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Education and Naivety

The main characters in Invisible Man and Native Son are both African Americans living in twentieth century America but they have very different perspectives and experiences in life.
In Native Son, the main character, Bigger is brought up in an extremely impoverished environment. He only gets to go through eighth grade in school and had to spend the rest of his life with a gang and looking for work. Although we don't learn a whole lot about the narrator of Invisible Man, we do find out that he was the valedictorian of his class in high school and that he went through college. This means at the very least he is much more educated than Bigger. This is not an especially interesting realization, however to me at least it raises some questions about their attitudes towards life and specifically towards dealing with white people. 
Bigger is a much more negative thinking person and is much more cynical than the invisible man, or at least at first. The invisible man's naivety is especially shown in the boxing ring scene where all he can think about is giving his speech even while he's in the middle of a fight. Bigger is also much less comfortable dealing with white people (especially one's that aren't super racist) than the invisible man. For example Bigger gets really uncomfortable and freezes up when he is initially interviewing for a job with Mr. Dalton but when the invisible man is talking to Norton he seems perfectly comfortable around him (despite Norton's oddities). 
This seems odd to me because I would have thought that the person with more experience around whites (as I would have thought the invisible man would have had) would be the more cynical one. However it seemed that even as the invisible man was dealing with more white people and more direct abuse from white people he still managed to stay naive. Meanwhile, This difference in comfort levels could be simply due to the fact that the invisible man had more interactions with white people than Bigger did and maybe he got used to having to treat white people better. However, that still doesn't explain why he is so naive despite living in the Jim Crow South. 
Also, connecting this to my point about education, I would have expected the more educated of the two to be more cynical and be able to recognize when he is about to experience racism. However, as shown in the boxing ring scene, he obviously can not recognize when people are not being sincere and when people are trying to hurt him. This is strange to me as Bigger, the less educated of the two, seems to know more about what's actually going on in the world than the invisible man does and can recognize racist people when he says them. Maybe I'm wrong though maybe being educated could make you more naive or maybe being educated could make you somehow not see how others are treating you.  

Comments

  1. Samir4 September 2018 at 08:14


    Cool post! The fact that the more educated and experienced of the two was more naïve confused me at first too. However, is it possible that his naïvety is the result of his education in a system controlled by white people? If we also look at the way that his parents responded to his grandfather's last words, it seems plausible that he was raised in an environment that taught him to be naïve in the way that he is. Just a thought.

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  2. Olivia11 September 2018 at 19:05

    I think the reason the more educated narrator is more naive is because of the biases of the educational system. He was probably (subliminally) taught in school that white people are superior to other races. Also I would argue with what you said about the narrator being "perfectly comfortable" interacting with white people. I think he is more well versed in interacting with them than Bigger, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's comfortable. When he's talking with Norton, I think several times he wonders how he's supposed to respond to something, or what Norton wants to hear/expects from him, so I feel like he very consciously puts on an act to pander to them. Also, when he sees Trueblood and the vet interacting so casually with Norton, he freaks out, which I think also displays his discomfort.
    "White guys invented... everything but peanut butter, I believe. That's what I was taught in school, everything but peanut butter. Doesn't sound right, but the American educational system having a racial bias? No way, Joseph." -- Bo Burnham (I just think this quote is really funny and applicable)

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