Summary and Analysis

Summary

The narrator learns that Ras is inciting violent destruction, and he realizes that the Brotherhood had planned the race riots all along, deliberately ceding power to Ras and allowing Harlem to fall into mass chaos. He becomes caught up in one rioter`s plans to burn down a tenement building and runs from the burning building, only to realize he has left his briefcase inside. Continuing to run through the chaos, he comes to a looted building where bodies appear to hang lynched from the ceiling. Ras calls for his followers to lynch the narrator as a traitor to the black people and to hang him among the mannequins.

The narrator tries to explain that the black community, by turning against itself now, by burning and looting its own homes and stores, is only falling into the trap that the Brotherhood has set. He runs and falls through an open manhole into a coal cellar. He sleeps and dreams of Jack, Emerson, Bledsoe, Norton, and Ras. The men mock him, castrate him, and declare that they have stripped him of his illusions.

Seeing that one of the men carrying the safe has been killed, the startled narrator realizes his wound could have been fatal. Scofield suggests that the narrator has "loot" in his briefcase, but the narrator replies, "Not much," correcting his misperception. Continuing to follow Scofield and Dupre, the narrator is caught up in Dupre's plan to burn down a tenement building — despite the protests of Dupre's wife. Running from the burning building, the narrator loses his briefcase again and runs back into the flames to retrieve it.

The narrator tries desperately to return to Mary's, but while running from two men with baseball bats, he falls into a manhole and lands in a coal cellar, his refuge and sanctuary. Desperate for light, he burns each of the items in his briefcase, discovering that Brother Jack wrote the letter warning him not to "go too fast. " Finally, exhausted, having lost all track of time, he falls asleep and dreams of being castrated by Brother Jack while several of the antagonists he has encountered during his life stand by and watch.

Analysis

In his preface, Ellison states that "war can be transformed by art into something deeper and more meaningful than superficial violence," and one way to achieve such a transformation is laughter's "comic detoxification." In this chapter, images of violence and destruction merge with ridiculous and comical imagery. A "three times guarded" dupré that conjures up images of the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland. A woman carrying the entire flank of a cow. A quart of Scotch from her waist pocket Scofield pulling her bottle and Boden's milk A grotesquely fat beer-drinking woman in her truck—Ellison turns the Harlem riot into something deeper and more meaningful increase. According to the narrator, America is not a land of milk and honey, it is a land of milk wagons and honey wagons.

Themes

Race and Racism

Identity and Invisibility

Power and Self-Interest

Dreams and the Unconscious

Ambition and Disillusionment