The Importance of Laughter

In Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, laughter is a powerful force in undermining authority.

Some of the first mentions of this we see in Invisible Man are during the prologue, where the narrator
describes his altercation with a man on the street. When he accidentally bumps into him, the man curses
him out, sparking a fight. They exchange insults and blows, but the narrator ends the encounter by running
away into the night while laughing hysterically. Though he nearly killed the man on the street, the narrator’s
most powerful weapon in a way was the ability to laugh at the situation and acknowledge its
ridiculousness.

Later on, in Chapter 1, the narrator’s grandfather details the ways he personally undermined authority in his
dying words. “Live with your head in the lion’s mouth. I want you to overcome ’em with yeses, undermine
’em with grins, agree ’em to death and destruction, let ’em swoller  you till they vomit you or bust wide open
.” The grandfather achieved his success by appearing compliant on the outside while secretly pursuing his
own agenda, though everyone around him only knew him as a meek and humble man. His smiles and
agreement served to placate the white people he supposedly submitted to, but was his obedience actually a
political statement the whole time? As a black person in (presumably) late 1800s-early 1900s America, his
day-to-day life was that of a spy in a foreign land. By keeping fighting in a world where his very life
became a war, the grandfather was inherently political despite his appearance to the contrary.

This confession leaves a lasting mark on the narrator, who puzzles over his grandfather’s words for years.
How would agreeing with someone- a seemingly innocuous thing- secretly be an act of rebellion? During
his college years, he worries that he has mistakenly broken the rules set out for him simply by following
them. His grandfather shows up again and again in increasingly cryptic dreams, ending every time with
“the old man’s laughter ringing in my ears”. As he becomes increasingly self-aware, the narrator begins
to see his grandfather’s point after being haunted by it for so long. 

During the scene at the Golden Day, laughter plays a big role in the bar’s upended power dynamics and the
stripping away of Mr. Norton’s power once he sets foot inside. The veterans visiting the bar play some
“vast and complicated game with me and the rest of the school folk, a game whose goal was laughter and
whose rules and subtleties I could never grasp”. In this altered environment, even attendants like Supercargo
no longer hold any power and are at the mercy of the veterans. Part of their power is the ease with which
they can laugh and ridicule Mr. Norton, while the narrator spends his whole time at the bar tiptoeing around
in fear of offending him. 

 Even more confusing is the veteran doctor’s laughter. He appears totally normal and lucid at first glance,
with his coherent speech and accurate medical knowledge. However, through the course of their conversation,
he shocks the narrator first by treating Norton like an equal, then by going on cryptic tangents and outright
mocking him. He bursts into laughter when Norton declares that the college is his destiny, and nearly goes
into hysterics as he calls both the narrator and Norton blind. The narrator is shaken by the veteran’s words
, but, like with his grandfather, he cannot fully discount them. Norton could also have easily disregarded
the veteran as just another insane person, but the experience of his life’s purpose being met with hilarity
shook him to his core. The fact that Norton ordered the veteran transferred to another hospital as far away
as possible shows the strong effect his words did have on him, even though Norton should have held power
over the veteran instead.With this, Ellison implies that laughter is subversive by its nature. Laughter can shatter
the illusion of self-importance, exposing things for what they really are. 

The veteran also contrasts with Bledsoe, the college director, in terms of how much power they each possess.
Though the veteran is seemingly less free than Bledsoe, being shuttled around from institution to institution,
he has the freedom to say whatever he wants. While Bledsoe has a cushy job and can run things behind the
scenes, his whole career could come tumbling down in an instant and he monitors his every action based
on the image he wants to present. The vet is freer mentally by his ability to laugh at life without walking on
eggshells. Bledsoe sacrifices his dignity for his work, making him especially vulnerable to being made fun
of. In this way, the veteran is truly the more powerful one due to how he can get under others’ skin.

I think the veteran and his intellect are an instrumental part in shaping the narrator we know from the prologue,
even though we haven’t fully seen that play out yet. Using his wit and humor to stay two steps ahead of
everyone else puts the power balance in his favor and tilts the dynamics of the racialized society he inhabits.