Clark Atlanta University

Dimensions of Alienation in Two Black American and Caribbean Novels

Author(s): Eugenia Collier
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Phylon (1960-), Vol. 43, No. 1 (1st Qtr., 1982), pp. 46-56
Published by: Clark Atlanta University
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/274598 .
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By EUGENIA COLLIER

Dimensions of Alienation in Two Black

American and Caribbean Novels
ITEATURE is a reservoir of truth to which those who thirst con-
tinuously bring their pitchers. A study of the literature by black
authors in the United States and the Caribbean reveals a heavy em-
phasis on the same themes, such as alienation, rootlessness, and a
search for the past - an emphasis which indicates kinship among black
people who have endured a commonality of experience - that is, op-
pression. These themes are, of course, not unknown in Western litera-
ture. But the emphasis there is lighter, and the alienation is more
philosophical than pragmatic; certainly it is not all-encompassing and
total, afflicting an entire people, as it is in black literature. The seri-
ous reader of Afro-American and Afro-Caribbean literature must of
necessity be greatly impressed with the similarity - despite super-
ficial differences - between these two bodies of works, a similarity
which has the greatest significance if literature is, as I believe, truth.
Of all the themes in literature that of alienation is among the most
moving to black people everywhere. To be isolated, to be separated
from others, to be fragmented within the self is a basic human dread.
Yet alienation is the fruit of the oppression of blacks, wherever the
slave ships happened to dump their fathers. As an inhabitant of their
most intimate selves, alienation is a constant element in the literature
of blacks. This essay concerns alienation in two major black novels of
the 1950s, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man' from the United States and
George Lamming's In the Castle of My Skin2 from the Caribbean. These
novels are appropriate for this study because they are among the most
perfect in terms of both technique and portrayal of theme, and because
thirty years later, nothing has changed to invalidate their central
thrust. Blacks are still, sadly, as alienated as ever.
The very title of Ellison's Invisible Man conjures up images of lone-
liness and despair so profound as to threaten the wholeness of the human
spirit. Invisibility means living in a world which forbids one's partici-
pation. The invisible person sees but is unseen; is vitally aware of a
universe in which his very being is discounted, nullified, denied. Thus,
invisibility is the ultimate alienation. To be both inside and outside
of one's world, to see what one cannot share: this is invisibility; this is
alienation.
Copyright 1947, 1948, 1952. Original publisher Random House. I am using the Signet Books
edition, published in New York, fifteenth printing. All references are to this edition.
X Original publisher McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., 1953. I am using the Collier Books Edition
(New York, 1970). All references are to this edition.

46
 DIMENSIONS OF ALIENATION 47

The concept of alienation is extremely complex. It is multidimensional:

it involves philosophy, psychology, sociology, religion, history, even
medicine. One is alienated from something that is a desirable aspect
of human existence. And since alienation is not a natural or positive
condition, it has come about for a reason, usually the result of a com-
plex of factors. Alienation is particularly devastating to black people.
In traditional Africa, everyone belongs to a group, everyone functions
in harmony with his or her group. Torn from their homeland and
forced to endure the most vicious form of racism, black Americans
suffer a uniquely agonizing alienation. It is this phenomenon that in-
forms Ellison's Invisible Man and defines its central symbol of in-
visibility. In discussing the dimensions of alienation in this novel, I
shall touch upon two aspects of alienation: double consciousness and
double vision.
W. E. B. DuBois at the turn of the century gave a name to a condition
which has ever haunted black Americans: Double consciousness.
It is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of
always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring
one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt
and pity. One ever feels his twoness,- an American, a Negro; two
souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals
in one dark body whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being
torn asunder.3
Double-consciousness is, then, a negative concept. It is a paradox, a
war, a conflict between the Americanness and the Blackness of black
Americans, between the role that they must play for survival and their
knowledge of what they really are. This is what the wise old grand-
father of Ellison's nameless protagonist means when he advises from
his death bed, "Son, after I'm gone I want you to keep up the good
fight. I never told you, but our life is a war and I have been a traitor
all by born days, a spy in the enemy's country ever since I give up
my gun in the Reconstruction. Live with your head in the lion's mouth.
I want you to overcome 'em with yeses, undermine 'em with grins,
agree 'em to death and destruction, let 'em swoller you till they
vomit or bust wide open." (pp. 19-20) And he who has been the meekest
of men insists, "Learn it to the younguns." The protagonist, who re-
sembles Grandfather, is disturbed by these words, which he cannot
understand, but which haunt him throughout his strange odyssey into
invisibility. For the protagonist, double-consciousness has resulted in
alienation on three levels. The first is alienation from the larger Ameri-
can society. White America cannot see him but sees rather the image
of his own misconceptions:
8 The Souls of Black Folk, originally published 1903. Reference here is to the Fawcett Premier
edition (Greenwich, Conn., 1961), pp. 16-17.
48 PHYLON

