Culture: Literary Imagination and Cultural

¶ … Culture: Literary Imagination and Cultural Identity

Language and discourse are at the root of all human societies. No human world can exist without communication. This communication occurs on many levels and frequencies. In addition to the everyday language used to communicate ideas and decisions, these ideas and decisions can be taken to a further level, on which power is depicted. Power is often a collective, sociological construct, in which the power of the collective is greater than the power of the individual. Indeed, individuals tend to submit to the power of the greater whole; the power of society as a collective entity. In many ways, such power is necessary in order to ensure the smooth functioning of society. However, it is inevitable that, even in the democratic society, some individuals will suffer while others will benefit from the power structures that are designed not only to ensure the smooth operation of society, but also to ensure that individuals submit to a certain format of conduct and being. This type of collective power is then depicted in novels such as Charles Bukowski's Ham on Rye and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. Both protagonists serves as anti-heroes who are at first oppressed by the power structures or indeed perceived power structures of their respective societies. Ultimately, both use language in order to not only communicate their sense of repression, but also to break the power that imposes this repression upon them. In the language of the novels, various constructs of communication serve as important themes, including the concepts of truth and the already mentioned power as perceived on both the individual and social levels. In order to consider the various constructs of social and individual use of discourse and power in Bukowski's and Ellison's respective novels, concepts from the works of Mikhail Bakhtin and Linda Hutcheon will be used. In addition, the idea of power and discourse will also be considered from the wider viewpoints presented by works such as those by Kafka and Plato.

In considering the issue of language use in the novel genre, Mikhail Bakhtin calls for a recognition that language connects individuals and society: "Form and content in discourse are one, once we understand that verbal discourse is a social phenomenon -- social throughout its entire range and it each and every of its factors…" (Bakhtin 259). If this is not recognized, Bakhtin holds that the language will be "flat and abstract." (259) In Ellison's "Invisible Man," language plays precisely the important role of connecting the individual protagonist with his society. In this, his society exercises power over him.

According to Valerie Smith (in O'Meally 27), the protagonist's various encounters with individuals in power, such as Norton, Bledsoe and the Brotherhood, is precisely what maintains his oppression: indeed, they "impose false names or unsuitable identities upon him. His experiences teach him that the act of naming is linked inextricably to issues of power and control." The issue of identity is vitally and importantly connected with discourse in the novel. Up to the end, the Invisible Man remains nameless. Despite their attempts and minor success, the powerful individuals and entities, as well as society as a whole, does not manage to impose their concept of identity upon the protagonist. This is something that only he can do. And he does this by means of seclusion and narrative; when he realizes that there is no way in order to truly be himself while he is at the mercy of those around him, the main character secludes himself to write his own narrative, which only he controls.

In the Bukowski's work, language and identity also play an important role. In Chapter 22, the narrator describes his encounter with a boy named Eli LaCrosse. The latter attempts to hide his true nature behind language: "He used a cuss word in almost every sentence, at least one cuss word, but it was all fake, he wasn't tough, he was scared. I wasn't scared but I was confused so maybe we were a good pair." In this case, Eli uses language he perceives to be tough in order to hide his true reactions to a world and society he perceives as decidedly hostile. Symbolically, he can be seen as a springboard for the narrator's own feelings regarding his place in society: he does not fit well with the requirements of his society or his world. He does not enjoy his interactions with the world around him for a variety of reasons. In addition to self-destructive actions such as drinking and violence, the narrator also connects with outcasts such as Eli much more easily than with the "normal" children at his school. He does this despite professing that he does not particularly like Eli. However, he identified with his status as an outcast and social reject. Thus he did not have the heart to join the rest of society in their rejection of the boy.

In both novels, Bakhtin's (261) assertion of the novel as "a phenomenon multiform in style and variform in speech and voice," is clear. The social worlds in which the protagonists move, live, and attempt to find their identities, use a different linguistic mode than the protagonists themselves. In Invisible Man, for example, the protagonist remains nameless for the duration of the novel. All around him, those with power are those who are aware of their place in the world and how to use language in order to ensure their power. Even the Invisible Man's grandfather has maintained his own subtle power in the world, in his own view, by a pretense of power. He tells his grandson to "…overcome 'em with yeses, undermine 'em with grins, agree 'em to death and destruction…" (Ellison 16).

It is this pretense of power that the protagonist attempts to impose and maintain, but finds inadequate for his purposes. The Invisible Man has two fundamental character flaws that separates him from the power he seeks. The first is his tendency to trust people, and the second his fundamental inability to be untruthful or insincere. His grandfather advises him to pretend humility, and for a time the protagonist succeeds in doing this, but eventually he finds himself overwhelmed an attempting to play a role while in fact his meaning is insincere. In reaction, he needs to separate himself from a society that would require of him such insincerity in order to take responsibility for the narration of his own life. Only in this way can he make his own meaning (Smith in O'Meally 47).

