(Invisible title above) A couple posts ago I said I would examine the theme/literary devices utilized in Invisible Man again once I finished the book.  Although I'm not completely finished, I am close enough to be able to do so.  In my earlier post, I selected blindness as a possible motif.  This continued to play an important role throughout the rest of the novel.  We learn that Brother Jack only has one eye, possibly representing that although he can see some things, he is partially blind to reality.  Something I forgot to mention in that previous post was that the speaker at the college was blind.  This shows his inability to perceive what actually occurs at the college and how the students are instructed to behave and function in society.  In the last chapter, the narrator finds himself down in a manhole in complete darkness.  I'm not exactly sure how this could indicate lack of "vision" on the part of the narrator since by this point of the novel he seems to have reached full self-realization.  Perhaps the narrator's burning of his papers in order to create a torch is symbolic of how in order to pass out of the darkness he had to disconnect from his past?  Not really sure...Anyways, invisibility continues to be a motif as well.  The narrator realizes that nobody pays attention to what he thinks or says; rather, he is expected to blend in with the ideologies of others.  I found a good quote to represent this in the Epilogue, "And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone's way but my own. I have also been called one thing and then another while no one really wished to hear what I calle dmyself. So after years of trying to adopt the opinions of others I finally rebelled. I am an invisible man" (573).  Another symbol that I noticed later on in the novel was Clifton's paper doll.  This symbol functions similarly to that of the coin bank in that they both are connected to times of slavery.  Clifton's "Sambo Doll" represents an African American slave that is obedient but lazy.  I suppose that this is why the Brotherhood and the narrator were so embarassed by the dolls- they represented a past that the Brotherhood was trying to break away from.  I also found it interesting that when the narrator tried to burn the doll for light in the last chapter, it "...burned so stubbornly..." (568).  Similar to the narrator's inability to get rid of the coin bank, this could represent how he cannot disconnect from the past.  In my other post I proposed the theme that variations in ideology can make it nearly impossible to unify a group in terms of the Brotherhood and Ras with respect to the Harlem community.  This could also be applied within the Brotherhood itself, as the narrator's ideas differ from that of the group.  Therefore, he resolves to undermine them by pretending to go along with what they say.  Unfortunately, the narrator doesn't realize the Brotherhood's actual plan until it's too late.  A theme to represent this is that a complacent and mindless person will be manipulated into following the plans of others.