... I taminvisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see

me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows,
it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting
glass. When they approach me they see only by surroundings, them-
selves, or figments of their imagination - indeed, everything and
anything except me.
. . . That invisibility to which I refer occurs because of a peculiar
disposition of the eyes of those with whom I come in contact. A
matter of the construction of the inner eyes, those eyes with which
they look through their physical eyes upon reality. (p. 7)
The protagonist's alienation from the land of his birth is shown
most clearly, I believe, in the paint factory episode. Here is most apparent
the strange duality of being both inside and outside. "Keep America
Pure With Liberty Paints," announces the sign outside the factory,
ironically combining the word liberty, sacred to the American myth,
with the dreadful purpose of the Ku Klux Klan - to "purify" America.
The Liberty Paint Factory specializes in white paint: Optic White, so
pure white that it is used for government buildings. But it is made
in a very peculiar way. Ten drops of a black liquid must be put into
each bucket of paint and stirred until it disappears into the white. Only
then can the paint be pure white -only with the invisible black.
The symbolism becomes clearer when the protagonist, having ruined
a batch of the paint by putting in the wrong black liquid, is sent to
work with Lucius Brockway, an ancient black man who keeps the
factory going by running a set of furnace-like machines deep in the
underground basement. Unseen, like the liquid that goes into the paint,
Brockway is necessary to the existence of the factory. It is he who
keeps the valves at the right pressure, he who pumps energy into the
factory, he who is indispensable to its continuation. Not a bit of paint
can be made without Lucius Brockway. The paint factory episode
exemplifies the protagonist's alienation from American society. The
black liquid must disappear into the white paint; Brockway must
remain separate and apart from the center of activity. Indispensable
and yet unseen; inside and yet outside.
Not only is the protagonist alienated from the land of his birth; he
is alienated from his own people, the black folk. The protagonist is
baffled by Grandfather's dying words, which are really nothing more
than a verbalization of a time-honored tool for survival, a tool devel-
oped and finely honed by the black folk. Throughout the novel, the
protagonist is both drawn to and mystified by the black folk heritage.
He remains both a part of and apart from his people. In the battle
royal episode he considers himself different from the other boys who
have been brought in to fight each other for amusement of the white
 DIMENSIONS OF ALIENATION 49

