Adapting and Overcoming: Reinvention of Self?

The ongoing evolution of our society and culture causes changes in our microcosmic existence that result in stressful and sometimes traumatic effects. Both Ralph Ellison and Kurt Vonnegut, in their respective works, portray the experiences of the Invisible Man and Billy Pilgrim, survivors of their times. Becoming 'unstuck' in time, seeing the world without boundaries, they are no longer limited by the definitions of progress or time as accepted by others. By redefining their own self concepts and their outlook on life, they are able to adapt to and overcome societal changes in finding a sense of peaceful coexistence with their environment.

Jim Trueblood, a black sharecropper, is the first of many characters that influence the Man's odyssey to self-reinvention. The Man sees how Jim has been stereotyped by both black and white communities as a spectacle, similar to what Billy becomes in the Tralfamadorian Zoo. Jim, a blues singer, has reconciled himself to his fate and reveals how he is able to live with it. "While I'm singin' them blues I makes up my mind that I ain't nobody but myself and ain't nothin' I can do but let whatever is gonna happen, happen." It plants a seed in the mind of the Man, a concept that reaffirms itself throughout the novel: what will be, will be.

The element of fatalism is resonant throughout both works. The Man, in traveling from the stratified racism of the South to the subliminal bigotry of the North, finds himself battling forces beyond his control. The feigned incompetence of the Southern Negro is just as subversive to white supremacy as is the underground activism of the black of the North. Yet it is the submissive role that the Man struggles with, fighting its transparency until he realizes that his own reinvention and sense of self-worth is the key to transcendence. Written during the peak of French existentialism in the 50’s, Ellison is influenced by the philosophy that things are exactly what they seem. What one believes oneself to be, one is in the eyes of the beholder. Billy Pilgrim agrees to the extent that he is what he understands himself to be. All else is irrelevant in the insolvency of time and space.

“Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is ‘So it goes’.” This is Billy’s reaffirmation throughout Slaughterhouse as he is bombarded with visions of death throughout his travels through time and space. We see not only the horror of war in his military stint in Germany, but even more tragedy as he survives a plane crash to learn of the death of his wife. In this extraterrestrial revelation, Billy is able to accept the inevitability of life and forge ahead while reestablishing his own identity and coming to terms with what he has, is, and will become.
We see how Vonnegut, like Ellison, has found a vision in which the vanity of life has been manipulated so that one is able to stare into oneself without gaping into the abyss. Both works can be said to exalt the glories of spiritual humanism, allowing the individual to immerse himself into the realities of self rather than the depravities of the outside world. The Man eventually understands that freeing himself from political manipulation is just as important as liberating himself from social and cultural limitations imposed by society on the black man. In doing so, he must realize his self-worth as a human being. At this point he sees that it is society itself which is transparent and vacuous. Billy also sees the vapidity of society, and to him it has become a kaleidoscopic jumble where each part is a function of the whole. Man has become a machine, part of the universal factory, and to be content with that knowledge allows one to divest himself of concerns over the policy of the Manufacturer. God becomes an abstract concept, and it is during his stay with the Tralfamadorians when he finds the essential truths that help him reach this spiritual epiphany.


The Man realizes an epiphany at a sidewalk stand where he is able to shrug off feelings of self-consciousness while feasting on candied yams. Enjoying the ethnic treat in public would have been considered reprehensible to ‘Uncle Toms’ such as Dr. Bledsoe. The Man decides that he will no longer be fettered by other people’s stereotypical constraints in fulfilling his own desires and meeting his own expectations. He exults in this act of self-discovery: “It was exhilarating. I no longer had to worry about who saw me or about what was proper…to hell with being ashamed of what you liked. No more of that for me.” While Billy’s own way of coping is more passive than the Man’s, we see a similar attitude in his interactions with family and friends upon his return to Earth. He has no compunctions about telling the public about his experiences, gladly accepting the risk of professional disgrace and psychiatric investigation.

It is difficult at times to detach the author from the narration. Ellison, a product of his times, dealt with civil rights issues and social prejudice throughout his career. Vonnegut was a soldier in Germany and uses Billy as a vehicle to navigate his own personal trauma after witnessing the horror of Dresden. The use of sometimes rhetorical dialogue by Ellison acts as a platform upon which his characters are able to voice the social and moral issues of the times. Alternately, Vonnegut dwells on the reflections of Billy and his transcendence of time and space in dealing with his post-war trauma syndrome.

“If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed. Still - if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I’m grateful that so many of those moments are nice.” Vonnegut himself steps into the novel at the end, having traveled on the same flight with a war buddy to visit Dresden after the war. Vonnegut, like Billy, accepts the fact that life goes on. In reliving our pleasant memories time and again, we are able to shield ourselves from the ugly recollections and even buffer ourselves against the unpleasantness of the present and future.