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Invisible Man and African American radicalism in World War II
African American Review, Fall, 2005 by Christopher Z. Hobson
These phases, of which the last will concern me most, correspond in a schematic way to similar episodes in the Communist Party's work: the turn from "maximalist" revolutionary agitation (the so-called "Third Period" policy) to the "People's Front" or "Popular Front" in the mid-1930s; the height of the People's Front, a time of mass reform work, alliances with liberal forces, and aggressive recruitment of African Americans into the party; and the later deemphasis on militant agitation in response to the USSR's entry into World War II (June 1941). (9) Secondary details reinforce the novel's specific reference to the Communist Party. For example, Jack's comment that the Brotherhood is searching for new Jeffersons and Booker T. Washingtons (306-07) recalls the CP's effort during the "People's Front" to cast itself as perpetuator of US revolutionary traditions; Jack's later statement about Harlem community notables, "[W]e've always avoided these leaders, but the moment we start to advance on a broad front, sectarianism becomes a burden" (365), evokes efforts to ally with "reformist" forces at the height of the "People's Front"; and the Brotherhood's later shift away from Harlem work has similarities in mood and consequence, as discussed below, with the CP's shifts just before and during the war. In keeping with his overall preferences in fiction, Ellison's portrayal is mythic and generalized; in particular, he omits anything corresponding to the period of the Stalin-Hitler pact, when the world's Communist parties abandoned their earlier calls for unity against fascism, denounced the war as interimperialist, and strove to intensify struggle on class and democratic issues. Ellison lets the Brotherhood's "international" turn do the work for both historical episodes. Nonetheless, those familiar with shifts in Communist policies from the early 1930s up through the war years should recognize in the novel's pages a compressed, heightened, and allegorized version of those changes.
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Though Ellison's treatment is ultimately critical, one cannot feel the depth and force of the criticism without understanding the power of the Brotherhood's attraction for the protagonist and thousands more. We can feel this appeal in the protagonist's words during his "dispossession" speech: "Something strange and miraculous and transforming is taking place in me right now ... as I stand here before you! ... I feel, I feel suddenly that I have become more human.... I feel I can see sharp and clear and far down the dim corridor of history and in it I can hear the footsteps of militant fraternity! ... With your eyes upon me I feel that I've found my true family! My true people! My true country!" (345-46) Here as elsewhere, Ellison echoes the Communist experiences of his friend Richard Wright, who wrote of his own entry into the party: "It was not the economics of Communism ... that claimed me; my attention was caught ... by the possibility of uniting scattered but kindred peoples into a whole. It seemed to me that here at last, in the realm of revolutionary expression, Negro experience could find a home" ("I Tried" 1:62). Like Wright, who describes feeling that the Communist Party could create "a new sense of reality ... a sense of man on earth," Ellison's protagonist feels, despite his criticisms, that the Brotherhood provides "the only historically meaningful life" ("I Tried" 2:54; Invisible Man [hereafter IM] 508). (10) And the strength of these hopes is felt when the protagonist, unsure at Tod Clifton's funeral whether the crowd is moved by hate or by love, wonders, "And could politics ever be an expression of love?" (452)
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