power structure. Yet he, too, is subject to the same pressures. He, too,
is tempted by the nude blonde and forbidden both to look and not to
look; made to fight his brothers blinded by a white blindfold; tempted
by shiny gold coins which are not only electrified but also fake.
Without the folk wisdom of his illiterate old grandfather he is nothing
more than an educated fool.
He has no understanding of the folk characters who cross his path.
He is embarrassed by Trueblood's narrative to Mr. Norton, the white
philanthropist, anxious to be guided by the white line which keeps
him on the right side of the road. In New York the first day as he
starts out hopefully with his briefcase full of deceptive letters of
recommendation, he encounters a black man pushing a cart and sing-
ing. The man greets him as a brother, using a brilliant display of street
language. But the protagonist understands neither the man nor his
rap. He is completely mystified; he is travelling on a different track.
He meets other black folk characters but does not understand them
either. He appreciates his landlady Mary and sympathizes with the old
couple who are evicted. But he does not understand them. He battles
with Ras, the West Indian nationalist, but he never really hears what
Ras is saying. Yet he is haunted by the folk and cannot escape them.
He is unable to get rid of the obscene nigger-bank from Mary's house
even after he has smashed it to bits. Finally it goes into his briefcase
along with other trophies of his search for himself. He feels a great
desire for the hot yams sold on the streets of Harlem and carrying
memories of down home, even though the yam he buys is frostbitten.
And he never really understands the versatile Rinehart, lover-man,
numbers-man, preacher-man, for whom he is mistaken as he flees
from both Ras and the Brotherhood. Folk ways are mysterious to him,
yet he himself is part of the folk.
The protagonist's ambivalent state of being both a part of and apart
from his people is most poignant in the Prologue. After his various
experiences in his futile search for himself, he has escaped through a
sewer to a lonely underground world. Here he thinks upon his experi-
ences and tries to ascertain their meaning. But still he cannot realize
rationally the depth of his alienation. He wants desperately to achieve
integration with the black folk who are his roots. He listens to Louis
Armstrong play the blues and wants to feel the vibrations not only
with his ears but with his whole self. Finally he learns to experience
the music as well: to hear the unheard sounds, to enter the music and
descend to its depths. Under the spell of the music and a marijuana
cigarette he sees visions of archetypal black folk-the slave girl sold
for her sexuality, the preacher and his congregation, the old slave
50 PHYLON

woman, her mulatto sons, all embodying some aspect of black history.
The protagonist attempts a spiritual union with each, but he is incapable,
and on each level he is rebuffed, even threatened. The dream ends with
his fleeing terrified from an unseen pursuer who seems to embody
several folk characters, while the music beats hysterically in his ears.
He awakens to the question, sung by Louis Armstrong, "What did I do
to be so Black and blue?"
The protagonist's alienation from the black folk and from his native
land are part of a third level of alienation: That is, alienation from
himself. For him, the components which comprise the Self are incom-
plete. He is a divided person. The double-consciousness of which
DuBois speaks has distorted his concept of who he is. Unlike Grand-
father, who is keenly aware of what is mask and what is truth, the
protagonist accepts the definitions of a hostile society. And so he is
nameless, invisible.
But double-consciousness is not the complete picture. The protago-
nist's alienation is comprised not only of double consciousness but also
of double vision: The ability to perceive with a clarity denied those
who are merely inside. Richard Wright describes this phenomenon in
his novel, The Outsider:
'"Imean this," Houston hastened to explain. "Negroes, as they enter
our culture, are going to inherit the problems we have, but with a
difference. They are outsiders and they are going to know they
have these problems. They are going to be self-conscious; they are
going to be gifted with a double vision, for, being Negroes, they
tare going to be both inside and outside ,of our culture at the same
time. . .. They will not only be Americans or Negroes; they will
be centers of knowing so to speak. . . . Now, imagine a man inclined
to think, to probe, to ask questions. Why, he'd be in a wonderful
position to do so, would he not, if he were black ,and lived in
America? A dreadful objectivity would be forced upon him."4
The protagonist's double vision develops during the course of the
novel as he loses the illusions that for all his life have clouded his
vision. The process is painful, but the result is an ability to under-
stand. The Epilogue contains the wisdom which invisibility has yielded.
The protagonist finally begins to understand Grandfather's advice and
to see himself and indeed all black Americans in relationship to this
country, its corruption, and its possibilities. It is this double vision
which makes it possible-indeed, necessary-for him to come up
above ground. He realizes that he will be no less invisible, but, he says,
even an invisible man has a socially responsible role to play.
What do blacks learn from the experiences of an invisible man? (For
a black novel must teach blacks about themselves or it is without

