Narrator's Racial Icons

Throughout the novel, we have seen several racial items pop up in the narrator's life. One thing that I found interesting, though, is that while he initially tries to reject them, he ends up just bringing them along in his briefcase. Pretty recently, the narrator has obtained a jolly bank, chain link, and Sambo doll. The parallels between the bank and doll are by themselves quite striking, and we see a certain pattern of events unfold after each.

The black Americana jolly bank the narrator notices in chapter 15 is the first of these events. I don't think his finally noticing it so late into his stay was a coincidence. As we've seen so far, Ellison has a way of making even the most mundane things mean something. I think instead the author tried to depict how the narrator, prior to this scene, was somewhat blind to just how racist the world is. He proceeds to smash the bank--quite an impressive feat, considering it's made of cast iron--and then panicking and putting it in his briefcase to discard later. When he does attempt to dispose of it, however, we see how the racial icon keeps on coming back into his life, and he ultimately leaves it be. As far as we know, he is still carrying it. Besides this clear symbolism of racial stereotypes, Ellison amplifies the situation by making each of his attempted disposals further lowering in status for the narrator. The first time he tries to get rid of it, the woman immediately assumes he's a southern hoodlum. This represents the constant labeling the narrator has endured throughout the book. As a matter of fact, we don't even know him by name--just as a black man trying to make his way through the world.

A little further down the road, we see the narrator acquire Tarp's chain link. As opposed to the bank, however, the narrator accepts this gift for what it is, and is rather protective of it when Westrum starts criticizing it. While Westrum takes the equality beliefs of the Brotherhood a little too seriously--getting upset at the narrator for owning such a thing--the narrator believes this is necessary to understand his history and how the past has shaped the world today. It is better to keep yourself well-rounded, rather than denying all things evil and fabricating a naïve reality, much like Westrum is doing.

Finally, the narrator obtains Clifton's Sambo doll. By now, he has enough racist memorabilia to establish his own museum, but we again see his somewhat unclear motives for holding on to all of this. Initially, the Sambo doll mesmerizes him. The "inanimate, boneless bouncing of the grinning doll" draws him towards Clifton's show before he even notices the puppeteer himself. Once he does, he doesn't know how to feel. On one hand he is enchanted, but in another he is disgusted at the puppet and the fact that the puppet enchanted him in the first place. Doing the most defiant thing he can come up with at the moment, he spits on it. Instead, people start to laugh at him too, thinking he resembles the doll. Not knowing what else to do, he scoops up the doll and puts it in his pocket too, "[dropping] it in the pocket where [he] carried Brother tarp's chain link."

Overall, I certainly don't think Ellison accidentally included all three of these events innocently. I think he was trying to get at the bigger picture of the narrator's life--and life for all african americans of the era--by representing how racial stereotypes have not died down since the abolishment of slavery nearly a century ago. The racial icons that continue to follow him and are seemingly inseparable from him definitely back up Ellison's intentions.