Invisible Man

Trouble begins to brew in the Brotherhood regarding the protagonist. First, he receives an anonymous letter warning him to ease up on the rate of progress he is attempting to make with the Brotherhood’s mission. (Later events reveal that Jack wrote the note.) Then a member of the organization takes offense to a piece of prison-gang leg iron that another member gave the protagonist as a symbolic sign of the Black oppression the organization is fighting against, and claims that the protagonist used a magazine interview about the Brotherhood for his own gain. A committee of Brotherhood members is dispatched to investigate these issues, and in the meantime the protagonist is reassigned to the downtown area of the city to work on women’s rights issues rather than racism. Shocked and disappointed, for he didn’t mean to do anything wrong, the protagonist takes up his new assignment. 

The protagonist works downtown on the women’s rights movement for a month. After one of his first speeches, a White woman approaches him and invites him to her apartment, ostensibly to discuss the Brotherhood’s ideology. Instead, she reveals that she’s in an “open marriage,” and the two have sex, despite the protagonist’s reservations about her ability to blackmail him with the relationship or bring it to the Brotherhood. The racial dynamics of the relationship also give him pause, because the woman or her husband could accuse him of rape. Despite these reservations, it’s implied that the protagonist and the woman see each other multiple times. When the protagonist is summoned to meet with the committee again, he fears that the relationship has been revealed to the others, but instead finds out that Tod Clifton, who was appointed to replace him in Harlem, has mysteriously disappeared. The committee reappoints him to his previous position in Harlem while it investigates the situation. 

The protagonist returns to Harlem to take over, and finds that the Brotherhood has become increasingly inactive since he left Harlem. Puzzled, the protagonist goes back to the district office late on his first night back to try and figure out why that happened. The office is deserted even of the member who used to live there, and when people arrive the following morning all he can find out is that the organization is taking a less local, more national/international approach to social justice. The protagonist tries to get a hold of the organization’s leaders to find out what’s going on, but can’t get anyone on the phone and soon finds out they’re in a strategy meeting that he was deliberately not invited to.

Irritated, the protagonist goes out to buy a new pair of shoes and encounters Clifton out on the street, selling stereotypical Black dolls as a street vendor in a demeaning way. The protagonist is appalled and impulsively spits on one of the dolls, causing Clifton to move to another street. Before the protagonist can try and talk to him, a policeman whisks Clifton away. The protagonist follows, and Clifton tries to evade the officer, tripping him in the process. The officer responds by shooting Clifton, who dies immediately. The protagonist is questioned by the police and waits until the police wagon comes to collect the body, then trudges away. Discouraged by the day’s events and the changes that seem to have taken place within the Brotherhood during his absence, he takes the subway back to the district office.

The protagonist decides that the Brotherhood should throw an elaborate, public funeral for Clifton so that his death becomes a rallying point for Harlem. He arranges a band, speakers, and reserves a prominent park for the ceremony, and a procession moves through the city with Clifton’s body before ending up at the park. The protagonist gives an angry, despairing speech to the crowds of mourners about the nonsensical nature of Clifton’s death and decries the brutality of the officer who shot him. He continues to feel disillusioned and hopeless about the possibility of making life better for minorities through the Brotherhood.