Masquerade, magic, and carnival in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man - Critical Essay

Along these lines, no one seems more invisible, endowed with the spiritual gift of "tongues," and adept at masking in the tradition of the folkloric trickster than B. P. Rinehart, who, despite always being referred to and "spotted," never actually appears. He represents the master of carnival disguise and, in one of his many masquerades, functions as a self-avowed "spiritual technologist" who has a special way station in "New Orleans, the home of mystery" (Invisible 495). He represents the Southern black preacher and hoodoo priest and practitioner all in one, claiming to "See all, Know all, Tell all, Cure all," and promises to reveal hidden secrets with his prophetic vision (495). He professes to know end-times revelation and seems omnipresent and omnipotent, virtually accepted by all. Rinehart intimately knows the black community to which he belongs--its particular cadences and short riffs, its vibrato and shouts, its costumes and masks--and, like Peter Wheatstraw, can use this cultural inheritance to assume a role that borders on, and crosses into, the supernatural.

Ellison locates the conduit for this power in the disembodied voice. The fact that Ellison refers to the Invisible Man's voice as "disembodied" and, no less, "taunting" attests to its spiritual or ghostly qualities, but the voice itself contains the power to mesmerize and control "as if by magic" ("Introduction," Invisible xvii). As in Dixon's The Clansman, oratory represents a mode of African occult expression. As was mentioned earlier, The Clansman describes old Aleck, "a born African orator, undoubtedly descended from a long line of savage spell-binders," and the mulatto Lieutenant-Governor Silas Lynch, who captivates" [if] by magic," among others. Rinehart might be characterized as self-possessed, and he can possess others at will. As the spiritual technologist, he undoubtedly masters the voice of divinity, much like his deacon, who leads the congregation in prayers, assuming the voice of an old-time backwoods preacher: His voice "rose and fell in a rhythmical, dreamlike recital--part enumeration of earth y trials undergone by the congregation, part rapt display of vocal virtuosity, part appeal to God" (Invisible 496). The congregation, swayed by this prayer and carried away by the gospel music, begins to "shout in the unknown tongue" as the spirit gives utterance. For the Invisible Man, the "whole scene quivered vague and mysterious in the green light" (498). The voice can indeed produce an emotional revivalism in the audience, as if they were possessed and inhabited by the speaker who stands in as the spokesperson for God--or as if, to use the language of voodoo, he were conjuring a deity to ride the congregation.

By reclaiming his African American cultural heritage, and bringing it to bear on his wider American experiences, the Invisible Man likewise discovers his own taunting, disembodied voice and the magical or mystical powers of invisibility that are available to him. Ultimately, on "lower frequencies" (read here with implied psychic and spiritualist connotations), he intends to "speak for you" (581). As in spirit-possession, as we have seen, an actor speaks on behalf of the loa or deity. Possession, however, involves a number of related linguistic and symbolic functions such as ventriloquism and double-voiced narrations. It suggests that voice can liberate, free, and empower the speaker as well as control, mimic, and dispossess the speaker and the ones addressed. Before he is able to draw from his cultural traditions of oratory, black preaching, storytelling, the use of words and naming, and, indeed, hoodoo practices and spirit-possession, and subsequently employ them effectively to stir the Harlem crowd to socia lly responsible action, the Invisible Man must first experienced his own death. This means that, above all, he must kill the hoodoo double under which he is cursed.