The Golden Day episode in Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man"

 

The Man’s ‘authentic’ life lessons at college occur when he is commissioned to chauffeur a white founding father, Mr. Norton, on a revisitation tour of the campus. They visit the cabin of Jim Trueblood. Trueblood gives a disturbing, detailed confession of how he, as if in some inescapably predetermined trance, came to accidentally rape his own daughter in his sleep whilst his wife, Kate, slept in the bed right next to them. 38 He relates to Norton how his wife then attempted to murder him with an axe, grossly disfiguring his face when it is discovered that he has impregnated his own daughter. This grotesque account of events unsettles Mr Norton, offending his “sensibilities”.



Invisible Man drives a visibly shaken Norton to a tavern to settle his nerves with whisky, where a second chaotic event ensues. They arrive at the Golden Day (a brothel) at the same time that a throng of African American army veterans arrive. They are patients at a nearby asylum, and are still ‘a little shell shocked’ from their exploits in the First World War. 46 The narration shifts again, this time overwhelmed by polyphonic fragments — a cacophony, even — of demented wartime conversations, the voices of ex-soldiers who permanently relive the battlefield. The men are confused by Norton’s presence, and, in a state of inebriation, descend into a chaotic brawl. Norton faints, and is carried upstairs by Invisible Man and an ex-physician to be out of harm’s way. The ex-physician, a former student of the college, tends to Norton whilst Invisible Man oversees, warning the founding father not to go back downstairs:

“The clocks are all set back and the forces of destruction are rampant down below. They might suddenly realize that you are what you are, and then your life wouldn’t be worth a piece of bankrupt stock. You would be canceled, perforated, voided, become the recognized magnet attracting loose screws. Then what would you do? Such men are beyond money, and with Supercargo [the patients’ overseer] down, out like a felled ox, they know nothing of value. To some, you are the great white father, to others the lyncher of souls, but for all, you are confusion come even into the Golden Day.”



The effects of war have created a hive of chaos within this tavern, as an intensified microcosm of the post-trauma of violent conflict: where race, class, profession, and age no longer follow the invisible binds of social order they do in the outside world beyond the Golden Day. Language and identity are broken down, and this is represented in the confusion that the patients have, mistaking Norton for decorated wartime General John J. Pershing, and at another point, for former president, Thomas Jefferson. In theme and the unapologetic characterization, the Golden Day episode is an homage to the writing of one of Ellison’s lifelong literary idols, Ernest Hemingway.

When the narrator returns with the founding father to the college, the African American principal, Dr. Bledsoe, reprimands him, impressing upon the young man the need to avoid the ‘white man’ as he has done, and to practise self-reliance. He is expelled shortly thereafter.


Read more about the novel:

Plot Outline/ Summary

Major Characters

Brother Jack

Themes

The Battle Royal Scene

The Liberty Paints Episode

As a Bildungsroman

Existential Vision

The Prologue and the Epilogue

Narrative Technique

Parody

Symbolism

Metaphor

Satire

Irony

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