all but obliterated.

The cultivation of this type of individual remains the most dangerous effect of religious pluralism in multicultural, urban societies; while definitely preferable to a society marked by religious violence and conflict, it is still a situation that demands a better, more collective solution. 

If members of these societies are left to cultivate their spiritual elements in this way, the rest of the religious and secular world can only expect to see further degradation as the historical movement of people towards cities continues on unabated.

Both rural and urban societies have the same religious needs, but find wholly different ways to meet those needs, and often find that those means are mutually exclusive with one another. It may not be possible to return to the folk traditions of yore, but a greater focus must be placed on the development of a singular spiritual path for those people who need it most. 

The fact that all religions lay claim to the one and singular truth is only the first obstacle that stays in the path to proper religious cultivation for the masses, because it leads to problems of trust among the populace.

The second is the newfound power of mass media, which has ill-fittingly replaced many of the societal benefits and values that religion once provided, leading to a religiously pluralist society that has given up its own spiritual and moral values for secular ones. 


These obstacles have no solution yet, but will become more pressing until they are met by a new religious concept that either renders the current form of religious pluralism irrelevant, or transcends it entirely.

Love and Loss through Tempo in Puccini’s Bohemian Classic, La Bohéme

The Metropolitan Opera performance of Giacomo Puccini’s 1896 masterpiece, La Bohéme is a powerful, riveting and faithful rendition of the opera’s original performance. Despite being more than one century old, the realistic tale of truncated love between poor poet Rodolfo, played by Ramón Vargas, and Mimi, portrayed by Angela Gheorghiu, remains as relevant and touching as ever.

This is, in no small part, due to the realistic portrayals of Puccini’s characters that are designed to stand the test of time thanks to their sophisticatedly human nature. Franco Zeffirelli leads the production that does justice to the composer’s grand ideals, while giving enough room for the artistic and expressive interpretation of conductor Nicola Luisotti.

The performance itself benefits from the sweeping changes of tempo that Luisotti employs to great effect in characterizing the varying tones of the principal performers. These changes allow for realistic performances, especially on the terms of the friendship and the love between Rodolfo and Mimi.

The opera itself is a perfect example of Puccini’s particular verismo style, which is characterized by a highly realistic narrative format that distances itself from the fantastic stories that remained the staple of Romantic period classical music for at least a century prior.

La Bohéme tells the story of four poor creationists living in 19th century Paris. The poet of the group, Rodolfo, falls in love with a mysterious, pure-hearted girl who comes to their home looking for matches in the night they are to celebrate the musician Schaunard’s good fortune.

After promptly falling in love with one another, Mimi decides to accompany the four to the Quartier Latin. As the two revel in their newfound love, Marcello warns them of his past heartbreak, which comes into the spotlight once the group enter the Cafe Momus and see his lost love Musetta with a boring, rich old man.

After Musetta charms Marcello by engaging in varying degrees of histrionic behavior, the six of them leave together while pushing the bill onto Musetta’s rich date. This concludes the first two acts, and the last two show Rodolfo, months later, claiming to have pushed Mimi away for her infidelity and flirtatiousness.

Upon being pressed to explain this to Marcello and Musetta, he admits that she is actually sick with tuberculosis and that he wants to see her marry a rich man so that she can afford medicine to stay alive. Mimi, hiding nearby, gives a telltale cough and the discovered couple embraces.

The two decide to stay together until next spring, when it is shown that Mimi left the wealthy viscount who became her patron in order to pursue her love with Rodolfo, which ends up costing her life. The opera ends with Rodolfo dramatically crying out Mimi’s name over her body, in a touching moment that serves as the climax of the performance.

The most distinctive feature of this particular performance of La Bohéme is to be found in the use of multiple tempi to distinguish between characters, their respective moods and the means by which the interplay of those elements distinguish the action of the narrative.

One example is to be found in the sensuous reduction that precedes Musetta’s Waltz in Act II: Quando Me’n Vo’ Soletta Per La Via, in particular. This performance is highlighted, especially in the beginning movement, by a sweeping tempo drop that focuses all of the musical attention on Ainhoa Arteta’s red-dressed interpretation of Musetta.

The drop in tempo, as well as its gradual increase that parallels the growing annoyance and aggravation of Marcello, reaches its highest point when the latter's name is actually mentioned, before lowering again and raising to the same point at Marcello’s and Musetta’s duet at the end.

