Tobias Wolff Disagrees With Others

¶ … Tobias Wolff disagrees with others who say that studying the humanities is losing favor. He says, given the concerns of people today, it is even more important to study literature. He argues: "There is a need in us for exactly what literature can give, which is a sense of who we are, beyond what data can tell us, beyond what simple information can tell us; a sense of the workings of what we used to call the soul. People go where they can find that. They need to find that. In this secular and material culture, it's a kind of oasis." This paper, for the Life Arts Project, will review several pieces of literature to help me gain a sense of who I was, what I became and what I have the opportunity to be. It will be a baring of my soul so that I can find my oasis.

How many people walk down the street each day and feel they are invisible? Other individuals bump into them, do not say "sorry," and go on like nothing happened. They say hello to the store clerk, but he does not respond. They go to work and everyone rushes around them. Often, people of color have even a greater risk of being ignored -- either because of they are feared, disliked or not considered worth the time and bother to be acknowledged. Ironically, it is not difficult to lose one's identity in a world with millions of people.

In the book, Invisible Man, the narrator says that he is invisible. It is not the case that his body cannot be seen. Rather, people just do not see him. Because of his "invisibility," he hides from the world, living underground and stealing electricity from the Monopolated Light & Power Company. He simultaneously burns 1,369 light bulbs and listens to Louis Armstrong's "(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue" on the record player to prove to himself that he exists, that he is flesh and blood. Now he is going to write the story of his life and his invisibility. As he writes:

I am an invisible man.

No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe;

nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms.

I am a man of substance, flesh and bone, fiber and liquids -- and I might even be said to possess a mind.

I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.

Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass.

When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination -- indeed, everything and anything except me.

Ellison's unnamed narrator is coerced, similarly to anyone who seeks a meaningful and committed life, to deal with numerous challenges and hazards and to find his way to the truth of the present by learning from his past and then using what he has learned for the present and future. By coming to terms with his blackness, he defines the values by which he can live and a way of connecting his own personal efforts to those that face all humans searching for the American dream.

Essentially, the Invisible Man's major theme is a person's search for identity. The narrator moves from the naivity of a newborn to a mature state of adult understanding, which is represented by the brightness of lightbulbs in his underground hiding place. Eventually, he realizes that his identity, as a black person, is wholly determined by the perceptions of other people, and thus he feels invisible. Regardless if he is a student, employee, or political activist, he is only seen as a member of his race. Instead of being interested in him, they are using him for whatever need they have for his race. Ellison notes that minorities in particular face this problem, losing individual identity through classification as members of a group rather than being seen as individuals.

Constantly misinformed or deceived, he learns through a series of revelations, that people are seldom what they seem. For example, in the earlier parts of the book Dr. Bledsoe, president of the college, apparently is respected by both whites and blacks. In fact, the narrator dreams about someday taking Bledsoe's position. However, Bledsoe shows his true character when the narrator accidentally discovers aspects of black life that Bledsoe has long hidden. Bledsoe is furious, for he has spent his entire life exploiting liberal white preconceptions about black culture in order to gain power over the very people he says he represents.

Invisibility takes many different forms. My invisibility was as a black female growing up in New York. As many blacks of my generation, I am now 50, childhood consisted of a series of major challenges. I was from a very poor family who could barely afford to pay for the rent and food. My father lived with us until I was 13, and then completely abondoned his past. He left one day and was gone for good.

By the time my father had left, I had already become "invisible." As a little girl, it did not take me long to realize that I was somehow different from the white children. At first I thought it was only "things" that separated us. Many of them had more toys, a bigger house, a fancy car -- all the "things" that we could not afford. The ads I saw in papers or the commercials I watched on TV showed all these happy white children playing and having fun. They lived in a completely different world than I did.

