![]() To even utter words that hold Black people responsible for the problem of white racism-the message that appeases the white crowd-Invisible must swallow his own blood, the very substance of life within him. Life, both temporal and eternal, is a matter of blood. 17:11) and “the life of every creature is its blood” (Lev. In Scripture, blood makes expiation for sin (Lev. Blood, of course, is charged with theological significance. In this moment, blood functions in pivotal ways that illumine the dignity and physicality of the imago Dei. The crowd hardly listens to a word of his speech “until, no doubt distracted by having to gulp down my own blood,” he blurts out the phrase “social equality.” Upon which “the laughter hung smokelike in the sudden stillness,” and “sounds of displeasure filled the room.” Even his rhetoric is confined to the talking points of a segregated society. The battle royal, in the novel’s view, is society in miniature: Representatives of every slice of society gaze upon Invisible as a means to an end, a human prop for fetishized entertainment and a muzzled voice for proclaiming that the absence of equality is due to the absence of Black responsibility. He’s rewarded with a briefcase and a scholarship to a Negro college. Bruised and beaten, Invisible is thankful to close the night with his speech, swallowing his own blood and saliva to expound on the need for Blacks to be humble and socially responsible. What follows is a traumatizing, degrading debacle: Ten Black students are led into a smoky ballroom under the drunken gaze of “the most important men of the town … bankers, lawyers, judges, doctors, fire chiefs, teachers, merchants” and placed before a “magnificent blonde -stark naked” before being blindfolded, set in a makeshift boxing ring, and commanded to blindly beat each other battle royal style while the white townsmen hoot, holler, and hurl racial epithets. He is viewed only as a living pawn to be acted upon or moved in service to any agenda but his own. The novel opens with the protagonist, Invisible, mulling over his life’s journey with an arresting, metaphorical “I am” declaration: “I am an invisible man.” Readers quickly find that Invisible is not seen as a full human complete with autonomy and dignity. At its center is Ellison’s nameless protagonist and his quest to find dignity in an American society devout in its denial of his humanity. Ellison’s novel is comedic and tragic, gritty and surreal, mythic and symbolic, layered and accessible. Widely lauded as one of the finest 20th-century novels, Invisible Man is an expansive, landmark text, tracing the painful absurdity of Black life in the Jim Crow South and the thinly veiled racism of the urbane North. Ellison’s attention to the embodied experience of invisibility pushes us into a deeper recognition that the imago Dei is a visceral doctrine concerned with blood and bones, dignity and freedom, bodies and sight. Read through a theological lens, the classics of Black literature, like Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, can point us toward a rich and profound answer. Yet much standard Protestant theological reflection does not account for the doctrinal elephant in the room: What does it mean to live as an image bearer when other image bearers try to limit your existence? The image of God is like a doctrinal diamond, refracting multiple truths about humanity. The declaration is a demand to be recognized and seen as fully human and made in God’s image. There is, then, both theological origin and depth to the “I am a man” declaration of those workers. Through seven “I am” statements, John’s gospel explains who Jesus is, the eternal Word made flesh. God’s self-disclosure declared him to be I am (Ex. “You are here,” King proclaimed to those on strike, “to demand that Memphis will see the poor.” One of the sanitation workers described the motive and message years later: “We felt we would have to let the city know that because we were sanitation workers, we were human beings.”Ĭhristianity is no stranger to the importance of “I am” statements. The strike drew the support of Martin Luther King Jr., who would give the last days of his life to this cause. “I am a man.” On February 12, 1968, over two hundred Black sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, bore this revolutionary message written on signs and embodied in their protest against the work conditions that had led to the death of two fellow workers.
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