This was a deliberate and well-planned move by conductor Luisotti to show the fervor of their feelings for one another and the relevance of her desire to leave her old lover in place of Marcello.

It should be noted that, in the interpretations offered by other conductors of the same piece, it is rare that this particular series of tempo changes occurs in the way that it is shown in the Metropolitan Opera performance. Luisotti used this to great effect throughout the opera to complement the character’s individual personalities.

In discussing the dynamics between the characters, it is necessary to more completely introduce the principal lead Rodolfo, played by Mexican tenor Ramón Vargas, who represents the most powerful and charismatic voice in the group.

His presence onstage is benefitted by a quick upswing in tempo that serves to show Rodolfo’s character as a man of impetus and action. By comparison, all of the character’s interactions with his colleagues occur at relatively slower tempos, demonstrating the character’s sensitivity to the feelings of others, which is a very important element to understanding the motives behind his actions.

This is most powerfully apparent in Act III’s Mimi E Tanto Malata, in which Rodolfo explains that he had hidden the real motive for his decision to leave Mimi in order to spare the feelings of those around him and to get her the medical attention that she needs.

The opening phrase of the piece, naturally, occurs in the slowest tempo within the act before quickly rising up to a conversational pace. Despite the relatively icy response that he elicits from Angela Georghiu’s Mimi, whose over-exaggerated and melodramatic performance dispels the necessary suspension of disbelief, the tempi used in their interactions serves to bring the two characters together in a believable fashion.

The level of realism that this endows the performance with easily makes up for Georghiu’s shortcomings; despite being described in the program material as the leading Puccini soprano in the world- a distinction that she does not seem to deserve.

Puccini’s La Bohéme was a highly rewarding experience and one that was as educational as it was enlightening to the spirit. The depth of imagery offered by the production and the camaraderie between the principal characters gives it a unique touch that is further embellished by the sweeping changes of tempo employed by conductor Nicola Luisotti.

The most surprising elements of the opera performance were the realization of Georghiu’s status as a classically over-hyped singer who does not deliver the warmth and realism of her counterparts, and the depth of vibrancy of Vargas’ interpretation of Rodolfo.

The decision to transpose Rodolfo’s famous aria Che Gelida Manina such that it peaks at a high B instead of the much-needed high C was also a less-than-welcome surprise to a piece that Puccini is known to have conceptualized in an almost Wagnerian style of through-composition.

In all other matters regarding the orchestration, tonality, tempi and other artistic choices that are made evident through the performance, it is one that definitely earns its merit as an excellent and lasting testament to the great Italian master and to the world of opera at large.

           

Duplicity in Oates’ Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been: Predicting Independence and Defining a New Culture of Isolation

There are few subjects that touch the heart of an individual like the transition from adolescence to adulthood. It is a subject universally explored by artists and writers alike, as well as one personally experienced, yet not always understood, by nearly every human being. 

The implications of cultural values on this period of transition, however, remained largely misunderstood until the release of Oates’ landmark short story Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

This story, published in 1966, tellingly shows the fragmentation of family values in the face of a personally gratifying, sometimes threatening pop culture that had just become a manifest at that moment in history. 

The story’s main character, Connie, clearly represents a new, duplicitous adolescent that wants badly to become an adult as soon as possible. The menacing Arnold Friend embodies the cool, dangerous, quickly shifting and never-quite-authentic mask of pop culture that instills isolation as an important personal value where, previously, familial piety had been the norm for most of human history.

1.         Summary

The story begins with a description of Connie, an impressionable 15-year old girl who quickly demonstrates that she rejects her traditional family role as sister and daughter in favor of a now-typical adolescent obsession for exploring her sexuality. She revels in the fact that she is physically attractive and uses this to create a persona that is mature and sexual, but only when she is out with her friends - never at home.

While out, she leaves her friends to go to a restaurant with a similarly-aged boy, spending the evening with him in his car, in an alley nearby. Here she sees Arnold Friend for the first time, who makes a passing remark to her that she quickly forgets about. The following Sunday, Arnold mysteriously shows up at her home and attempts to convince her to leave her home and go for a ride with him. 

