The Nameless Narrators

While it’s an unlikely comparison, the narrator in Invisible Man parallels the narrator in Fight Club quite closely. They both are nameless throughout their respective books; they use poetic language and metaphor, use a flashback to explain how they arrived at their current situation at the beginning of the book, and are of questionable sanity. This comparison can help understand the characters in both books, and give new insight to the psychology of the character.

Through both books the narrators of Invisible Man and Fight Club are nameless. This gives them a certain artistic license. It shrouds them in a layer of mystery, and to some level, it allows us to put ourselves in their place. They seem to be, on some level, metaphorical products of their environments, racism and consumerism, rebelling against the world. The fact that we don’t know who they are almost makes the voice feel like our own, and it also blurs the lines between thought and voice in both novels.

The language used by the narrators through the novels, especially in the chapter before the flashback, and gradually more so as it approaches that point, is a very poetic, odd, and striking voice. They use strange imagery that makes you question your perceptions. In Invisible Man the narrator describes a statue of the college founder lifting a veil from a slave’s head. He says “When I look again, the bronze face, whose empty eyes look upon a world I have never seen, runs with liquid chalk–creating another ambiguity to puzzle my groping mind: Why is a bird-soiled statue more commanding than one that is clean?” In Fight Club the narrator has lost everything in his apartment in an explosion and he comments “I wasn’t the only slave to my nesting instinct. The people I know who used to sit in the bathroom with pornography, now they sit in the bathroom with their IKEA furniture catalog.” These narrators both use unusual images that truly make you read over them several times thinking "Did I read that right?", which is exactly what they are trying to do, make you look over to truly understand the deeper meaning which lies within almost humorous images.

Imagery of death plays a large role in the voice of the narrators. In Invisible Man, the narrator beats up a man then says “Something in this man’s this man’s thick head had sprung out and beaten him within an inch of his life. I began to laugh at this crazy discovery. Would I have awakened at the point of death? Would Death himself have freed him for wakeful living?” This results in a powerful image, making us question whether we are truly more free than those who are dead. In Fight Club the narrator also questions life in a 9-5 job. Wondering if a job, even one where he gets to travel regularly, really means freedom he states “I set my watch two hours earlier or three hours later, Pacific, Mountain, Central, or Eastern time; lose an hour, gain an hour. This is your life and it’s ending one minute at a time.”

            Both books start in the present and use a flashback to explain how they arrived there. They both feature dark imagery. In Invisible Man the narrator is living in a basement apartment with over one thousand light bulbs, and beats up a man just for calling him a name, and we still wonder if he isn’t enlightened as he talks about being invisible. In Fight Club the narrator is at the top of a building with a man with a gun in the narrator’s mouth, and explosives at the base of the building. The narrator voices his thoughts and words poetically throughout this entire chapter, yet most of what is being said is meaningless to us as we don’t know how he got there. These chapters also bring into the back of our minds a question of sanity of the narrators for the rest of the book, as we aren’t necessarily sure that they’re insane, but at the same time owning a basement apartment with over one thousand light bulbs, and questioning the cleanliness of the gun in your mouth rather than the fact that there is one there don’t really seem to be behaviors of a sane person.

            With all of this in consideration, these narrators seem to come across as more effective than if we know everything about the narrator. If we know their name we are assured that they’re fictional, which, while expected, in some way still lingers at the back of our minds. If our narrator is a Harvard graduate, we criticize their upbringing, we assume they were a legacy admission, we dismiss their knowledge of life unrelated to academics. The fact that they have no name, no town associated with them, and they use elaborate and unique imagery makes them seem almost like a messiah; because we know little to nothing about them, there is little or nothing to hold against them or detract from their voice, even the argument of sanity. One of the questions both these books pose is one of what defines and blurs the lines of sanity and insanity. This makes us question ourselves rather than the narrators, and makes them seem all the more powerful.