The Veterans
Once upon a time, the asylum patients the narrator meets in the Golden Day were the kind of men Mr. Norton would have loved to meet. They were all professionals, successful in their field, and from Norton's perspective, evidence that his efforts to "uplift" black people were fruitful.
But things didn't quite go to plan. All of them were drafted into the war, suffered immense trauma, and returned to suffer even more due to their race. Their credentials weren't enough to exempt them from racism, and eventually they either gave on up society or were pushed out, and ended up in an insane asylum.
The veterans represent the shortcomings of institutions like the narrator's college (and coincidentally, their aslyum is right down the road from it). They did everything right - got an education, learned a trade, showed talent for it - but then came war and racism. In a way, the war could represent the experience of dealing with racism - the veterans just wanted to live their life, but then they were dragged into a battle they didn't start and never wanted, and are left without compensation or recognition. In the end, because of their experiences, these particular men were unable to continue functioning in society.
Or maybe they just didn't want to - the short fat veteran that tells his life story seems completely sane. If anything, he's just tired of the struggles he faced attempting to live in mainstream society. Who wouldn't be? The apparent sanity of the Golden Day's veterans suggests that maybe, what's really crazy is to try to appease and exist in a country that doesn't care about you. After all, they seem almost happier than the narrator, who's near having a nervous breakdown over bringing some random old man a drink. On some level, the veterans have decided that it's better to give up than fight a pointless battle, a philosophy that directly contradicts the narrator's hardworking attitude at the time. Maybe that's why they make him so uncomfortable - their very existance suggests that he might be doing something wrong.
This is such a great post. No one I've seen has really touched on this idea yet. I do really like the idea we're given that the veterans represent a possible future for the narrator. How would Norton feel seeing "his fate" turn out this way? Similarly to the veterans, we see in the prologue that the narrator has also removed himself somewhat from society. Though he's not living in an insane asylum, he's living underground by himself and seems to have gone a bit crazy. How would Norton feel seeing the prologue narrator? It becoming the next Bledsoe the only outcome these white trustees are happy with? That's what it seems.
ReplyDeleteI love the parallels you make between physical war and internal battles due to systemic racism's effects. It definitely makes sense to think of giving up the fight or trying to appease white people as breaking free from the holds of white-dominated society. There doesn't seem to be a way to win or completely dominate the society that has already been built unless you start by changing your own mentality towards it first.
ReplyDeleteGreat post! I haven't really thought about the veterans from Golden Day in a while. I like the idea that you brought up in the last paragraph about the veterans just being tired after seemingly doing all of the right things, but still ending up in a bad spot. I think you could make a parallel between the veterans and the Narrator. The Narrator started out doing seemingly all the right things to achieve his goals, but because of racism and his invisibility, he ends up basically giving up on life. The way he is at the end of the novel is arguably even more crazy than the veterans, even though he went through completely different situations throughout his life. This really shows that black people were put down no matter what they did and how impossible it was for black to really escape horrible situations. This is sort of similar to the idea that Bigger was a product of his circumstances in Native Son, and that he really couldn't do anything to keep from ending up on death's row. Great post!
ReplyDeleteI'll add that the war also serves, for "the Vet" (the doctor, the guy the narrator sees later on the bus), as an avenue for higher education and a glimpse of a potential alternate reality to the American racial-segregation model. He claims to have gone to serve in the army as a medic, and he stayed in France after the war, where he became a specialist in brain surgery (to the point where he's able to diagnose Norton's condition, which only a handful of doctors in the country can do). He's also, of course, able to "diagnose" Norton in a deeper way, as when he starts berating him and the narrator about how "neither can see the other" and all that, and it's these radical and dangerous ideas that presumably get him labeled as "crazy." Of all of these Vets, it's this guy--which his ironic detachment, his subversive sense of humor, his "off the map" existence, commenting from the sidelines--that most precisely anticipates the narrator's own outcome. It's like we can hear a little glimpse of the prologue narrator's style when "the vet" is talking.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the similarity in tone of the Vet and the narrator, once they've reached "enlightenment" (ha ha lots of light bulbs), is Ellison saying that that kind of morbid but outwardly lighthearted (haha) attitude is the way to cope with understanding of the world's inequity.
DeleteThe idea of the patients all having been men Norton would love to meet is really interesting to me. Norton seems only interested in the students at his specific college, and maybe a few administrative people like Bledsoe, but there's no interest in what the students succeed after they graduate. Norton thinks he's setting them up for an amazing life by helping provide an education, but a lot of them end up falling to the same racist system other black people do. There's no way to prepare someone for a world which is built to put them down.
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