4 Originally published 1953 by Harper and Brothers. Reference here is to the Perennial Library
edition (New York, 1965), p. 129.
 DIMENSIONS OF ALIENATION 51

value.) They learn that they must divest themselves of the definitions
of the past, definitions not made by themselves but by a society which
is violently and uncompromisingly racist. It is a painful process, this
re-definition of Their Selves, for it involves serious questioning of what
they have been and where they thought they were going. But it is
necessary. For only then will they be whole.
Alienation, the malady of the colonized, affiflicts Caribbean blacks
just as severely as it does their American brothers and sisters. The
sense of outsiderness is different in the Caribbean. Black people are
a numerical majority there, where centuries ago the greed of Euro-
peans resulted in a slave population that vastly outnumbered their
enslavers. But money and power have remained in the hands of whites,
and the standards and aspirations of the people, by and large, are still
labeled "Made in Europe." The theme of alienation is endemic in the
black Caribbean world, reflecting - even in the lush splendor of tropical
beauty -the ruined world of the oppressed. For writers the sense of
isolation is especially intense, for most have had to leave home and
travel to Europe or America for their education and for the opportunity
to publish, after which they no longer fit the old life, the old home.
Derek Walcott's The Gulf and Dream on Monkey Mountain, Edward
Brathwaite's The Arrivants, Erroll John's Moon on a Rainbow Shawl,
and V. S. Reid's The Leopard are only a few of the vast number of
Caribbean works that reflect the theme of alienation. George Lamming's
In The Castle of My Skin, which is one of the most beautiful books I
have ever read, portrays most clearly the fragmented world of alienated
black West Indians.
In The Castle of My Skin shows a boy growing up in Barbados. More
than that, it is a portrait of the village of his birth and the changes
which result only in the movement from subtle exploitation by a white
feudal landlord to brutal exploitation by a brown semi-affluent middle
class. Throughout, the novel reveals the same dimensions of alienation
revealed by Invisible Man: alienation from the colonizer, from the folk,
from the self. There are differences in the two novels as in the two
cultures. But the basics remain the same. Like Invisible Man, this
Caribbean novel utilizes a nameless narrator whose experience reflects
that of a people.
The separation of the people, including the narrator, from the colo-
nizer is obvious from the beginning. The landlord, Mr. Creighton, lives
high on a hill, separated from the villagers not only by a forest but
also by a high wall with broken glass glued to the top. The villagers
erect their shabby homes on Mr. Creighton's land and forever bring
their hard-earned ground rent to his offices. The village is named
after the Creighton family, which has owned it for generations. In the
52 PHYLON

villagers' sight, Mr. Creighton is second only to God. And a close second
at that. Children imitate his fabulous horse and buggy when he deigns
to come to town, adults are flattered by his attention, everyone refers
to the white overlord as the Great. The distance between Mr. Creighton
and the villagers is crystallized in the scene in which the narrator,
referred to once in the novel as "G," and his two friends, Boy Blue
and Trumper- kids, all three - manage to get inside the wall and
hide outside the house where they can observe a party at which the
Creightons are entertaining the officers of a newly arrived British
ship. They are literally on the outside looking in. The boys understand
only incompletely the slice of life they are seeing, and the "Great"
totally distort the motivation of the boys, who are discovered when
they inadvertently crawl into an ant's nest. They elude capture, but
the word goes out in the village that "vagabonds" have broken into
the sacred grounds to rape the landlord's daughter.
The alienation of the people from the colonizer is clear also in the
scene in which the schoolboys are engaged in the annual review for the
birthday of the Queen of England. The visiting inspector is a white
government official, for whom the black head teacher parades the boys
like a display of prize cattle. Each class has its performance in com-
petition with the others. Lamming's description of the inspector, un-
surpassed for effectiveness by anything in literature, reveals the real
nature of the Great:
The inspector was smoother than anything you had ever seen except
perhaps a sore. Sometimes'a villager caught a chigoe flea in his
toe. He was careless in his attention, iand the flea hatched in the
flesh. Under the skin of the toe there would soon be a small bag
fertile with fleas. The toe swelled up into a white and shiny
smoothness. It was an indescribable smoothness of skin under
which fleas lodged. When the toe was pricked with a pin, the skin
cracked and the pus spilled out. The smoothness had slid away,
but you couldn't forget it. You couldn't forget it when you saw
-the inspector smile. Smooth like the surface of pus. It gathered and
secreted so much .so quietly and so stealthily. (pp. 35-6)
The state of colonization and the ambivalence toward the colonizer
have resulted in separating the people from each other. The villagers
are exceedingly proud that Barbados is called Little England; they
are loyal, if subordinate, subjects of the Queen. Obviously, the villagers'
aspirations to be like the whites are futile. But the very aspiration
fragments the people. The ones who come closest to the Great in
physical proximity or in lifestyle are superior to the ordinary folk.
The overseer, the constable, those with a modicum of illusory power
flaunt their "superiority" over the lowly. Villagers who go to England
to be educated and to become lawyers and doctors return "stamped
 DIMENSIONS OF ALIENATION 53

