Fingerprints

How do we respond to outside influences while remaining true to ourselves?

     So often we lose ourselves by conforming to external influences. We become who other's want us to be. But what separates the roles we take on from our true sense of self is the fact that we begin to change our own values, our own ideas, our own opinions-everything that sets us apart- to agree with the multitudes of society. It is even easier to conform to outside influences when we lose sight of who we are. Ralph Ellison captures these ideas through his unnamed protagonist. Invisible Man is a novel that explores the idea that one can lose his or her identity because of external forces. The Invisible Man serves as a symbol of not only African American individuals who took on prescribed roles in society, but all people who have struggled to remain true to themselves when society wants them to be someone else. 

     The Invisible Man struggled to find his own identity because of the social climate in 1930s America. Thus, he allowed society to define him-taking on the roles people wanted him to. As the narrator states in the novel's opening, “All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned somebody tried to tell me what it was.” The narrator’s blackness comprises a large part of his identity, although this is not something he has necessarily chosen. As a result of the racist environment, the narrator is invisible. He does not have supernatural powers to make himself disappear, but he is invisible because the world around him refuses to see him.

     However, invisibility did not stem from racism alone. The Invisible Man's sense of self became blurred when generalizations about his identity were cast upon him- making him seem like a drone rather than an individual. This becomes evident at the unnamed black university and at Liberty Paints. However, it is the Brotherhood, an obscure organization that claims to a black activist group, that proves to be most disillusioning for the narrator. The Brotherhood gives The Invisible Man a new name and a list of prescribed rules-essentially redefining who he is as a person. He allowed others to define who he was- failing to remain true to himself while the world impacted him. 

     Like the Invisible Man, I believe that we as people all struggle at some point to remain true to ourselves despite outside influences. There was a time when I believed there was this handbook I had never gotten that explained how to be. I was conscious of how I sat, how I smiled, how I spoke. I wondered if everyone I knew would go home and exchange notes on how I didn't quite fit or something worse: maybe they wouldn't notice. So I tried to pick up the patterns. I wore what they wore and I said what they said. In time, I made a version of myself that fit in (whatever that means). As time continued, the patterns kept changing and it took too much energy to try and keep up. Then I realized something: even though there is a thing called fitting in, it isn't something you can learn and practice. I realized that the way to become natural or be myself was to forget who I was trying to be to other people. And if there is a handbook, you probably get to write it yourself.