After a lengthy confrontation in which Arnold spans the entire spectrum of rhetoric in his insincere, disjointed and jocular manner, he becomes violently threatening and convinces her to leave the house. It is implied that she will never see her home again after that.

2.         Connie as the New, Duplicitous Generation of Adolescents

Connie is clearly described as living through two separate identities. As Oates writes, “Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home…”, implying that Connie’s incipient transition into adulthood is only a ruse at the moment (Oates 2). Connie is playing dual roles in her life, both as a member of the family which she intentionally rejects, and as a conscious woman who is prepared to explore her sexual identity.

Despite her acting like a mature, confident woman, once Arnold shows up outside her home and offers her a ride, she is suddenly indecisive and childish. His forceful nature has inhibited the rise of her maturity, and she describes her transitional indecisiveness and duplicity at the same time when saying, “She couldn’t decide if he liked him or if he was just a jerk” (Oates 5). 

When she threatens to call the police directly after this, it is an important symbolic moment in which she transfers all of the responsibility for her personal safety and security to an outside authority, cementing her adolescent status through her powerlessness to stop Arnold.

An important symbol for Connie’s adult fantasy is music. In the older kids’ restaurant as well as at her home, pop music is her only guide into the world of adult sexuality and remains the way she understands romance in general. When she realizes that Arnold has tuned his radio to the same station as the one that she was listening to at home, she lowers her guard because he seems to fall in line with the expectations that she has built up through her exposure to pop music and culture. 

Her lowering the guard is shown further when Arnold begins distractedly singing the lines to various songs during their confrontation outside her house. She responds by becoming increasingly nervous, as her transition from a little girl who listens to these songs and stories towards a woman who lives them becomes complete.

By the end of their confrontation, in the very last lines of the story, Arnold sings sweetly about her blue eyes, despite the fact that they are not blue. This difference of color supports the interpretation of Connie as an archetype for the misunderstood teenager more than any other individual character element evident in the story. 

There is no Jungian archetype for the misunderstood teenager and the concept itself is less than a century old even now. That is why Oates uses details like the different color of the eyes in order to show the reader that Connie should not be interpreted as a single, complex character, but rather as an existential conflux of teenage sensibilities that represent the American youth in general.  

Urbanski writes more in depth about the interpretation of Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? as an existential allegory, but stops before using Oates’ representation of the Connie character as the grounds for creating a new archetype. Instead, he insists that she is, at most, a mere symbol that represents a certain element of the new American youth culture (Urbanski 76).

3.         Arnold as the Embodiment of Pop Culture Alienation

Where Connie is an innocent girl undergoing transformation, Arnold represents the fullest and most extreme point on the spectrum of that change. Oates describes most of his actions as being inauthentic, not genuine, or flat-out lies, and his entire character is designed to be appealing, albeit in an awkward and untrustworthy way. 

This lack of authenticity is shown by his laughter, which is acted out powerfully before it is made clear that, “The way he straightened and recovered from his fit of laughing showed that it had been all fake” (Oates 6). His hair is described as possibly being a wig, and his age is hinted at, but never delivered. It is only made clear that he is not, as he says, 18 years old.

These, as well as many other red flags designed to warn the reader to be suspicious about his intentions, lead to an interpretation of Arnold as the manifestation of the era’s cheap pop culture. His interaction with Connie is an allegory for her own transformation from an innocent family girl to a product of the culture that changed her. 

His duplicity and unnatural nature have led some critics to point out that he may not even be human, but rather than being directly fantastical or a hallucinatory dream-figment created by Connie as suggested by Coulthard, he fits best within the scope of a personified symbol. Arnold Friend’s duplicity shows this best because it touches the heart of Connie’s own transition and leads her to develop a sense of trust in someone who, by her own admission, she should absolutely stay away from.

Arnold Friend’s duplicity shows an inherent dualism of personality that Oates is using to describe pop culture as a whole, which was, in the 1960’s, still a new and widely misunderstood phenomenon. Arnold’s constant singsong chatter and wide use of out-of-fashion slang make this connection clear. Weinberger creates a beat generation stereotype of Arnold as a character when he writes, “[He] represented a false and overconfident male sexual stereotype that completed Connie’s innocence and transition” (12), which is fully supported by Oates’ description of his clothing and passive/aggressive mannerisms.

