【正文】 potatoes draw him ―with such a surge of homesickness that I turned away to keep my control‖. Such feeling is summed up in such word: ―they’re my birthmark‖ and ―I yam what I am!‖ In this view, he acknowledges his identity of a southern black. When he eats them he recalls his free and happy past life in the south. This episode is the best evidence that proves he has chosen himself and is never chosen by other people. The narrator at this time gradually found the identity of himself. His last plete awakening doesn’t happen until one day he witness the murder of Tod Clifton. Clifton is the old member of the Brotherhood. He is aware that the true purpose of the Brotherhood is not to serve for the needs of the black people. So he leaves the anization. Later, the narrator witness Clifton’s racially motivated murder at the hands of white police officers。 the end of his story is also the beginning. He states that he finally has realized that he must honor his individual plexity and remain true to his own identity without sacrificing his responsibility to the munity. He says that he finally feels ready to emerge from underground. 3. The reasons of the lost of the narrator’s identity Racism As for the relationship between racism and the lost of the narrator’s identity, we can say it is racism that directly leads to the lost of the narrator’s Identity. It is well known that racism was popular in America when the novel was written. As the narrator struggles to arrive at a conception of his own identity, he finds the fact that he is an African American living in a racist American society makes his efforts more plicated. Because of racial education he receives, it is often painful for the narrator to recognize of the kinship with all African Americans. At first he attempts to conform to the standards of the white world and thus make a 美國(guó)“黑人文學(xué)”對(duì)自我身份的探尋 —— 以拉爾夫埃利森《看不見(jiàn)的人》為例 place for himself in it. For a rather long time, he would not like to accept his black identity. We have already noted his feeling of superiority to the other young blacks who participate in the debasing prize fight. During the battle royal episode, the narrator announces his disdain for the other young men who participate in the whitesponsored fray. He sees himself as set apart from the ranks of the black munity due to his role as featured speaker during the smoker following the battle: ―I suspected that fighting a battle royal might detract from the dignity of my speech. In the narrator’s mind, he is different from other African Americans. So at the beginning of the story, he always tries to keep a distance from other African Americans. However, the reality is in the eyes of American whites, he is a black. The major obstacle to the narrator’s distinguishing himself from other African Americans is the fact of his own ―blackness‖, which at the same time can never be excised from his being, causing a seemingly irresolvable tension within the narrator’s psyche as the will to individual identity confronts the fact of munity heritage and identification. An example is during his first days in New York he disclaims his Southern background when he refuses a breakfast of pork chop and grits. He is determined to shed this ―bumpkin‖ past, and is offended by a waiter who offers him pork chops and grits for breakfast. Fortunately, the narrator gratefully accepts Mary’s aid and acknowledges their racial kinship. On the day of the first winter snow, when he emerge from his safe retreat in Mary Rambo’s home, the narrator encounters a street vendor selling baked yams and experiences a sudden nostalgia for the South. He buys three to eat as he walks down the street, feeling totally free. He even imagines his classmate’s shock at seeing him with these emblems of Southern culture. He scorns them for distancing themselves from all of the things that they in fact like: yams, chitterlings, and boiled hog’s maws. By buying baked yams, eating them and scorning those racist ideas, the narrator openly asserts both his kinship with African Americans and his Southern origins. The narrator is a smart youth. So we have every reason to believe that he must have found the similarities between him and the Sambo Dolls—both of them are blacks and manipulated by others. So in a sense, the narrator’s reassignment reminds him of his true marginality within the anization and points out to him both his dependence on the power of the Brotherhood and the importance of his identification with the black munity if he is to achieve individual identity. He realizes the necessity 美國(guó)“黑人文學(xué)”對(duì)自我身份的探尋 —— 以拉爾夫埃利森《看不見(jiàn)的人》為例 of embracing the ―we‖ he has hitherto rejected if he is to constitute the ―me‖—or, more appropriately, the subject ―I‖—he so desires, for he can lay claim to individual identity in no other way. The impact of American Culture It is wellknown that every country has its unique cultural plex. To American, one of its culture plex is the American Dream, which embodies the American’s typical ideal and traditional value. It is based on the beliefs of equality, freedom and success. As Thomas Jefferson declared in The Declaration of Independence, ―we held these truths to be selfevident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.‖ Franklin and Abraham Lincoln have transformed the idealistic ragstoriches into reality, and they bee idols and good examples for millions of American people. Before the middle of the nieen century, the American Dreams was beautiful and romantic. However, towards the late of the nieenth century, with the rapid development of economy in the capitalist country, the conventional American Dream was degenerated into a Dream of Gold which led to moral corruptio