Liberty Paint Discussion Thoughts

I thoroughly enjoyed the socratic seminar on the Liberty Paint section of Invisible Man because of the multiple interpretations of this section. One of the main points that I truly liked during the discussion was Antoine's point of the narrator's journey and its relationship to Dante's Inferno. For example, Lucius Brockway could be an allusion to Lucifer or the Devil. Not only this, his workshop is located beneath the industrial factory three stories down as if one is literally and figurative walking down towards hell. Another correlation to Dante's Inferno is seen during the hospital scene. This scene contains many correspondences to circle Six, where Dante portrays the heretics and their fiery chests similar to the iron lung which the invisible man describes as "fiery". Lucius Brockway's positioning within the factory was also incredibly interesting to me as he is located at the very bottom and claims that " right down here is where the real paint is made. Without what I do they couldn't do nothing, they be making bricks without straw..." Essentially, Brockway is the foundation for the "pure" liberty paints. This is so ironic and contradictory considering that the perfectly white paint must be created with black droplets and by a black man himself in a basement. Looking farther than the racism problem, one can also see that the important theme of individuality vs. community. For example, the Optic White paint is created by adding black to the middle of the white paint to make it glossier. Thus, one can imagine an eyeball like symbol which is a smaller circle within a larger circle. This symbol definitely portrays a common motif throughout the book, which is the influence of a larger community over the individual. For example, we see this through the university, industrial paint, brotherhood etc. It seems as though the narrator is constantly influenced by a larger force around him or a community that seems to strip away his individuality until the end of the novel. Not only this, this scene also portrays an evident rebirth within the text. For example, at the beginning of chapter 12, after the hospital scene, the narrator claims, " When I came out of teh subway, Lenox Avenue seemed to careen away from me at a drunken angle, and I focused upon the teetering scene with wild, infant's eyes, my head throbbing". Also, before the beginning of chapter twelve, the speaker notices a "young platinum blonde [who] nibbled at a red Delicious apple as a station lights rippled past behind her. The train plunged". The fruit is an obvious allusion to the Genesis, which could indicate a loss of innocence within the narrator because of his transformation. Lastly, it is interesting to note that the narrator makes another plunge as if he is moving in deeper towards another layer of hell if you wanted to correlate this back to Dante's inferno.