Arnold’s dual nature is explored up to the point of him no longer having a traditionally-defined identity like Connie - he seems to know everyone, yet nobody knows him and he has no family and distances himself from his less-charming, music-obsessed friend Ellie as much as possible. 

These details justify the interpretation of Arnold as a force of isolation for Connie. His flashy car and use of rhetoric, as well as music, serve to give him an almost demonic sense of power within the narrative of the story.

Oates makes the duplicitous nature of Arnold clear when writing that “His whole face was a mask” in such a way as to totally hide his own identity and, instead, put in its place a collective urban fantasy that we now know as pop culture (Oates 9). 

That fantasy is one that Connie reluctantly shares, despite not understanding her complicity. It is one that she partakes in only because of her desire for the separation from her family that would allow her to take on the mature, sexual identity that she thinks she wants. Once the opportunity finally comes, she gets scared and tacitly refuses to leave with Arnold. 

However, at the end of the confrontation, she accepts that she cannot call the police and must take responsibility for her own decision to leave with this dangerous stranger. She realizes that the transition from fantasy to reality has to be made, and can only be made in this way.

4.         Arnold Friend - Bringing the Culture of Isolation to Connie’s Home

During the confrontation outside Connie’s house that shows most of the character development that takes place within the story, Arnold uses every trick he knows to get her to leave the house and go with him. Arnold has been described as a devil figure by multiple critics, in particular Joan Easterly, whose fantastic interpretation of the text goes as far as to suggest that his boots did not fit properly because he had hooves instead of feet (Easterly 540). 

While this interpretation is certainly colorful, it does not fit in with the conflicting nature of Connie’s reluctance to go out with him. It is more appropriate to define his falseness as stemming from the identities that he puts on: the songs he sings clips of, and the out-of-fashion sayings he variously spits out and scrawls onto his golden car. These elements are the ones that secure the foundation of this interpretation and lend credibility to the awkwardness of his personal isolation and desire to reach out to, kidnap and own Connie.

Arnold’s identity as a symbol for the teenage-fantasy pop culture is made most apparent through Connie’s identification of him through music. Oates makes music the focal point of her attraction to him, stating that, “listening to the music from her radio and [Arnold’s] blend together” is what made her keep talking to him in the first place (Oates 6). 

In doing so, Oates also points out and predicts a trend that was only beginning in the 1960’s and continues to this day: the alienation of disaffected youth that finds identity and expression through pop culture forms. It is precisely this sense of disenfranchisement from the values of the traditional American nuclear family culture prevalent in the 1950’s that creates people like Arnold Friend, who is suitably dressed in the garb of a 1950’s greaser - the original prototype.

The culture of isolation comes in when Connie is forced to choose between her two identities: one in which she plays the role of a daughter and sister in a family, and her newfound sexual identity that she is not prepared for, but eagerly wants to accept nonetheless. In order to accept this new role and to transition fully into adulthood, she must leave her family, abandon the roles that they have constructed for her, and adopt a new role as the companion and lover of an obviously false stranger.

It is through Arnold’s falseness that her oncoming isolation becomes clear, and, as Urbanksi points out, “Arnold Friend as a character need not actually exist outside of Connie’s mind; everything he stands for needs only be represented by a figment of her imagination.” (10) Taking his falseness as far as to declare him not physically real seems an unnecessary step. The fact that his interest in Connie has nothing to do with helping her identify herself as a member of any particular society, however, shows clearly enough that he is pointing her towards isolation as a defining characteristic of her new identity.

5.         Conclusion: Oates’ Predictions Come True

In the time since the publication of Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?, many of these themes, as foreseen explicitly by Oates, have indeed become true for generations after generations of disenfranchised youth. The urge for young girls to identify themselves sexually at younger and younger ages and their use of whatever rebellious music is in fashion at the time continues to move towards increasingly extreme measures. 

Whether speaking of punk’s “Blank Generation” of the 1980’s or any pop culture phenomenon invented today, the onward march as predicted by Oates in this story continues to grow as society calibrates itself towards isolation and away from family values. A single look at any television program released in the last several decades shows an inversion of the traditional merits of family in favor of lonesome self-branded identity. 

As Walker points out, pop culture media using the channels of music, television and film only portray families as being complicated sources of conflict for main characters with selfish desires - not a single wholesome, functional family is ever portrayed in a positive light (Walker 69).