This, according to Danielle Allen (in Morel 38), is the fundamental problem with the social system of democracy within which the Invisible Man attempts to operate: "Democracy puts its citizens under a strange form of psychological pressure by building them up as sovereigns, and then regularly undermining any individual citizen's experience of sovereignty." The Invisible Man cannot secure his individual sovereignty in a society which, although claiming democracy, does not acknowledge his right as a sovereign. All those exercising power over the Invisible Man make decisions regarding his identity and the actions in which he is to engage in order to secure his own well-being and sovereignty in the world. Ironically, this very attempt is what most harms him, both physically and psychologically.

Symbolic of such harm is the destruction the Invisible Man suffers after the accident at Liberty Paints. According to William R. Nash (in Morel 108), it is not difficult to infer the meaning of the "white" world in which the injured narrator finds himself: "…the clinical discussion is a loose acknowledgment of the history of racial oppression melded with speculation about how best to handle this particular case." The doctors around the Invisible Man indeed treats him as invisible; not acknowledging any individuality or personality apart from the fact that he is indeed not white like them or like his surroundings. The episode sets him clearly and painfully apart from the world in which he has tried to make his own way by feigning humility. Yet the world, and particularly those in powerful, privileged positions, believe themselves to be democratic and aimed towards the well-being of all citizens (Allen in Morel 38). This is however proven to be deceptive to an even greater degree than the mild deception the Invisible Man attempts. Not being deceptive by nature, the protagonist believes others to be sincere in their attempts to help him make his way in the world. As a result he is betrayed time and again, until he learns that the only way to find his true self in a way that is not untruthful to himself, is to separate himself both physical and mentally from the society where deception is the only way towards power.

Political deception and the need of society for tasteful lies is also a theme that Bukowski addresses. In Chapter 19, the narrator tells the story of a class assignment that he was unable to complete truthfully. Unable to attend the President's visit to Los Angeles, the narrator nonetheless completes the assignment requiring a depiction of the visit and the speech. This earns him the grudging respect of his peers, who were unpleasantly impressed by what Mrs. Fretag, his teacher, referred to not as deceitful, but "very creative." The narrator discovers one of the novel's main truths: "So, that's what they wanted: lies. Beautiful lies. That's what they needed. People were fools. It was going to be easy for me." This conclusion is in reaction to the discovery of his deceit. Mrs. Fretag, the teacher, had indeed attended the event, and confronted Henry about his deceit. Upon telling the truth about his absence, the narrator is nonetheless praised as "remarkable." He is not punished, but rewarded for lies that sound beautiful, but are no less deceitful for that. In this, the author makes a comment about the society in which the narrator operates, and how to gain power in that society. His creative work earns him the respect of and power over his peers. Even those who used to oppress him leave him alone because of the power of his words. In this way, the narrator uses language deceitfully, although not with the original aim to gain power. But he learns that language, and especially language in the use of deception for specific purposes, can provide power in a variety of contexts. It is also significant that this episode is combined with politics, making the moment all the more poignant and indeed remarkable, as Mrs. Fretag duly noted.

Linda Hutcheon's assessment of postmodernism as a contradictory phenomenon can be applied to the power of deceit as provided for in both novels. Deceit and truth are juxtaposed by both Ellison and Bukowski in terms of the paradigms of power entailed in these concepts. According to Hutcheon (178): "From the earlier Marxist notion of ideology as false consciousness or as an illusory belief system, current critical discourse has moved to a different notion of ideology as a general process of production of meaning." This is the illusory and contradictory nature of postmodernism. For Ellison's protagonist, deceit is manifest in his initial and apparent acceptance of those in power around him. The hidden truth, juxtaposed with this, is the fact that he is attempting to undermine this power in order to empower himself. Bukowski's protagonist writes an essay that constitutes a lie in its entirety. Yet he is not punished for this, as expected. He is praised, and he begins to understand the power of the lie in a society that in fact professes the value of truth.

The concept of truth and illusion are also depicted by Plato in his "Allegory of the Cave." In this work, Plato uses the cave as a symbol of society-imposed ignorance. This is similar to the intellectual darkness and naivete from which the Invisible Man initially suffers. His darkness is so severe that he is in fact invisible to others. It is only when he retreats into physical darkness at the end of the novel that he can enter the light of his own intellect.

