【正文】 ach other to thedeath. Black still are having their strength turned upon themselves. 2. The lost of the narrator’s identity The confusion of society 美國“黑人文學(xué)”對自我身份的探尋 —— 以拉爾夫埃利森《看不見的人》為例 In the late 1920s or early 1930s, the narrator lived in the South. Since he is a favored public speaker, he is invited to make a speech to a group of important white men in his town. These men reward him with a briefcase containing a scholarship to a prestigious blackcollege, but only after humiliating him by forcing him to fight in a ―battle royal‖ in which he is pitted against other young black men, all blindfolded, in a boxing ring. After the battle royal, the white men force the youths to scramble over an electrified rug in order to snatch at fake gold coins. The narrator has a dream that night in which he imagines that his scholarship is actually a piece of paper reading ―To Whom It May Concern . . . Keep This NiggerBoy Running.‖ Three years later, the narrator bee a student at the college. He is asked to drive a wealthy white trustee of the college, Mr. Norton, around the campus. Norton talks incessantly about his daughter, and then shows an undue interest in the narrative of Jim True blood, a poor, uneducated black man who impregnated his own daughter. After hearing this story, Norton needs a drink, and the narrator takes him to the Golden Day, a saloon and brothel that normally serves black men. A fight breaks out among a group of mentally imbalanced black veterans at the bar, and Norton passes out during the chaos. He is tended by one of the veterans, who claim to be a doctor and who taunts both Norton and the narrator for their blindness regarding race relations. Back at the college, the narrator listens to a long, impassioned sermon by the Reverend Homer A. Barbee on the subject of the college’s Founder, whom the blind Barbee glorifies with poetic language. After the sermon, the narrator is chastised by the college president, Dr. Bledsoe, who has learned of the narrator’s misadventures with Norton at the old slave quarters and the Golden Day. Bledsoe rebukes the narrator, saying that he should have shown the white man an idealized version of black life. He expels the narrator, giving him seven letters of remendation addressed to the college’s white trustees in New York City, and sends him there in search of a job. The narrator travels to the bright lights and bustle of 1930s Harlem, where he looks unsuccessfully for work. The letters of remendation are of no help. At last, the narrator goes to the office of one of his letters’ addressees, a trustee named Mr. Emerson. There he meets Emerson’s son, 美國“黑人文學(xué)”對自我身份的探尋 —— 以拉爾夫埃利森《看不見的人》為例 who opens the letter and tells the narrator that he has been betrayed: the letters from Bledsoe actually portray the narrator as dishonorable and unreliable. The young Emerson helps the narrator to get a lowpaying job at the Liberty Paints plant, whose trademark color is ―Optic White.‖ The narrator briefly serves as an assistant to Lucius Brockway, the black man who makes this white paint, but Brockway suspects him of joining in union activities and turns on him. The two men fight, neglecting the paintmaking。 but each new question does not cancel the validity of the question that precedes it. On his way to selfdiscovery, the narrator experiences too much frustration. Fortunately, with each setback he gains some maturity, and so the circular maze that entraps him bees less damaging to his soul. 4. Search for identity His Awakening Through his journey, the narrator is searching for his identity as an independent individual. As a humble and submissive slave, the narrator believes he would achieve his ideal by distinguishing himself from the rest ignorant and poor blacks. But by contrast with his dream, he neither extricates himself from the predicament nor achieves economic success. Spiritually shaken by the truth of racial discrimination, the narrator begins to awaken gradually. He realizes that he is entitled to get freedom. If he wants to get freedom, the first way is to change his meek and submissive view of life and break the dominance of white authorities. This is the foundation for him to search for his identity. The first experience that made him awaken is when he knows that Dr. Bledsoe, one of the authorities that he was so respected and admired before, cheats him. As the narrator mits his mistake by showing 美國“黑人文學(xué)”對自我身份的探尋 —— 以拉爾夫埃利森《看不見的人》為例 Norton Trueblood’s shack and carrying him to the Golden Day, Bledsoe immediately reproaches the narrator that he is a fool lacking in judgment. He tells the narrator that: ―don’t show the white what they want to see, but what the blacks want them to see‖, and expels the narrator from the college. However, the narrator at that time doesn’t awaken, and he still holds the hope that Dr. Bledsoe could help him to get a job in New York. Instead of hatred for Dr. Bledsoe, he convinces himself that he is at fault and deserves it. However, his hope is disillusioned after he learns the truth that Bledsoe intends no employers to offer him a job and he just deceives him. Immediately, the narrator is irritated, and it is the first time for him to think about the authority people whom he admires much before. It is very painful for him to know this, because it represents the disillusion of the dreams he has before. He wants to get his identity as Dr. Bledsoe does in his , Dr. Bledsoe represents the loss of blackness and black culture. He himself had no identity. In this way, breaking away from the influence of Dr. Bledsoe is the first step for the narrator in his search for identity. The narrator’s declaration of his love for blacks and the reconfirmation of black history are expressed in the episode of description of eating sweet potatoes. The sweet