Invisible Man - Facets of Bledsoe

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, through its messages about both race and human nature, tells an important tale about the downfalls of society. It uses the dichotomies of invisible as opposed to blind, and inside versus outside of the scope of history to force us as readers to consider previously unknown aspects of ourselves and the past. Both of these are involved in the description of the university president, Dr. Bledsoe, a character both contradictory and hypocritical in nature.

Dr. Bledsoe is a confusing character for the narrator to grasp, as he both idolizes the president and ultimately dislikes his prerogative. The narrator describes him as the students’ “coal-black daddy” that they fear (116), though he has been kind to the narrator since his enrollment at the college. He also has many mixed emotions about the state of his expulsion from the school and how Bledsoe essentially took advantage of him in order to save the school’s reputation, and his own as president. Bledsoe is also guilty of a fair amount of hypocrisy. He often overestimates his position as president because he believes he can control the actions of the schools wealthy white donors when he almost grovels at their feet in their presence as he does with Mr. Norton. This is a sign of his blindness to the realities of his position. He, like many other characters the invisible narrator encounters, is often very narrowly focused and oblivious to things he claims to be so knowledgeable about.

His most obvious hypocrisy is his actions toward the black community that surrounds the school. The narrator and the community view him as their “leader” and their “magic” (116), for he maintains the integrity of the school. This, though, is only a mask he subjects the school to seeing in place of his true intentions. He preaches cohesion and advancement of the race outwardly to the student body, but would willingly “have every Negro in the county hanging on tree limbs by morning” as long as he can retain his position of power (143). His self interest outweighed his desire to actually improve his community, though he creates a facade that prevents the school from seeing this. As the president of the university, Bledsoe works towards the advancement of black society, but would voluntarily allow them to fall to ruin for his own self promotion. Of his hypocrisy, Bledsoe is cognizant and acts intentionally.

The narrator struggles to understand Bledsoe because of his many, often contradictory facets. Part of his confusion come from Bledsoe’s obvious displays of hypocrisy, and the fact the Bledsoe seems not only aware but behaves purposefully to be hypocritical. These sentiments of Bledsoe the narrator later extends to the other characters like Bledsoe that appear at different times in the novel.