Mary In Invisible Man Essay

The Vet’s statement serves to foreshadow the events that Invisible Man will experience not that he is migrating North. The first woman he encounters while there is Mary Rambo. The woman who nurses Invisible Man back to health following the explosion at Liberty paints. Prescribed to the stereotypical role of mammy: “ a representation of a maternal ideal , but not caring for her own children. Her love, doting, advice, correction and supervision were reserved exclusively for white children” (Harris-Petty). Mary’s relationship with Invisible Man echoes the relationship shared between a mother and a son. Mary cares for, feeds, and houses Invisible Man as he recovers to full health, in return Invisible Man is appreciative to the process of rebirth , and feels encouraged by Mary’s belief that he may one day be “ a credit to the race” (Ellison). To quote Carolyn Sylvander in her work,________________________________________, Mary is “not a real person in the book but rather a super human force of good, of salvation, of virtue and hope, the means by which the Invisible Man is born anew into his brother hood identitiy , but of no interest in and of herself” (Sylvander 78). Yet, Invisible Man’s actions are not a testament to Mary’s weakness and complicity with the Mammy stereotype,

Caught in the miasma of a Caucasian patriarchy, the invisible man is not only ill equipped to resist it, but he contributes to its perpetuation. The social oppression of the white patriarchy, Ellison cautions, functions not only on the level of black and white but more generally as a construction of power built to exploit minorities, whether of gender or color. Invisible Man details, in part, the struggles of a victim. Yet it attains its highest value in the perfect manifestation of the blindness of an invisible man. (Elkins