Skip to main content

Chapter 8 motif

The Bible

" I was so far away from home, yet there was nothing familiar in my surroundings. Except the Bible; I picked it up and sat back on the bed, allowing its blood-red-edged pages to ripple beneath my thumb...I turned to the book of Genesis but could not read."

TIM has just arrived in Harlem and he is sitting in his hotel room reminiscing on his life back home.

TIM’s allusion to Genesis, the creation story, is symbolic of his beginning in Harlem. He was excited to get to Harlem but that he’s there he’s lonely and hasn’t done anything towards making a new beginning to himself, it’s as if he “could not read” his creation.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Chapter 5,6 and 7

Chapter 5 Quote :  "Around me the students move with faces frozen in solemn masks , and I seem to hear already the voices mechanically raised in the songs the visitors loved."  Content :  The invisible man entered the chapel on founders day after the car ride and the whole situation between him and Dr.Bledsoe.  Explanation :  TIM noticed how the students were only robots for the white people. They are like machines who are there to work for the white people.  Chapter 6 Quote :  “Suddenly he reached for something beneath a pile of papers, an old leg shackle from slavery which he profoundly called a ‘symbol of our progress’.”   Content : The narrator is in Dr.Bledsoe's office talking to him before Dr.Bledsoe kicked him out of the university.  Explanation :  Dr. Bledsoe believes that the old shackle is a symbol of progress the black people made since slavery. Bledsoe is proud of the leg shackle and  shows it to the na...