Analysis Of What Did I Do To Be So Black And Blue

he narrator begins telling his story by saying that he is an “invisible man.” His invisibility, he says, is not a physical condition. He is not literally invisible, but is rather the result of the refusal of others to see him. He says that because of his invisibility, he has been hiding from the world, living underground and stealing electricity from the Monopolated Light & Power Company. He burns 1,369 light bulbs simultaneously and listens to Louis Armstrong’s “(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue” on a phonograph. He says that he has gone underground in order to write the story of his life and invisibility. As a young man, in the late 1920s or early 1930s, the narrator lived in the South. Because he is a gifted public speaker, he is invited
The narrator is inducted into the Brotherhood at a party at the Chthonian Hotel and is placed in charge of advancing the group’s goals in Harlem. After being trained in rhetoric by a white member of the group named Brother Hambro, the narrator goes to his assigned branch in Harlem, where he meets a black youth leader named Tod Clifton. He also becomes familiar with the Black Nationalist leader Ras the Exhorter, who opposes the interracial Brotherhood and believes that black Americans should fight for their rights over and against all whites. One day, the narrator receives an anonymous note warning him to remember his place as a black man in the Brotherhood. Not long after, the black Brotherhood member Brother Wrestrum accuses the narrator of trying to use the Brotherhood to advance for personal distinction. While a committee of the Brotherhood investigates the charges, the organization moves the narrator to another post, where he works as an advocate of women’s rights. After giving a speech one evening, he is seduced by one of the white women at the gathering. After a short time, the Brotherhood sends the narrator back to Harlem, where he discovers that Clifton has