Seeing the Invisible Man

"Somewhere a machine began to hum and I distrusted the man and woman above me"... "Be quiet now," one of them said firmly. "You'll be all right" (232). And just like that, he was silenced.  In chapter eleven, the narrator wakes up in a hospital where he sees several unfamiliar figures. The whole chapter reminded me of a Marionette: a puppet controlled by strings. Immobilized and unable to make decisions for himself, the narrator could be considered "lifeless" like a puppet. Although his facial and physical features seem to show a human, he was definitely not treated as such, but rather, as a puppet.  However, instead of a regular puppet that is directly controlled by a single person's hand and has no strings, a Marionette is more complicated: In this case, the people behind the strings controlling the narrator in this chapter are the doctors, but more generally, the white people who dominate society. And even the cross at the top where st

That's probably not true, by definition, but it does feel frustrating and confusing. In Native Son , we run into aspects of naturalism throughout the book. Naturalism says that "natural forces predetermine a character’s decisions" which make them act a certain way. However, it almost feels wrong to label Bigger's crimes as "natural". Do his circumstances and environments really make that much of an impact? If you had two people, with the same circumstances and upbringing, would they really turn out just the same? Twins don't. If you lived the life of Bigger Thomas, would the story play out just the same? ...Who knows.  Coming to terms with the idea that you have no sense of control over your life doesn't seem like the best experience to go through. Yet, Bigger felt like this at the end of  Native Son , simply accepting that this is how his life will end. He had no choice. He did all that he could do.  But wait! He's not guilty. In fact, he didn&#