Invisible Man Narrator Quotes

Narrator

Quote 76

They caught her just as she reached a door, raised her from the floor, and tossed her as college boys are tossed at a hazing, and above her red, fixed-smiling lips I saw the terror and disgust in her eyes, almost like my own terror and that which I saw in some of the other boys. (1.9)

The white men objectify the naked woman as well as the black men, so this is really just Oppression Central as the white men take advantage of both gender and racial inequalities.

Narrator

Quote 77

But I'm realizin' that she's a woman now, when I feels her turn and squirm against me and throw her arm across my neck, up where the cover didn't reach and I was cold. She said somethin' I couldn't understand, like a woman says when she wants to tease and please a man. I knowed then she was grown and I wondered how many times it'd done happened and was it that doggone boy. (2.189)

Trueblood remembers the moment he viewed his daughter as a sexual being. He later has sex with her body, suggesting that he sees his daughter's sexuality as something he rightfully has control over.

Narrator

Quote 78

Most of the time he'll be working, and so much of his freedom will have to be symbolic. And what will be his or any man's most easily accessible symbol of freedom? Why, a woman, of course. In twenty minutes he can inflate that symbol with all the freedom which he'll be too busy working to enjoy the rest of the time. He'll see. (7.19)

The vet suggests that a man's freedom can most easily be found in having sex with a woman, suggesting that dominating a woman's body is liberating.