As I grew older, I also noticed that there were other differences in these commercials. Everyone was always smiling. Many times there was a mother, father and child spending time together. or, at least, it was the mother hugging and smiling with her son or daughter. There was not the slightest hint that life was ever bad. Even when a child fell down and needed a bandaid, her mom would quickly come to the rescue, kiss the bump and put on some magical ointment.

By no means am I saying that my mother did not love me. She always did whatever she could for me. However, when my father was with us, much of her time was spent taking care of him. Arguments, with loud yelling, became the typical communication. After my father left, my mother had to work two jobs to continue to pay for the expenses. She was rarely home, and I became used to coming home and living in an empty house. When she was home, she was exhausted and just needed to rest. I knew she loved me, but she was not the smiling mother I saw on the TV who could make all the pain that I felt disappear. I was too young and naive to know that the perfect world in the commercials did not exist for anyone -- white or black.

My next understanding was the color issue. Of course, I always knew that these people in the ads looked different. Yet, I equated the differences to money or social standing, not color. When I started going to school, I quickly learned that I was "different" because I was black. By the time I graduated elementary school, my self-esteem was law. When my father left, even though it actually was for the best, my confidence fell even lower. Not only was I invisible to this outside "white" world, but to my own father. This is very difficult for a young girl of 13 to understand. As an adolescent, I was going through so many other things, as well. Today I look back on this time and it sounds like I alwys whined or complained. That could not be farther from the truth. I was very quiet and rarely even spoke at home or school. My teachers never had to worry about me; my mother knew she could leave me alone and I would be all right.

Of course, from a positive standpoint, I experienced first-hand the passing of the Civil Rights Laws in 1965 and 1970. As a young girl, I saw the marches on TV and heard the speeches. I knew life was changing, for the better, but not quickly enough for an impatient teen.

In 1942, Albert Camus first defined the human situation as basically meaningless and absurd. In his essay "The myth of Sisyphus," a mythical King of Corinth, Sisyphus was condemned to do the useless and absurd task for all eternity of rolling a stone up a mountain each time it would come tumbling down. This was his lot in life. He would have no opportunity to do anything else for himself or anyone else.

According to Camus, such endless meaningless repetition mirrors human existence. Life is pointless and absurd and cannot be justified in either religious or humanist terms. The only reason to continue living is to accept and transcend the absurdity with personal scorn and strength. Camus is overwhelmingly concerned with the impact of his ideas on everyday life -- coping with the severe and confusing realities of everyday existence. Based on all of this, Camus asks, in the face of such defeat can a person be actually be happy? It is possible. It is the only reality that a person has. In this world, an individual must confront the limitations of knowledge.

I don't know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I cannot know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms... I do not want to found anything on the incomprehensible. I want to know whether I can live with what I know and with that alone.

Man is given two choices -- he can kill himself, but then he allows both absurdity and meaningless death to triumph over him. Or he can rebel, continually rejecting death in acceptance that he will one day die. In everyday life, the mechanical and repetitive contains both tragedy and comedy. Seen one way, there is no room for higher meaning than daily survival. In another way, the comic can escape the endless tragic repetitiveness.

A leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He, too, concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

Unlike Camus, I became too disconsolate with life and could not see the reason for pushing the rock up the hill over and over again. As I got older, I became more and more tired and unable to push against life itself. I also did not have the creative outlet that Camus talks about, so did not have anything that could fill the void in my life that was positive. I was lonely, I was alone. Unfortunately, I did find something to erase the pain and fill the void, but it was not positive. I then spent 24 years of my life pushing that rock up that hill over and over again, but going further and further downhill each time. This was the route I had chosen to escape from the daily absurdity, and the route I was taking with the unexpressed hope of forever escaping from the absurdity.

In the book Lay My Burden Down Pouissaint explains how African-Americans are not apt to go for help when they become depressed. That is why their suicide rate is so high; they look for other means of help other than counselling or medication. He explains that African-Americans may not this help only about 2.3% of all psychiatrists in the U.S. are African-American.