Also important are Scofield’s and Dupre’s “cotton picking” sacks, which conjure up images of enslaved black Africans toiling in the cotton fields on countless Southern plantations. During the riot, Dupre uses his sack to carry loot.

As he runs, two police officers who mistakenly think his briefcase is filled with looted goods follow him. Rather than turn the briefcase over, the narrator jumps into an open manhole. Mockingly, the officers put the cover back over the manhole, leaving the narrator to die.

He is thus forced to find shelter and help in the nearest possible place. But now, enough people have been involved in Griffin’s mayhem that it will be relatively easy to round up a posse of believers when the time comes to do so.

The coin bank represents an exaggerated black figure that is excited to eat the coins that a white man gives him. The coin bank represents the difficulty of abandoning the legacies of past stereotypes, and that all men carry the burden of history with them as they move forward.

His grandfather instructs him to open the briefcase. Inside the narrator finds an official envelope with a state seal. He opens it only to find another envelope, itself containing another envelope. The last one contains an engraved document with a crude command to keep the narrator running.

Brother Jack warns everyone that the Brotherhood does not stand for violence at the meeting the next morning. Brother Jack sends the narrator an anonymous letter warning him against moving too fast, saying it’ll make people uncomfortable and suspicious.

Brother Hambro The white brother who trains the narrator in the art of scientific rhetoric. Brother Tod Clifton The handsome, charismatic young black brother assigned as Harlem’s Youth Leader.

The narrator’s grandparents were slaves who had been emancipated eighty-five years before the narrator recalls their lives. They believed in Booker T. His grandfather’s speech causes “anxiety” because it contradicts his apparent meekness and the existence of an otherwise calm life.

What is ironic about the narrator’s attempt to get rid of the coin bank? The narrator is trying to get rid of this coin bank which is a caricature of a black man but he needs the money.

By Dupre’s logic, the tenement must be burned down, as otherwise generations of black people will continue to be born into its squalid conditions. By burning the tenement down, Dupre forces change, though it is not necessarily clear that change will be for the better.

Many figures also refuse to acknowledge truths about themselves or their communities, and this refusal emerges consistently in the imagery of blindness. Thus, the boys who fight in the “battle royal” wear blindfolds, symbolizing their powerlessness to recognize their exploitation at the hands of the white men.

The police mock him and put the manhole cover back in place, trapping him underground. In order to provide himself with light, the narrator burns the items in his briefcase one by one. These include his high school diploma and Clifton’s doll.

At the novel’s end, the narrator is forced to burn most of the brief case’s contents in order create a light to see by. This act is a recognition that the past must be reckoned with in order to move forward into the future. The Brief Case Symbol Timeline in Invisible Man

At the novel’s end, the narrator is forced to burn most of the brief case’s contents in order create a light to see by. This act is a recognition that the past must be reckoned with in order to move forward into the future. Get the entire Invisible Man LitChart as a printable PDF.

In fact, the bodies are mannequins. He then encounters a spear-wielding Ras, dressed in the costume of an Abyssinian chieftain and riding a black horse. Ras calls for his followers to lynch the narrator as a traitor to the black people and to hang him among the mannequins.

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