like an envelope with what they called the culture of the Mother
Country." Through their consciousness rings the bitter refrain, "The
enemy. My People . .. My people are low-down nigger people. My
people don't like to see people get on. .... The image of the enemy, and
the enemy was My People." (p. 20) And the villagers themselves be-
lieve it. The myth, says Lammings, "has eaten through their conscious-
ness like moths through the pages of aging documents." (p. 20) Not
only class snobbery but also differences in skin color separate the
villagers from each other. Nobody wants to be black, but most are.
They make bitter jokes about each other's blackness and consider
mulattoes as the most beautiful. The infusion of the blood of the
colonizer is a decided asset.
The divisive nature of oppression is symbolized in Lamming's de-
scription of the games in which white tourists pit the black boys against
each other in diving for pennies:
The boys dived and the white men watched the sprawling black
limbs in their scramble. Some minutes later the boys would surface,
disputing the accusations they made against each other. Some
complained of being kicked, and others of being scratched and
later decided to settle the dispute by tossing more coins. If the
dispute went on after their return the white men would tell them
to fight it out and the boys fought. (p. 124)
Worst of all, the people are separated from their past. It is the past
which gives us our sense of identity: we cannot know who we are
unless we know who we have been. Oppressed people are robbed of
their past by the manipulation of the oppressor, who knows very well
the force of history. In the Castle of My Skin reveals the people's
separation from their past in several meaningful passages. In one, the
schoolchildren who have performed so well for the white inspector
are chatting about such things as slavery, freedom, and the English
king. In spite of their education, they have only distorted notions of
all three. Moreover, the villagers are infected with disdain for Africa,
the land of their ancestors. The shoemaker, one of the more informed
and articulate of the villagers, insists ". . .. if you tell half of them .. .
they have something to do with Africa they'll piss straight in your
face." (p. 110) And another adds that "no man like to know he black."
(p. 110) The old man Pa, so old that nobody knows his age, sums up
the problem one night when he is apparently talking in his sleep.
Actually in his subconscious mind, released in sleep, he seems to be-
come one with his ancestors and to speak not as himself but as the
racial unconscious. Pa speaks of ancient African cultures in which men
are one with their world until the advent of strangers who induce
54 PHYLON

