Invisible Thoughts

What to say about this. I am enjoying my reading of this novel, but whenever I read a novel that deals with social issues such as racism I find that I get upset. I dislike seeing how people of another social or ethnic class were or in some cases still, treated. This book deals with racism of African Americans.

The main character in this book is obviously a bright young man who has proven himself to be intelligent and looking to go places with his life. This leads me to the one place in this book that really got me going and that was when he gave an incredible commencment speech and was recommended by the superintendent to read it. What really got me was that they brought him in with a bunch of other black boys, blindfolded them and then proceeded to treat them like animals, kicking, punching, etc. They had to fight back blindfolded, humiliated. Then when it was over the superintendent and the other men acted as if nothing was different, like what they had done was unimportant and just normal. And then to have the invisible man" come out of this fighting experience with only the thought that he would finally be able to give his commencement speech, not indicating at all his thoughts about their treatment truly amazed me. I did not understand why there was no outragious anger. They act as if this is normal and they must endure it. The superintendent, the one who thought his commencement speech was terrific, was a part of all this and then just continued on as if the fighting had not happened, offering him a scholarship to the black college.

For me, this part of story was hard to understand. I am looking forward to finishing the story to see how this plays out with him being in Harlem, all that anger he has inside of him, and whether or not he will fall to the status quo of others in Harlem or whether he will overcome adversity. I think I will be disappointed if there is nothing happy about the ending, but we’ll see…