The catering of media channels to adolescent values of independence has bred this isolating, anti-family cultural effect. What was originally conceived as a young persons’ independence has long been twisted into a totally dependent cultural isolation in which their own, false identities can be put on and used when convenient. This convenient false identity is never shown more clearly than with Arnold Friend. 

Despite consistently being described as unreliable, untrustworthy, dangerous and even threatening, he remains attractive enough to convince Connie to leave her home and go with him into the new world of adulthood that he spreads before her. It is made implicitly clear that she is leaving her family forever, but Oates does not mention for what, other than the “vast, sunlit reaches of land” that surround her (Oates 10). 

Isolation And Light As Devices Of Enlightenment: The Journey To Political Self-Determination In Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man

RalphEllison’s literary masterpiece, Invisible Man, explores the status of the black man in mid-century America. In the process, it pays special attention to the conflict between his personal identity and that which is given to him as a member of the African-American community in a larger, national context during a time of rampant racism.

Numerous scholars, such as Warren and Howe, have pointed out the symbolism of color that pervades the novel and amplifies its meaning. However, the treatment of light itself is rarely touched upon in literary criticism. Light was not scientifically well understood at the time of the novel’s writing and, in fact, remains poorly understood to this day.

In Invisible Man, light is used to represent a clearly mysterious force that, while illuminating whatever was in focus, managed to remain itself unknown and apparently unknowable. Ralph Ellison used light as a metaphor for identity and as a device to frame the isolation brought on by intellectual honesty. This becomes clear particularly in the face of self-serving political parties, commonly united only by their widespread corruption and brought to his attention personally by his own betrayal by the Communist party.

The key to understanding this interpretation of Invisible Man lies in grasping Ellison’s personal hopes and desires that he felt could be achieved through affiliation with the Communists. He had spent the years prior to World War Two writing for numerous Marxist publications, such as The New Masses, and later found both himself and his people betrayed by the gradual change in scope from Marxist class politics towards social reform. The black proletariat was being handed the short end of the hammer, sickle notwithstanding.

Ellison’s struggle, as it was being felt by millions of other Americans, is revealed by two major elements. On one hand, there is the nuanced interpretation of Invisible Man’s overt Marxist themes, in particular its treatment of the Brotherhood, within the structure of its extended use of light as a metaphor.

On the other hand, there is the interplay between this and the other political values expressed throughout the book. It becomes more obvious during the Second Red Scare that was beginning to take hold at the time of the novel’s release and which continued to construct a massively dehumanizing era. This era is governed by the Communist witch hunts led by Senator Joseph McCarthy as the country plunged further into Cold War fear mongering.

1.      Summary

In Invisible Man, Ellison portrays a nameless black man who declares himself socially invisible, giving a first-person account of his past. Telling the story from a point in the future, the narrator has already experienced the outcome of his numerous betrayals.

The first time, it was at the hands of the important white men who gave him a scholarship to a prestigious black college after forcing him to fight in a humiliating blindfolded battle royal. The second time, it was by the college president Dr. Bledsoe.

He is later betrayed by his black, anti-union supervisor at the Liberty Paints plant, by the hospital staff following his altercation at the plant, and then by the Brotherhood, who use his oratory skills for their own needs, making him an enemy of the Black Nationalist leader Ras the Exhorter.

At the climax of the story, he flees from the police down a manhole cover where he remains since and becomes effectively invisible on a social level. Even the two instances of sexual relations with women, both white, that occur in the story are shown to be wholly designed for using the narrator on account of his skin color, as part of a widespread black sexual stereotype.

2.         Light As A Symbol For Identity And Honesty In Invisible Man           

The long series of betrayals serves as the primary marker of structure in Invisible Man. Throughout the story, the narrator moves from one situation to another, each climaxing with a form of betrayal that leads him further into the light of truth and self-discovery while destroying him socially.

The use of light, as represented in the story, creates a sense of sharp contrast between the affirmed, self-aware individuals who are capable of vision, and the blind, self-righteous representatives of organizations. The only pleasures of the latter are derived from pushing forward various social and political agendas at the cost of the narrator’s sense of identity.

2.1.      Light And Isolation In The Beginning

By the time he reaches the end of this road, he is living in a disused room underneath an all-white apartment complex where he siphons power from Monopolated Light & Power to create a space, “full of light. I doubt if there is a brighter spot in all New York than this hole of mine, and do not exclude Broadway.” (Ellison 12).

