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Masquerade, magic, and carnival in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man - Critical Essay
African American Review, Summer, 2002 by Christopher A. Shinn
The hanging of Sybil functions as a reversal of the primal lynching scene; in place of the black body, the white woman, or her carnival twin, is sacrificed. The culprits who perform this act of revenge are not hooded white Klansmen but looters from the black community, and the hanging constitutes less a ritual act (to be re-enacted) than a momentary display of carnival madness. Combined here are the death rituals of hanging and lynching, ancient sacrifices and modem mannequins, the guide Sybil and the black male victim at once. Sybil becomes the symbol and ritual of "America": the ritual of violence that her fantasy rape recalls, the Southern ritual of lynching and the birth of a nation, and a replay of the rape scene in which Marion is chased by Gus that the Invisible Man muses upon and mutters about under his breath. She takes the place of the Invisible Man's lynching by Ras, and by her sacrifice she mirrors the Invisible Man's symbolic destruction.
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These scenes provide a critical link to the Invisible Man's entry into the underworld, for Sybil, the "carnival muse" with her "debased fertility," also represents Aeneas's guide to Hades. Her name literally means 'cave dweller,' referring to the cave at Cumae, near Lake Avernus, dedicated to Triple Hecate, which forms the entrance to the underworld (Walker 966); in the novel, following his encounter with Sybil, the Invisible Man significantly enters into his own underground, cavern-like hole. The priestesses of Sybil (known as sybils). moreover, were said to be possessed by her oracular spirit, and they routinely "called up the dead there [at the cave] for necromantic interviews. By the same door, Aeneas descended into the womb of the earth (his mother Aphrodite)" (966)--corresponding to what Harris calls the "womb of space." The cult of Sybil, according to legend, elicited conjurations and pleas for rings of invisibility that were bestowed as part of the graces of "the Blessed Virgin of Fairies, 'sibyllia,' or the 'three sisters of fairies, Milia, Achilia, Sibylia,' "who appeared "in form and shape of fair women, in white vestures" (967). The Invisible Man's meeting with Sybil sets in motion his discovery of the magical powers of invisibility, which comes after the final ritual sacrifice of the mannequins "in the form and shape of fair women" and which follows his own symbolic death and foray into the underground.
Sybil in Ellison's Invisible Man, although suggesting these mythological and magical elements of folklore, hardly lives up to her divine reputation. In fact, Claudia Tate refers to her as the "prophetic and pathetic Sybil" (63) among a host of other female characters in the novel: Mary Rambo, the old slave woman, the naked blonde woman of the battle royal, the wealthy and sophisticated Emma, and the anonymous seductress. All of these women, however, help guide the Invisible Man in his quest toward freedom, functioning in their posts as did the "underground station masters of the American slave era" before them (Tate 64). They also constitute incarnations of the carnival muses or co-per-farmers in the sideshows of America's carnival amusements, mirroring the abject spiritual or material conditions of the Invisible Man with whom they come into contact. Sybil also partakes of the founding myth of her own white female victimization, sexually titillated at the thought of being raped by a "black brute." She meets t he Invisible Man at the Chthonian bar--another reference pertaining to the gods and spirits of the underworld--and she summons him home with her "to join her in a very revolting ritual" (517), while he intends to use her to extract information about leaders of the Brotherhood to exact his revenge. Both fail miserably in their attempt to exploit each other, for Sybil becomes too drunk to relay information or tell what has happened (or, actually, what has not happened) and the Invisible Man becomes too conscious of his moral responsibility to act out the part of the black brute or to rape her as a vengeful act against the white-controlled Brotherhood. These scenes hold a critical purpose in staging the development of the Invisible Man, and none seems more important than this "final battle royal," leading to the entrance of the underworld, that she precipitates as a character and symbol of the Invisible Man's own "prophetic and pathetic" roles (Tate 170).
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