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Eloquence and Invisible Man
College Literature, Fall 2005 by Hanlon, Christopher
"No, no," I heard myself yelling. "Black men! Brothers! Black Brothers!
That's not the way. We're law-abiding. We're a law-abiding people and a slow-to-anger-people."
[. . .] They stopped, listening. Even the white man was startled.
"Yeah, but we mad now," a voice called out.
"Yes, you're right," I called back. "We're angry, but let us be wise. Let us, I mean let us not. . . . Let us learn from that great leader whose wise action was reported in the newspaper the other day. . . ."
"What mahn? Who?" a West Indian voice shouted.
[. . .] This was it, I thought, they're listening, eager to listen. Nobody laughed. If they laugh, I'll die! I tensed my diaphragm.
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"That wise man," I said, "you read about him, who when the fugitive escaped from the mob and ran to his school for protection, that wise man who was strong enough to do the legal thing, the law-abiding thing, to turn him over to the forces of law and order ..."
"Yeah," a voice rang out, "yeah, so they could lynch his ass."
Oh, God, this wasn't it at all. Poor technique and not at all what I intended. (Ellison 1981, 275-76)
Unlike prior speeches he has given, this speech is directed at an audience that will not constrain itself to listen quietly, that offers its own retort when provoked. Over the course of his potentially disastrous intervention, the protagonist finds himself forced to adjust his pronunciations to the temperament of the crowd; as his listeners fire back their own answers and protests in response to his various statements, they actively interfere with the trajectory of the protagonist's address, but in such a way as to tease a sort of repressed eloquence from him. Over the course of this sequence, the protagonist's audience functions as the "ornery" American audience Ellison identifies as the writer's muse; it is also, for that matter, the critical, evaluative audience Emerson describes in the essay on eloquence: "The audience is a constant meter of the orator. . . . If anything comic or coarse is spoken, you shall see the emergence of the boys and the rowdies, so loud and vivacious that you might think the house was filled with them. . . . There is also something excellent in every audience,-the capacity for virtue. They are ready to be beatified. They know so much more than the orator,-and are so just!" (1903-04, 7: 66). Re-gathering his powers, Ellison's protagonist continues:
"But wasn't it the human thing to do? After all, he had to protect himself because-"
"He was a handkerchief-headed rat!" a woman screamed, her voice boiling with contempt.
"Yes, you're right. He was wise and cowardly, but what about us? What are we to do?" I yelled, suddenly thrilled by the response. "Look at him," I cried.
"And look at their possessions all strewn there on the sidewalk. Just look at their possessions in the snow. How old are you sir?"
"I'm eighty-seven," the old man said, his voice low and bewildered.
[. . .] "Did you hear him? He's eighty-seven. Eighty-seven and look at all he's accumulated in eighty-seven years, strewn in the snow like chicken guts, and we're a law-abiding, slow-to-anger bunch of folks turning the other cheek every day of the week. What are we going to do? What would you, what would I, what would he have done? What is to be done? I propose we do the law-abiding thing. Just look at this junk! Should two old folks live in such junk, cooped up in a filthy room? It's a great danger, a fire hazard! Yes, yes, yes! Look at that old woman, somebody's mother, somebody's grandmother, maybe. We call them 'Big Mama' and they spoil us and-you know, you remember. . . ." (Ellison 1981, 276-77)