That brightness is, in fact, the knowledge of his own identity. It has served both to excise the narrator from society entirely and to give him the ability to understand himself, not as a functionary whose usefulness is defined by some organization, but as a complex individual human being. By running 1,369 light bulbs constantly in order to create this effect of extreme light, Ellison has shown a link between the brightness of elucidation and truth and the isolation of the uncompromising hermit.

2.2.      Light Pointing Towards Unachievable Ends

While the first and most crucial use of light as a literary device within Invisible Man happens at the very beginning, the symbol continues to propagate thereafter. When the reader is shown the actual contents of the recommendation letter written by Dr. Bledsoe, it concludes with the statement, “I beg of you, sir, to help [the narrator] continue in the direction of that promise which, like the horizon, recedes ever brightly and distantly beyond the hopeful traveler.” (Ellison 388).

The key word in this passage is, “brightly”, where it is shown that the promise in question, though seemingly false when compared to what Dr. Bledsoe had said, was entirely correct. The “bright” future, however, was not one working in the employ of this reputable company - it was surrounded by the stolen light of more than a thousand bulbs in the ultimate conclusion of ever increasing self-knowledge and actualization.

2.3.      Light And Blindness

Only a moment after the preceding scene is complete, the man to whom the narrator is speaking advises him, “There is no point in blinding yourself to the truth. Don’t blind yourself…” and later claims that the narrator has been, “freed” (Ellison 390). The theme of blindness, as explained in depth by Warren’s interpretation of the novel, runs exactly parallel to the use of light as a device for understanding one’s identity.

In every case in which blindness is used throughout the novel, it is done in order to show a character who has failed to fulfill their individual destiny by glorifying something or someone else. The best examples here are the blind reverend Homer Barbee, Brother Jack and the narrator’s own experience of fighting blindfolded in a battle royal in order to earn his right to go to university.

The important message that Ellison makes apparent through this treatment of blindness is that it happens because of the participant’s adoption of the organization’s goals in place of the individual himself. While this is barely touched upon in the beginning of the novel, it becomes more and more apparent until, at the end, Brother Hambro spells it out clearly to the narrator.

In this explanation, however, Brother Hambro is not just speaking on behalf of the Brotherhood, but, indeed, on behalf of all social organizations and their destructive relationship with the self-determining nature of the individual, particular when defined by race.

3.         Defining The Individual Identity Through Social Organizations

Ralph Ellison maintains that organizations, especially political ones, are the first step towards the loss of self that is commonly referred to as blindness in Invisible Man. In every instance where the narrator was exposed to an organization, it was used to isolate, humiliate and dehumanize him.

The message that Ellison seeks to convey through this treatment of social groups is that they detract from the individual’s ability to conceive of and create their own purpose in a modern world that largely only wants them to fit into whatever preconceived mold is ready for them.

3.1.      Suffocating The Self Through Group Identity

Each of the organizations of which the narrator plays a part serve as an example for how black people should integrate successfully in society. Whether constructed in a negative or positive light, the fundamental idea of all the organizations represented in Invisible Man is that they and the character in whom their power is vested, know best what kind of life the narrator should live.

This theft of choice is often shown through symbolism, such as in the Liberty Paint factory where a “dead black” mixture was used to create the extra-pure “Optic White” paint. It is also shown through situational awareness: in the same location, the narrator finds himself equally disregarded by both his black supervisor and the white union members.

The latter place him squarely in the middle of their own interpersonal conflict, without even letting him participate in the discussion in a meaningful way. In essence, both sides of the conflict are completely unaware of the narrator’s humanity, and simply see him as another piece to their puzzle.

3.2.      The Dim Light Of Those Who Can Define Themselves

Once the narrator returns from his first encounter with the union, he is interrogated by his black, anti-union supervisor, Brockway, while “seeing how the light caught on his wrinkled forehead, his snowy hair” (Ellison 456). Here, Ellison describes the light in reference to a man who is self-aware and who has made it clear that he defines his identity, poorly as it may be, through Liberty Paints, which Brockway has already stated would not exist without him.

