Swoller Till You Bust Wide Open

Cronus was the son of Uranus and Gaia, and the youngest of the twelve titans. He was advised by his mother to castrate his father, and he did so with a harpē. Cronus then rose to be the king of the titans and the god of time; all was well. But a prophecy told him that one day, he would be overthrown by his own son. To “ensure he kept his power and the prophecy did not come true, Cronus swallowed each child as soon as they were born.” Cronus swallowed them to nullify the threat they posed.

Why am I recounting an abridged version of the Greek myth we know so well, you ask? Though it seems unlikely, and perhaps even unintentional, this Greek myth lies at the very heart of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. The narrator begins his story with his grandfather on his deathbed, who calls the family into his room to offer this puzzling advice:

Son, after I'm gone I want you to keep up the good fight. I never told you, but our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy's country ever since I give up my gun back in the Re- construction. Live with your head in the lion's mouth. I want you to overcome 'em with yeses, undermine 'em with grins, agree 'em to death and destruction, let 'em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open (12)

“... let ‘em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open.”

Let us, for a moment, return to the tale of Cronus. In his attempt to prevent the prophecy from coming true, he had successfully swallowed five of his children. However, desperate to save the last one, his wife Rhea fed him a stone she wrapped in swaddling clothes. She then gave Cronus a drug, by which he was forced to vomit forth first the stone and then the children he had swallowed.”

Sound familiar?

Did the white citizens of 1950s america ‘swoller’ African americans to eliminate the threat they presented?

At the end of his junior year of college, the narrator takes a job driving Mr. Norton, one of his university’s white, wealthy founders, around the campus. In an attempt to show the gentleman around, he unwittingly drives Norton to an area of ramshackle cabins that once housed slave quarters and that now house black sharecroppers. They also house Jim Trueblood, a widely hated figure due to the fact that he “took both his wife and his daughter” (40). This is shocking and appalling information, but as it turns out, Trueblood isn’t a monster- he’s a poor, uneducated black man. And yet, when white people learn what he’s done, they don’t punish him. Jim says to Norton and the narrator,

‘Fore they heard ‘bout what happen to us out here i couldn’t git no help from nobody. Now lotta folks is curious and goes outta they way to help. Even the biggity school folks… offered to send us clean outta the county, pay our way and everything and give me a hundred dollars to git settled with” (42).

After Jim recounts his story to Mr. Norton, Mr. Norton does the same. Both the narrator and Jim “saw him removing a red Moroccan-leather wallet from his coat pocket… it was a hundred-dollar bill” (55).

Why are white people accepting and even rewarding this kind of behavior?

The answer is that they’re swollering the people that engage in it.

White people like Mr. Norton have an image of Black Americans that is only further fleshed out when they hear that things like this occur; the action of paying Jim Trueblood after hearing he impregnated his daughter crushes him in the box Mr. Norton and so many others have put him in.

Interacting with Trueblood has rattled Mr. Norton, and the narrator, fearing that Norton may die from shock, drives to the nearest tavern, the Golden Day, which serves black people and also happens to be a brothel. The narrator intended for this to be a quick pit stop, but the proprietor refuses to sell take-out whickey and Norton had fallen unconscious. When Norton wakes up, he is furious and demands that the narrator take him back to the college.

Upon his return, Dr. Bledsoe, the head of school, requests to speak with the narrator and Norton. “‘Mr. Norton, Mister norton! I’m so sorry,’ he crooned,” and assured him that the narrator would be severely punished (82). The narrator is shocked by Dr. Bledsoe’s reaction and thinks,

Hadn't I seen him approach white visitors too often with his hat in hand, bowing humbly and respectfully? Hadn't he refused to eat in the dining hall with white guests of the school, entering only after they had finished and then refusing to sit down, but remaining standing, his hat in his hand, while he addressed them eloquently, then leaving with a humble bow? (83)

Again, the white people have swollered him. Dr. Bledsoe has “agree[ed] 'em [Mr. Norton] to death and destruction,” but it’s not enough to make him vomit (13). The threat of Dr. Bledsoe has simply been nullified.

Officially expelled from his school, the narrator ends up in New York City with a job at a paint plant. Overwhelmed by his new environment, he sees ahead of him “a huge electric sign announc[ing] its message through the drifting strands of fog: KEEP AMERICA PURE WITH LIBERTY PAINTS” (151). There, his job is to produce buckets of paint that contain “the purest white that can be found” (156). The method of doing so is peculiar, however:

The idea is to open each bucket and put in ten drops of this stuff," he said. "Then you stir it 'til it disappears. After it's mixed you take this brush and paint out a sample on one of these." He produced a number of small rectangular boards and a small brush from his jacket pocket. "You understand?" "Yes, sir." But when I looked into the white graduate I hesitated; the liquid inside was dead black. Was he trying to kid me? (154)

To make the white paint whiter, the narrator must add “glistening black drops” to the mixture. As he watches the black drops “spread suddenly out to the edges,” he sees the black being swollered by the white. From the perspective of the white owners of the paint plant, and from the perspective of many white people at large, black people exist to bolster their white counterparts. The narrator muses that “perhaps the real quality of the paint is always determined by the man who ships it rather than by those who mix it” (159).

