Search for Identity
...ects the inward struggle or fight that takes place when an individual is (re) discovering him or herself for the first time and finds that everything they had been taught or worked toward achieving is a farce. This stage embraces a type of rebellion, that is getting rid of the old self and trying to embrace the new by withdrawing from the people and things the individual is familiar with (342). This rebelliousness, against whites in general, involves total immersion into “blackness.” Once this awareness is achieved the individual’s defensiveness is replaced by receptiveness and openness (325). The final stage, stage four, reflects the new identity. This person accepts and is at peace with him or herself and those around him or her. This peacefulness, openness, and self-confidence of one’s blackness is seen through the interpersonal transactions with others (326). These stages reflect the varied metamorphoses that Brother Narrator goes through to achieve his identity. In stage one of Brother Narrator’s journey he jumps at the opportunity to be a speaker for the Brotherhood, a group that is against the dispossession of all race of people, plus it is a paying position and he is in need of a job. It is at this stage Cross states that “the Negro is depicted as one who views herself or himself and her or his group from the perspective of whites, and will do anything to overcome the stigma of race in order to obtain white approval” (323). He starts out being a speaker for the Brotherhood; They believe in unity - Blacks and whites were considered ‘equal,’ as brothers and sisters. Brother Narrator was recruited by Brother Jack, the leader of the group, upon hearing him make an impromptu speech on behalf of an old couple who is being evicted from their home (Ellison 269-275). Brother Jack is impressed with Brother Narrator’s eloquence and his ability to move the people to action. This is the kind of person the Brotherhood needs – someone who can get the people stirred up and moving, but in the direction the Brotherhood wants them to go. After Brother Narrator is recruited, he proves his commitment to the job by undergoing extensive training, which will enable him to stir the people on an intellectual level and not an emotional level as he did at the eviction site and his first Brotherhood meeting (Ellison 344). He is trained to become a theoretician, one who can masterfully use scientific jargon to win the people instead of simplistic words. Brother Narrator’s ability to give passionate speeches is the foundation the Brotherhood builds upon. Shortly thereafter, the Brotherhood being very pleased with Brother Narrator’s progress and dedication to the job “promotes” him to “chief spokesman of the Harlem District” (352). His primary focus is making speeches to the people and swaying them in favor of the Brotherhood and he does this without question and with naiveté because of his desire to belong. Because of his naiveté, he believes what the Brotherhood wants him to believe and so when delivering his speeches he does them with such fervor and passion that the people hearing the speech has no choice but to be swayed. This makes him a smashing success inside and outside of the Brotherhood. He increases the membership of the group and is making a lot of public appearances promoting the ideology of the Brotherhood. This is Brother Narrator’s way of somehow showing the Brotherhood that he is just trying to assimilate. He proves it to them by giving the best possible speeches wherever he goes. But, all good things must come to an end. Somehow, something happens on the “perfect” job that hurls Brother Narrator into stage two with the slow “pulling of the rug from under his feet.” The Brotherhood decides to relocate Brother Narrator downtown and sever the strong bond he has formed with the Harlem district. They send him downtown to deal with “The Woman Question” (399). As he leaves the meeting, Brother Narrator is conflicted: No, despite my anger and disgust, my ambitions were too great to surrender so easily. And why should I restrict myself, segregate myself? I was a spokesman – why shouldn’t I speak about women, or any other subject? Nothing lay outside the scheme of our ideology, there was a policy on everything, and my main concern was to work my way ahead in the movement. I left the building still feeling as though I had been violently spun but with optimism growing. Being removed from Harlem was a shock but one which would hurt them as much as me, for I had learned what that the clue to what Harlem wanted was what I wanted; and my value to the Brotherhood was no different from the value to me of my most useful contact: it depended upon my complete frankness and honesty in stating the community’s hopes and hates, fears and desires. One spoke to the committee as well as to the community. No doubt it would work much the same downtown. The new assignment was a challenge and a opportunity for testing how much of what happened in Harlem was due to my own efforts and how much to the sheer eagerness of the people themselves. And, after all, I told myself, the assignment was also proof of the committee’s good-will. For by selecting me to speak with its authority on a subject which elsewhere in our society I’d have found taboo, weren’t they reaffirming their belief both in me and in the principles of the Brotherhood, proving that they drew no lines even when it came to women? They had to investigate the charges against me, but he assignment was their unsentimental affirmation that their belief in me was unbroken. I shivered in the hot street. I hadn’t allowed the idea to take concrete form in my mind, but for a moment I had almost allowed an old, southern backwardness which I had thought dead to wreck my career (400-401). Although Brother Narrator knows they are wrong, he capitulates and goes where they send him without saying goodbye to anyone. Unbeknownst to Brother Narrator, the rug is almost from under him. The rug is finally pulled from under him when he is summoned back to the Harlem district to investigate the disappearance of a fellow-brother and spokesman, Tod Clifton. What Brother Narrator uncovers sends him spiraling downwards into chaos, but unfortunately for Clifton, he dies in the face of it. Brother Narrator finally sees the Brotherhood for what it truly represents and his role in it. Brother Narrator finally deduces at an “emergency” meeting, after Clifton’s funeral, that both he and the Harlem district were expendable pawns in the Brotherhood’s game and that he was used as a tool to increase their membership and dues. The Brotherhood manipulated them, both the Harlem district and Brother Narrator, to get what they wanted and now they were moving on. Both Brother Narrator and the Harlem district were just a means to an end for the Brotherhood. They call it sacrifice for the betterment, or greater cause, of the movement. Brother Narrator is dumbfounded because of all the time, effort, and pain he’s put ...