In the next sentence, he describes, “looking at [Brockway] through a kind of mist”, which displays the fact that the narrator does not yet understand what this identity means. He is not aware of his own identity either and, more importantly at this moment, does not understand Brockway’s ability to define himself through the organization that Liberty Paints represents on a socio-political level: that of capitalism (Ellison 456). This leads to a physical confrontation that distracts both men from the pressure valves, leading to an explosion that lands the narrator in a hospital.

3.3.      The Many Inevitable Betrayals

At the hospital, the narrator is again subjected to torment at the hands of an organization that was, in theory, created to help him. Critically, this torment takes the form of electricity, which is shortly understood to be thematically combined with light. In his amnesia, the narrator is asked who he is, and responds by telling the reader that the question, “seemed to set off a series a weak and distant lights… Who am I?” (Ellison 488).

His total loss of identity is defined by the darkness of amnesia that was treated with painful electric current that was again defined as, “dazzling with lights”. It was forced upon him by an organization whose ostensible virtue was to help people recover from illness and injury, but whose only real goal was to reduce him to a test subject for their own purposes (Ellison 492).

In each case where the narrator finds himself as part of an organization, regardless of the stated, intended or explicitly promised goals thereof, he is betrayed, tricked, or otherwise used in a dehumanizing manner. Ellison clearly points out this as being the result of the organization’s self-serving nature at the expense of individual identity.

This is where darkness and blindness are combined into a complex literary device through which the narrator explains to the reader that those institutions: the schools, religions, businesses, hospitals and social platforms of which he found himself a part were, in fact, all designed to push him down while extending their own goals at any cost.

The narrator consistently finds himself drawn in against his own will, defined by those who seek to crush his identity and replace it with their own, and then give him nothing in return but their condemnation, betrayal, and violence.

4.         Self-Definition Through Isolation: Shortcomings Of The Early Marxists

The most important elements of this novel are only available to the close reader who is
aware of the Marxist overtones present throughout, as well as being aware of Ellison’s personal history with the young Communist Party.

Free of the modern connotations that Communism elicits nowadays, the younger Ellison found himself attracted to the promise of a free, fair worker’s paradise, of the equality that America had never quite managed to offer its black citizens before.

He became involved with this seemingly futuristic, utopian political party and then quickly lost his faith as it became increasingly clear that the promises being made were, like so many others, not for him. In response, he colors this aspect of the Invisible Man’s narrator’s story with the beginning of hope after numerous betrayals leading only further into the inevitable isolation of self-discovery.

4.1.      The History Behind Invisible Man’s Communist Allegory

Upon leaving the hospital and collapsing in the street, the narrator is treated to the first acts of kindness described so far in his adventure. This kindness comes not from an organization, but from an individual named Mary Rambo who takes him in and nurses him back to health.

At this point, light leaves the narrative until the narrator describes, “a spot of black anger” that “threw off a red hot light of such intensity…” inside himself, and which led to him joining the Brotherhood, Ellison’s allegory for the Communist party (Ellison 568).

As related to fellow author Richard Wright in the 1940’s, concerning his treatment by the Communist party, Polsgrove quotes Ellison:  “‘If they want to play ball with the bourgeoisie they needn't think they can get away with it…’ [and] In the wake of this disillusion, Ellison began writing Invisible Man, a novel that was, in part, his response to the party's betrayal.” (32)

The foundation for Ellison’s disenfranchisement was the manner in which African Americans were treated by the early Marxists who felt that, while it was beneficial to receive support from African Americans, any form of Black Nationalism was completely out of the question.

As Robinson writes, “Black nationalism was intolerable to a movement so constantly close to foundering on national and ethnic divisions” (218). This created a division between the nationalists, depicted in the novel through characters such as the sinister Ras The Exhorter and the communists that could never be restored.

4.2.      Half-Blind Leadership

The identity crisis that begins to plague the narrator at this point in the story is given form by his attempt to integrate into the Brotherhood and their resulting use of him for his oratory ability. After the death of Tod Clifton at the hands of the police, the narrator’s unapproved funeral earns him harsh treatment from Brother Jack, who serves to represent the organization as it beats the narrator down and robs him of his identity in the process.

Brother Jack’s ideological rant, along with the symbolic dropping of his false eye, shows a critical moment in which the narrator’s simple ability to make a decision was met with derision and led to his inevitable later status as a pariah.

