Top 2 Invisible Man quotes
“Our white is so white you can paint a chunka coal and you’d have to crack it open with a sledge hammer to prove it wasn’t white clear through.”
Lucius Brockway, Chapter 10
The author uses the Liberty Paints factory as a metaphor for race relations, in this quote, the old black worker in the basement of the factory boasts about the effectiveness of the company's 'optic white' paint. His boast is a reflection of the pressure that black individuals experience under the white power structure which smothers their blackness much like the white paint that covers the black of a piece of coal.
"And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone’s way but my own. I have also been called one thing and then another while no one really wished to hear what I called myself. So after years of trying to adopt the opinions of others I finally rebelled. I am an invisible man."
Protagonist, Epilogue
The protagonist summarises that the struggle he has had to endure during the course of his life has been chiefly due to his own inability to identify his inner self. He has let his identity be controlled by social conventions, and according to the ideologies that he had been taught to follow at College and later during his stint with the Brotherhood. He now realizes that he has the liberty to be himself, and he first becomes aware of this variance within himself when he briefly leads the life of Rhinehart. In this quote, the author uses the title of an Invisible man to refer to his inner true self which remains out of sight for all but himself.