Lost and confused, the narrator is taken in by a kind woman named Mary Rambo, who is “a force, a stable, familiar force like something out of my past which kept [him] from whirling off into some unknown which [he] dared not face,” asking for little in return. One day, he comes upon a crowd of people who gathered to watch an eviction take place. As he watches the couple’s belongings, like “a whiskey bottle filled with rock candy and camphor” and “a small Ethiopian flag” get scattered and thrown about, he identifies acutely with them, looking at “remembered words, of linked verbal echoes, images, heard even when not listening at home” (211). The narrator is inspired to make a rousing speech, pleading with the crowd to be “strong enough to choose to do the wise thing in spite of what” they feel (213). Making speeches is not unfamiliar to the narrator. In fact, his public speaking skills are what granted him the scholarship to the college he only recently parted ways with. The superintendent of his high school once said, “He makes a good speech and some day he’ll lead his people in the proper paths” (26).

It wasn’t just the black people surrounding the eviction that were roused, however. The narrator is invited to a mysterious meeting with a man who heard his speech:

‘You know,’ he said, taking a gulp of coffe, ‘I haven’t heard such an effective piece of eloquence since the days when i was in—well, in a long time. You aroused them so quickly to action. I don’t understand how you managed it. If only some of our speakers could have listened!’ (224)

The man would turn out to be Brother Jack, a member of the Brotherhood, an organization hypothetically designed to empower African Americans and fight back against oppression. They want the narrator’s ability to excite a crowd with his speeches to help him with their cause. However, the brotherhood only cares for its own interests and the survival of the organization. As a result, no member is treated like an individual, and everyone is sacrificed for the cause, which is as murky and unclear as a swamp. When the narrator agrees to be part of this organization, Brother Jack gives him a new identity:

That is your new name," Brother Jack said. "Start thinking of yourself by that name from this moment. Get it down so that even if you are called in the middle of the night you will respond. Very soon you shall be known by it (240)

Brother Jack has “selected [his] living quarters,” forcing the narrator to leave Mary, and stripping him of his former identity. Under the pretense of a good cause, the narrator is being swollered, used for nothing but his voice that is drowned in a sea of so many others. In attempting to bring other people up, he has brought himself down; he has become nothing but an invisible voice, and brother Jack, the white ringleader, doesn’t seem to care.

As a member of the brotherhood, the narrator has a run-in with Ras the Exhortor, a self-proclaimed “black nationalist” (282). He is violent and impulsive and charismatic, and he refuses to be swollered. He has a violent encounter with Brother Clifton, but can’t seem to inflict violence on the narrator himself:

“‘You black, BLACK! You—Godahm, mahn!’ he said, swinging the knife for emphasis. ‘You got bahd hair! You got thick lips! They say you stink! They hate you, mahn. You African. AFRICAN! Why you with them? Leave that shit, mahn. They sell you out. That shit is old-fashioned. They enslave us—you forget that? How can they mean a black mahn any good? How they going to be your brother? (287)

However, by isolating himself completely from white people as a whole, he is letting himself be swollered. He isn’t giving himself room to breathe, to see nuance in the human condition. Similar to the vague ideologies of the brotherhood, Ras has wrapped himself in the general ideas of what is wrong with the world, without identifying himself in it.

In the beginning of the novel, when the narrator and Mr. Norton are at Golden Day, the narrator comes across a war veteran, who gave him seemingly cryptic advice:

‘Come out of the fog, young man. And remember you don't have to be a complete fool in order to succeed. Play the game, but don't believe in it -- that much you owe yourself. Even if it lands you in a strait jacket or a padded cell. Play the game, but play it your own way -- part of the time at least. Play the game, but raise the ante, my boy. Learn how it operates, learn how you operate” (119).

During 1950s America, the only way to prevent getting swollered was to recognize one’s own humanity.

Not other people’s perceptions of you.

Not empowering ideologies embracing your struggle.

Just you.

So when the narrator ends up in a basement with no light, physically separated from everything and everyone around them, he can finally find himself.

And then, Cronus vomited.

Works Cited

Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. New York :Vintage International, 1995.

Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1. 4 - 5 (trans. Aldrich) (Greek mythographer C2nd A.D.)