Mr. Norton and the Narrator's innocence

Through the discussions of Invisible Man I noticed how large of a change the narrator went through to achieve self-realization of invisibility. I immediately noticed the narrator’s intense awareness of his image to others in the end of the book, and found it funny to look back and see how innocent he was in the beginning. I specifically wanted to analyze the narrator’s innocence and how it was affected and encouraged by Mr. Norton’s innocence in the beginning of Invisible Man.

One of the more obvious scenes where the narrator and Mr. Norton’s innocence was exposed and ridiculed, was when the vet was treating Mr. Norton in the Golden Day. The vet comes into Mr. Norton’s room as this wise figure who can see the narrator’s and Mr. Norton’s blindness at first glimpse. The vet tries to test the extent of their blindness by telling Mr. Norton “To some you are the great white father, to others the lyncher of souls”. Stating that, to people like the narrator you are their savior and a godly figure that has money, power, and benevolence, but if you’re not blind you can see Mr. Norton’s ignorant destructiveness. The narrator, confused, then asks “What do you mean [Lyncher]?”, and to answer the question the vet shows how Mr. Norton is blind to his destructiveness.

He asks Mr. Norton why he’s interested in the school to which Mr. Norton replies, “I felt, and still feel, that your people are in some important manner tied to my destiny”, his destiny being his success. Then Mr. Norton states “I’ve watched it grow each year I’ve returned to the campus”. First of all whenever someone uses the words “your people” it never sounds good, in this case because he doesn’t know how to classify the group of people yet he wants to learn about them. Also Mr. Norton says that he’s “watched it grow each year [he’s] come back to the campus” in order to find out the how his success has grown through the success of black people, but he’s blinding himself because he’s blocking himself from the outskirts of campus where the real poverty is. Basically setting up a system that always leads to his destiny being successful because he’s checking the Campus where all the successful blacks are.

When the vet realizes that the narrator is confused by this, he goes on to ridicules the narrator because he’s so blind that he couldn’t even consider the possibility that Mr. Norton is misguided. So the vet goes on to making comments to Mr. Norton like, “He has eyes and a good distended African nose, but he fails to understand the simple facts of life” “He registers with his senses but short circuits his brain. Nothing has meaning”, and “Behold! A walking zombie! Already he’s learned to repress not only his emotions but his humanity. He’s invisible”. So the narrator is just going along with the way things are, and even though he sees all these inequalities he doesn’t do anything about it because he’s so innocent. I also noticed that the vet says these comments in a rhetorical tone because he knows that they are both blind to each other, and there’s no use changing it, because like Bledsoe and the narrator’s grandfather said, there’s no use in changing the way things are you just have to keep running.

Ultimately, the narrator’s innocence is affected by Mr. Norton’s innocence because the narrator believes in Mr. Norton’s destiny being the success of people like him, and Mr. Norton depends on him for success. So in a sense their innocence complement each other, and keep each other running because they both believe in each other’s false ideals. One of the last thoughts I want to put out there is that, if you notice it, it’s interesting to see how in the beginning of the book the narrator’s surroundings are invisible to him, but in the end he becomes invisible to his surroundings, showing us both sides of the spectrum.