men to betray their brothers and who buy and sell their fellow human
beings. The old world is destroyed and there is no turning back:
The families fall to pieces and many a brother never see his sister
nor father the son. Now there's been new combinations and those
that come after make quite a collection. So if you hear some young
fool fretting about back to Africa, keep far from the invalid and
don't force a passage to where you won't yet belong. (p. 234)
The narrator G. is profoundly and personally affected by the frag-
mentation from which the village suffers. He is without family, except
for his mother, his other relatives having followed the tide of Barbadians
who had to leave the island for jobs and education. As a child he is
frightened nightly by phantoms who haunt his brain. Growing up, he
wants more than anything to be an accepted member of the boys. But
he never is. His mother's ambitions for him preclude his associating
with the likes of Trumper, Bob, and Boy Blue, and something in his
own personality helps to keep them apart. In their interaction he is
the onlooker; he reports what they say and do, but his own part in
the group dynamics is minimal. The obvious separation comes when
he passes his examinations for high school while his friends remain
in the village. In high school G. is even more alone. And being a high
school boy, he does not "belong" in the village. The education system
of the colonizer has fostered this separation. The boyhood group finally
dissolves when Bob and Boy Blue join the constabulary and Trumper
goes to America. G's isolation is complete when he must leave Barbados
to teach in Trinidad. The rigid class system inherited from the oppressor,
the economic exploitation which keeps people poor and hopeless and
ignorant and ready to be victimized by anybody with the sagacity and
the nerve, the psychological pressures which ultimately force ambitious
people to leave the island, the little-understood World War II which
disrupts and destroys - all of these aspects of oppression trap the
narrator G. into isolation.
Functioning in this fragmented world, the narrator experiences the
most devastating isolation -alienation from the Self. He experiences
loneliness and despair, which increases as he grows up and as his vision
of his world increases. As the moment approaches when he must leave
his island home and, like the others, never really return, he tries to
repeat some of the rituals of his boyhood, but they are forever lost. He
realizes sadly that those elements which have comprised his life are
somehow other than himself:
 DIMENSIONS OF ALIENATION 55
When I review these relationships they seem so odd. I have always
been here on this side and the other person on that side, and we
have both tried to make the sides appear similar in the needs,
desires, and ambitions. But it wasn't true. It was never true. .... I
am always feeling terrified of being known; not because they
really know you, but simply because their claim to this knowledge
is a concealed attempt to destroy you. That is what knowing means.
As soon as they know you they will kill you, and thank God that's
why they can't kill you. They can never know you.... They won't
known the you that's hidden somewhere in the castle of your skin.
(p. 291)
He feels two sharply divided selves -the external self and the real
self for which discovery by others would mean both life and death.
The answer to the alienation wrought by oppression is firmer and
more positive than that in Invisible Man. For Trumper returns from
America. From the overt agony of black Americans, who are unpro-
tected by the numerical superiority which disguises the pain in Bar-
bados, Trumper has gained double vision. And amid the noise and
bustle of America he has found the answer: "My people . .. The Negro
race . . . The Race, our people." (pp. 331, 332) The overt racism of the
United States and the obvious suffering of black people, the besieged
minority, has taught Trumper to see what was hidden by the subtle
racism in Barbados, where blacks are the powerless majority. Neither
he nor the narrator G. uses the word alienation; they describe the com-
mon affliction as "being a part of what you could not become," which
is what Wright described as being both inside and outside simul-
taneously. And Trumper sees what G. as yet cannot: That black people
in America and the West Indies -and by extension, in the entire
diaspora -share a common history and a common destiny. This kin-
is
ship the answer to alienation.
"You remember," I said, "a long time ago we spent a day at the
beach? You and me and Bob and Boy Blue.... You remember you
were saying iabout a feeling, a big bad feeling in the pit of the
stomach. A feeling you were alone in a world all by yourself, and
although there were hundreds of people moving around you, it
made no difference. You got giddy. Boy Blue said it made him
giddy to think about it." ...
"A man who know his people won't ever feel like that," said
Trumper."Never." (p. 338)
It is vitally meaningful that two novels in such totally different
settings - one a tiny Barbadian village, one the urban sprawl of New
York- should be steeped in the same theme of alienation, and that
the loneliness and isolation of an oppressed people should haunt all
genres of both black American and black West Indian literature. The
56 PHYLON

writing of black people everywhere is impressive testimony to the

seriousness of the problem of alienation and to the fact of shared
experience of all the scattered people who were once uprooted and
enslaved. But literature must not merely describe; it must also offer
solutions. The solution is there if blacks will but see it: To remain a
part of what one cannot become means eternal alienation. And history
has demonstrated repeatedly that the oppressed cannot become their
oppressor. Blacks must cease yearning to imitate white culture and
must instead look to fellow blacks, their blood brothers, whose com-
mon experience transcends differences in location and language. Only
then will they find themselves. Only then will they control their
destiny. The time is upon black people, and the need is urgent. Other-
wise, as a world of black literature eloquently tells them, they will
separately remain adrift on an endless sea of loneliness.