The Invisible Man

So far I think that the book is still pretty good. The beginning of Chapter 11 starts out with the narrator waking up in a hospital and alls he sees is a doctor standing over him, with one of those light things on his head. The doctor has him swallow something to make become unconscious again. When he wakes up again the doctor keeps trying to figure out what his name is. It says though how all the narrator could think about was his pain. He couldn’t even remember why he was at the hospital, They are using electric shock therapy on him one doctor wants to continue with it the other doesn’t arguing that it’s rather primitive. And at some point the idea of castration was brought up and I had no clue where that came from or even more so how what would help. Also that they wouldn’t being using this on some other man who had a Harvard or New England background but its different cause he’s of African American descent. I think that is a very good point, I never thought that you could even do these types of things to someone with out consent. It also says how the effects are like a lobotomy. That’s like what they did to “crazy” people in mental hospitals and it has horrible effects. The idea of racism comes up a lot in this book. One of the doctors makes a comment about how the narrator seems as if he is dancing when he is hit like the electric shock, saying “they really do have rhythm”, meaning black people in that sense. That is definitely a racial statement referring to African Americans as “they” as if blacks are a different species or something. The doctors still try to figure out the narrators name but he can’t understand him so he writes down on a card WHAT IS YOUR NAME? At this moment the narrator realizes he has no clue who he is. I can’t even imagine that feeling; it has to be absolutely awful. Waking up and not remembering anything about your life, how old you are or who you are, not even what your name is. It’s just got to be the worst and scariest feeling ever. The doctors continue to write a bunch of things down that relate to his identity to try and figure out who he is. They begin asking questions about Brer Rabbit and Brer Bear which I guess were two characters from folktales that were first introduced to
America by African slaves. I think that too is a very racist comment just to assume because he is black and to go from asking his name to questions about some story. This part of the story was a little confusing to me I guess that these questions did start to being back some of his memory. He starts to form himself a new identity but still there’s no way for him to get rid of his whole culture and the problems that seem to always arise because of his race, he still is going to have to deal with racism. I think that the doctors were a big part of this chapter and racism was a central theme. Those doctors were very racist from the very beginning with the electric shocks to the racist comment of “they have good rhythm” to the part that really shocked me to the suggestion of castration. That I found to be a very racist statement in and of itself because they would just be doing that to him for the fun of it I guess seeing that medically there was no reason. Then even to using the stories of the Brer Rabbit to make him remember his identity like every black man was to know that story. In the end of this chapter the narrator his new identity gives him more freedom and looks like things might start looking up for him.