Brother Clifton's Death In Invisible Man

In Ralph Ellison’s, Invisible Man, he explores the ideas of rebirth succeeding after death. After someone's death, Invisible Man tends to contemplates the meaning of that person and what they represented. In the narrator’s growth through the Brotherhood he is very obedient, yet blind to the organization. Brother Clifton’s death was the primary catalyst for his mental upset and successive actions. His death, caused by the white police, acts as a symbol of racial connections impacts the community more than any of his life's work did. Through the event of Clifton’s death Invisible Man has moved from a stage of naivety to the recognition of his circumstances and later an active change as he struggles of to find his place which is fraught with tumult.

Invisible Man comes out with strong intention when he is asked to give an uplifting speech to the people gathered at Clifton’s funeral. Instead of inspiring the massed mourners, the narrator causes a disturbance throughout his speech which illustrates his newly embittered state. “All right. . .you do the listening in the sun and I’ll try to tell you in the sun. Then you can go home and forget it. Forget it. His name was Clifton and they shot him down” (Ellison 455). Invisible Man continues to break from his brotherhood model by rightfully exposing the racist connotations seen in the murder of Clifton. Invisible Man seems to resign himself to his reality instead of rouse the listeners to fight back. Invisible Man proclaims in his speech, “He was black and they shot him. Isn’t that enough to tell? Isn’t it all you need to know? Isn’t that enough to appease your thirst for drama and send you home to sleep it off?” (456). It becomes astonishingly clear that the narrator is deeply angry beneath his deadened tone, accusing Clifton of “a normal mistake of which many are guilty: He thought he was a

They eventually form a sort of connection and Invisible Man’s friendship with Clifton is one of his few redeeming connections throughout this deplorable moment of his life. To much of Invisible Man’s surprise Clifton quits the Brotherhood for a career selling Sambo dolls on the street. Invisible Man reacts with ailment as he “looked at the doll and felt my throat constrict…There was a flash of whiteness and a splatter like heavy rain striking a newspaper and I saw the doll go over” (433). Before the narrator can even confront Clifton on his confusion to why he left the Brotherhood to sell sambo dolls, a white policeman fatally shoots Clifton as he tries to fight back with aggression. Invisible Man is left in a daze as he tries to wonder home after the recent circumstance. For one of the first times, he sees a connection between Clifton’s profligate death and the problems oppressing young intelligent black men. Invisible Man begins to ask himself “What had one of my teachers said of me? . . . You’re like one of these African sculptures, distorted in the interest of a design. Well, what design and whose?” (440). Invisible Man starts to recognize the racial undertones of Clifton’s death. He has a