The false eye again uses blindness as a device that shows the manner by which the Brotherhood’s ideological intention, which Ellison agreed with at one point, suffers from the practical impossibility of reaching that promised point, symbolized by Jack’s half-blindness.

In the eyes of the Brotherhood, the narrator is not a human being whose real social and political needs carry any relevance. He is simply a mouthpiece for their agenda, which, by that point, no longer included anything of value for him or for the people he represented.

4.3.      Resolving Ideological Conflict Without Identity

In this particular situation, the narrator was put in the middle of two organized, ideological forces that refused to offer him the chance the speak up and assert his own identity. While the Brotherhood claims to be working for the common people, the black nationalists represented by Ras The Exhorter see the attempt as futile and turn the narrator into an enemy.

As a result, violence breaks out quickly as ideologies are taken to their logical extremes and each one attempts to use the narrator as a vessel for their own needs. Irving Howe, a longtime critic and detractor of Ellison’s, writes, “Ideology is sometimes treated by the American novelists as if it were… private experience.

Those massive political institutions, parties and movements… are barely present…” (190) in a clear shot at Ellison, who is targeted as the, “American novelist” in particular. What Howe failed to realize, however, is that this intensely character-based depiction of ideology is exactly what gives Invisible Man its social power.

By consolidating the ideologies inside the characters that express them, readers are introduced only to the actions that the ideologies inspire, and are left only with the impressions of those actions on the narrator, who is pushed through their gears for as long as he remains useful.

Ellison points out that the actual ideologies in question are not as important as the manners in which they are twisted by individuals. They are turned into mechanisms for destroying the individual in the name of creating a better environment for whatever social class the ideology caters to most.

For Communism and Marxism, the proletariat remains the obsession of every ideological standpoint, while, for Black Nationalism, it is not just the African-American, but only those somehow untainted by white culture.

5.         Reaching Atonement And Identifying The Self

Each of these experiences comes through Ellison to the reader in the form of the narrator, who is placed through constant trials arising from his inability to assert an identity in a world that is dictating one for him through whatever socio-political powers he comes into contact with.

The education system, and, later, corporate capitalism as embodied by Liberty Paint are given a great deal of significance towards defining the narrator’s sense of self and identity for him. However, the highlight of these conflicts remains the isolating struggle between The Brotherhood and Ras The Exhorter’s black nationalists.

As Warren later suggested, “Ellison’s reflections on his craft could not help but cast light on the construction of reconstruction of the problem of the color line” (23).  Through this, he means to indicate that, on both sides, and again through the symbol provided by light, the basis of race is used both by racists and assertive non-racists in a way that makes political self-determination impossible.

The backwards characteristic of Black Nationalism is shown very clearly in Ellison’s work, as the color line is made unclear by individuals who eschew identification with the self for that with a group. That identification along the color line, as well as the Brotherhood’s identification along the line of social class is shown to be the first step into organized political tyranny.

Once Brother Hambro tells the narrator clearly that the individual is of no importance, his ego death is complete. It is from here that the story’s final elements come into play. The narrator takes part in a race riot through the symbolic act of burning down a building. He is confronted by Ras The Exhorter who blames the Brotherhood for not making better use of the funeral for Clifton, and takes this anger out personally on the narrator.

As a result, the narrator is forced into hiding and it is only there that he manages to fully assume his own humanity as a self-determined, complex individual. It is at this point, hiding deep underground, that his transition into full invisibility has been completed, and the narrator comes to terms with the fact that he  “has no meaningful identity until, illuminated by hundreds of light bulbs, he realizes that he is an invisible man” (Stark 60).

The narrator, having fulfilled his desire to complete the memoir of his transition, then tells the reader that he finally feels ready to emerge again into society and to fulfill his role as a meaningful, complex individual. It is time for him to define himself and his own needs without being assigned a role by some nebulous higher authority.

Having fully isolated himself and coming completely into the light of self-realization and identity, he is now prepared to face the world on his own and establish his own road to self-determination. He will no longer allow himself to be used and defined by others for their own gain.

Ellison universalizes this in his widely celebrated last sentence that directly addresses the reader and shows that all people, as social beings, are subject to the whims of the authorities. These authorities thrust them into darkness in an attempt to define them as useful for their own causes, but, through the light of honest appraisal, self-determination can be reached, embodied, and even enjoyed.