Nurture vs. Nature -- How

Nurture vs. Nature -- how environment and socialization shapes the personalities and lives of the main characters of Invisible Man, Absalom, Absalom, and Clockers

What makes us who we are? The diverse narratives of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom, and Richard Price's Clockers all come to the same conclusion. Although a human being may possess an ordinary, fallen, or noble nature, ultimately it is that person's social environment that shapes the path of his or her life. Regardless of the person's original intentions, he or she cannot escape the influence of peers and societal judgments about such personal characteristics as race and class. This recalls the oft-cited psychological cliche that 'genetics provides the bullet, but society pulls the trigger.' In other words, society is the force that propels the human destiny, even though the individual human character may have an essentially good or bad nature.

For example, the life Ralph Ellison's protagonist in Invisible Man is constrained by his society's constructs of racism and how it deems a Black man should live and act. He lives as a virtual hermit, in fear of White society, and taking comfort only in the sight of light reflected by electric illumination in his room. "I am nobody but myself," he says, believing that shutting out all other human beings is the only way to escape the fact that he is an "invisible man," as a persecuted and placeless Black man in contemporary America. (Ellison 1) Gradually, the reader comes to know his story over the course of a series of flashbacks. Clearly, the protagonist possessed considerable intellectual and academic gifts at the beginning of his life. He was given a scholarship to a prestigious college -- or rather the most prestigious college African-Americans were allowed gain entrance to, during that era of Southern history. But even to win this covered scholarship, society forced him to 'know' or acknowledge his inferior place as a Black man. He and his fellow students were compelled to engage in a kind of wrestling match for dollars, or "Battle Royal" for sport. Rather than take pride in what he had earned academically, he was forced to feel shame for who he was as a human being. Symbolically, the fight begins "blindfolded," as the Whites can gaze upon the young Black men about to engage in combat, but they cannot look at the Whites, recognize the White's identities, as White influence in society is so pervasive and unspoken. (Ellison 8) Black men are reduced to objects, and stripped of their clothes and their characters during the fight -- society and the rules of the cruel match affect the protagonist, but they are not allowed to affect White society as having individual identities.

This shame carried over into the young Black student's college career. As the protagonist shows a wealthy White donor around his college, the reader sees how he has internalized the fears, hates, and prejudices of White society, as he reacts negatively to members of his own race. When the two come into contact with other Blacks, the narrator remembers feeling fearful and apologetic at the sight of African-Americans drinking, even though the behavior of these individuals is actually better than what transpired at the "Battle Royal" that allowed him to obtain his scholarship. Despite the Black student's sense of shame, he cannot escape the social impact of a prejudiced society in the way he sees the world. As a result of his unintentional error in taking the donor to a house of ill repute, he is expelled from school. This is another indication of how the originally good character of this young man goes unrecognized, and his destiny is entirely shaped by either long-standing historical prejudice or social happenstance.

Also, the fact that his deeds and words have no impact upon his environment clearly has a negative effect upon the narrator, as he grows increasingly timid, for example, as he is showing the White man different sights of the college and the town. Later, the college tells him: "Why, the dumbest black bastard in the cotton patch knows that the only way to please a white man is to tell him a lie! What kind of an education are you getting around here?" (Ellison 125) In other words, his education is not meant to advance him, but to keep him in his social place, and instill within him the negative constructs of Blackness of his society, regardless of his personal gifts.

Eventually, the narrator moves to the North and becomes affiliated with Harlem communists. He is not really ideologically in sympathy with these individuals' economic ideology. Eventually, he leaves their fold -- but Ellison creates the impression that the only reason the narrator ever found communists attractive at all was because of the fact that society offered African-Americans so little venue to express their rage at White society. Either there was acquiescence -- which did not buy the young college student an education -- or there was rage and rioting in reaction to racist oppression, which has its own costs in terms of violence much like the damage this bowing and stooping did to his soul. Ultimately, the narrator wishes to chose neither, neither the slavish devotion to Whites or to a totalitarian ideology. But since he wishes to choose neither, he is essentially left with nothing, no society at all, only invisibility. Whites do not acknowledge his humanity, and the Harlem communists see him as a dupe if he does not subscribe, in its entirety, to their ideology.

In Absalom, Absalom, the reader sees the reverse equation of Southern society, as presented in Ellison's narrative. The main protagonist of the Faulkner novel, Thomas Sutpen is a cruel man, crass and utterly lacking in the kind of innate intelligence and quiet, although thwarted nobility of the Invisible Man of Ellison. However, because of his low upbringing, he is determined to buy social prestige by accumulating wealth and by instilling fear in others -- in both his slaves and family. As a white, poor man, Sutpen's wealthier neighbors despise him. Like Ellison's protagonist, this hatred fuels Sutpen to succeed. But the venues open for a White man to succeed are far different in the South than those open to a Black man. Sutpen is more economically mobile than Ellison's narrator, and creates an estate as a result of his exploitation of slaves in the West Indies.

The reason Sutpen chooses this method traces back to one of the formative instances of Sutpen's life occurs as a result of White-Black relations. When Sutpen came calling to his new, aristocratic Southern neighbor the man's Black servant told him to go to the back of the house, by implication because of his low birth, Sutpen was outraged to be treated as lower than a Black servant. Sutpen believes he was better because he was White. Society grants Whites greater opportunities for social mobility so Sutpen uses his rage to build himself wealth -- to gains enough money to buy slaves of his own, so he could oppress Blacks as richer Whites oppressed him, when he was new to the area.

Although Sutpen achieves his dreams of wealth, not all of his aspirations come true. One of his sons dies. The other son becomes a fugitive -- because of his crime of murdering his brother. Sutpen's desire to control his world, although he is given more opportunities to do so than Ellison's narrator, and because he is treated with more fear and respect by his neighbors and family ultimately comes to no greater fruition than that of a Black man in a comparable situation. Even the determined Sutpen cannot evade the forces of fate, such as the Civil War. Nor can he eradicate from his heart the prejudices of his time, which cause him to reject Bon, his son, because he has Black blood in his veins, leaving Sutpen without an heir. Sutpen is hypocritical -- "half breed" servants populate his house, evidence of sexual transgressions between supposedly purer Whites and supposedly inferior blacks. But he feels free to "kick and curse" these persons, like animals, because society deems it correct, and because this kind of treatment and separation of the races is an accepted practice of his society. (Faulkner 199) He cannot forget that first snubbing, and this 'colors' his every interaction with Blacks on a social level, even if he may feel sexual desire, he cannot forget "it was the nigger [who] told him, even before he had had time to say what he came for, never to come to that front door again but to go around to the back." (Faulkner 290)