Postmodernism furthermore departs from other literary interpretations in terms not only of its fundamentally contradictory nature, but also in terms of its fluidity. It does not interpret meaning, but rather produces meaning itself. This connects with Bakhtin's (263) depiction of language in the novel, which is neither static nor singular in nature: "a combining of languages and styles into a higher unity is unknown to traditional stylistics; it has no method for approaching the distinctive social dialogue among languages that is present in the novel." Both Bakhtin and Hutcheon appears to understand that the nature of language and its various stratified uses towards power in society cannot be divorced from the world in the novel. In depicting the postmodern world, the novel needs a postmodern interpretation of language and the relation of this language to collective power structures, along with the struggle of the individual to gain what power he can.

In both novels, then, there is a juxtaposition of collective power with individual powerlessness. Both protagonists use language as their means of gaining power in their respective ways. The Invisible Man at first uses language to feign humility, and later to become both separate from society but personally powerful. According to Smith (in O'Meally 27), the Invisible Man "discovers the true meaning of his life only after he assumes responsibility for naming himself by telling his own story." This provides him with personal power, although not social or collective power. At the end of the novel, the reader does not know whether he will indeed reenter society successfully or indeed regain the social power he pursued from the beginning. However, the personal power he gains provides hope as a vehicle for the potential of such power in society that prefers beautiful lies over an ugly truth. How the narrator will survive in such a society is uncertain. Yet there is a type of satisfaction in a sense that the Invisible Man has finally gained some self knowledge and could be able to use this to not only set himself apart from, but also above a society that maintains its concern for the well-being of all when in fact this is not true.

In Ham on Rye, the narrator also faces, as seen above, the power of the beautiful lie as opposed to the distasteful truth. He experiences this in terms of his own deceit. The scene of his public narrative deceit as mentioned above can for example be juxtaposed with his private efforts at writing fiction on a typewriter his parents had given him. Henry sees his stories as "very bitter and ragged… the stories seemed to beg, they didn't have their own vitality." In opposition to this, his equally fictional depiction of the presidential visit impressed even Henry himself: "the words sounded good to me. Everybody was listening. My words filled the room, from blackboard to blackboard, they hit the ceiling and bounced off, they covered Mrs. Fretag's shoes and piled up on the floor. Some of the prettiest girls in the class began to sneak glances at me." By writing this beautiful but deceitful work, the narrator connects powerfully with his social environment. He receives admiration, even from those who do not like him. His deceit is socially powerful but personally destructive. In the same way, Ellison's protagonist experiences his own deceit as both socially powerful and personally destructive. Although he is frequently betrayed as a result of his honest gullibility, he is nonetheless able to gain some social power through his pretense at humility. The same gullibility is depicted by Kafka in his "Before the Law." A sincere but uninformed man from the country searches for entry into the law and is told that such entry cannot be granted at the time. This happens throughout his life and he die without gaining entry. When he dies, he learns the truth that entry was in fact open to him, and the he needed only have tried. In this way, the Invisible Man is also deceived by those he perceives as powerful. In contrast to Kafka's character, however, he learns the truth of his own power while he is still in a position to access this power. His personal annihilation drives him into seclusion, where he can learn to be honest first with himself and rebuild his life and his own identity.

Hutcheon's idea of the novel as a potentially dangerous construct within the society from which it emerges can be applied to both Ellison and Bukowski's respective works: "…the novel is potentially dangerous not just because it is a reaction against social repression, but because it also works to authorize that very power of repression at the same time. What postmodern fiction does, however, is to reverse that doubled process: it installs the power, but then contests it." The protagonists in both novels do the same to varying degrees of success. The Invisible Man's success is his connection with a world of power that he can nonetheless never feel himself part of, while Henry wields the conscious power of deception by an understanding of the human nature that needs such deception. Both novels therefore make a rather dark comment about the societies they depict. Postmodern society is beautifully deceitful. Those who understand the lie and how to use it narratively are those who wield power over others and themselves.

Ancient writings such those by Plato also frequently consider the concepts of truth and deception. In applying these to the postmodern novel, however, it is often necessary to reverse the juxtaposition offered by the ancients. Plato's Allegory of the Cave, for example depicts a cave as symbolic of ignorance: "my opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right…" (Plato). Plato makes a direct distinction between the idea of good, which is the highest form of knowledge and action, and that of the lesser actions, driven mostly by the physical paradigm. For Plato the pursuit of the "good" concept is the ultimate human achievement. For the postmodern world, as depicted in the novels discussed, this pursuit of the good is however more complex than merely departing from basic human desires and pursuits. In the postmodern world, social and individual power have become the replacement of the good. As such, the "good" concept is transformed into a concept of power. The Invisible Man finally pursues the visibility he has always wanted from society by secluding himself, while Henry pursues the "good" of power by the relatively "evil" means of narrative deceit.