The Life and Afterlife of Tod Clifton

Sorry about the late post! I had this in my drafts and COMPLETELY forgot to publish it.

The death of Tod Clifton marks a turning point for the narrator of Invisible Man. Since Chapter 1, where he originates as a naive and completely un-self aware young man, the trials and tribulations of his life have been slowly disillusioning him from his old view of the world. He has been making the same mistake repeatedly, finding something new to cling onto in the hopes that his life will somehow be perfect from then on. Once kicked out from college, the narrator entertains the fantasy of getting a summer job with high recommendation from Bledsoe and returning once more to finish his degree. Once those dreams have been crushed, he rebounds with surprising excitement to his new job at the paint factory, then to his position as a spokesman for the Brotherhood. This wide-eyed idealism becomes increasingly harder to sustain after the blinders covering the narrator’s eyes are torn away time and time again.

A central motif in Invisible Man is sight and the lack thereof, from the first moment the narrator questions if the Founder’s statue at his college represents “a revelation or a more efficient blinding”. Each subsequent revelation to the narrator only seems to blind him further as he adjusts his optimistic perspective to each situation he finds himself in, no matter how absurd.

He is blinded by his enthusiasm and his belief that working hard and doing “the right thing” will make his a model of success. Real life, however, proves to be much more complicated. 

After Clifton’s death, the narrator finally wakes up to the harsh reality of the world around him.  

His shock finally dissipates and the fundamental injustice and pain of his grief sets in. 

Part of this is due to the fact that Clifton is one of the few characters we see that really connect with the narrator, and possibly the only character he develops a strong emotional connection with. Other characters that play key roles in the narrator’s development are confusing (like his grandfather and the veteran), or downright antagonistic (like Bledsoe and Mr. Norton). Even positive characters like Mary or the woman he sleeps with are one-sided and not fleshed out as well as Clifton is. He gets more physical description than we see from any other character, but also six pages set aside for the speech at his funeral alone. Clifton is important as a friend and compatriot, and also as an ideal of what an activist should be (at least initially). The narrator is a surprisingly detached character throughout the book, even cutting off contact with his family at the Brotherhood’s request, so the loss of the one person he truly cares about carries an even greater impact.

Aside from its emotional significance, Clifton’s death drives a rift between the narrator and the rest of the Brotherhood because they only see him as a traitor and refuse to acknowledge that his status as an unarmed black man shot by the police surpasses the matter of what he was selling. Clifton’s betrayal was shocking and hurtful, but did not justify his brutal death in any way. The narrator, once split with the Brotherhood on this issue, discovers more and more of their hypocrisy. Their cavalier attitude to Clifton’s murder helps the narrator reveal how greedy and manipulative they are, and how they only value their black followers as votes on a ballot instead of people in their own right. The narrator takes agency of his own life from then on and begins to actively work to undermine the Brotherhood’s organization from within. This is a far cry from earlier, when he was blinded by their ideology.

Though painful, Clifton’s death is necessary for the narrator to develop, from the questions, emotions, and critical thinking it evokes in him.