The entire first chapter is devoted to Gunnar describing his family and their so called "Uncle Tom exploits" with great detail and pride, showing that his family truly believed that by conforming to how white society wanted them to act, they were doing something noteworthy.
Instead, his family stays just outside of history, purportedly behind major historical events like the beginning of the American revolution, or the assassination of Malcolm X. However, their contributions to these events are glossed over, in favor of telling about just eager to please white people they were.
Unlike the rest of his family however, Gunnar rejects having to please white society, saying at the end of the first chapter, "the fruit never falls far from the tree, but I've tried to roll down the hill at least.".
We can tell from his call for mass suicide as "the ultimate sit-in" and his self-description as a "Negro Demagogue that Gunnar has achieved his goal of not becoming the Uncle Tom stereotype he so feared.
Given this knowledge about future Gunnar, as well as the all white environment we see him in for the first few chapters, we can surmise that some event must occur to make Gunnar break away from the path he was starting down, and begin to question his ancestors.
Given this knowledge about future Gunnar, as well as the all white environment we see him in for the first few chapters, we can surmise that some event must occur to make Gunnar break away from the path he was starting down, and begin to question his ancestors.
Beatty's world of racism and Uncle Tom characters are a lot more subtle than the worlds of Hurston, Ellison, and Wright. In Invisible Man, the narrator in the first few chapters is very obviously an Uncle Tom character because he really believes in white supremacy. This is the society that Gunnar's ancestors dealt with. Gunnar, especially in Santa Monica, is living in a setting where treating black people as inferior is not widely accepted. So, I'd say it's a lot harder for Gunnar to be an Uncle Tom than it was for Rolf. People don't really expect him to be subservient. You say that Gunnar breaks away from his path to becoming an Uncle Tom but I don't really think he was going in that direction in the first place.
ReplyDeleteI feel like though it could be seen that Gunnar is headed in the direction of becoming another Uncle Tom (like his father), Gunnar does actually realize that there is societal oppression and there is some sort of game being played. This can be seen when his teacher is talking about a "colorblind" society and Gunnar says as a witty answer that dogs are colorblind. I feel like though Gunnar especially towards the end seems darker and more pessimistic, it would have been much harder for him to become an Uncle Tom character just because of the awareness he had from the beginning. Your post has some great observations and i think because we have finished the book, I see the whole picture and can't see Gunnar on that path anymore.
ReplyDeleteEven early on, in his "all-white multicultural" elementary school, we can see Gunnar as starting to distance himself from Kaufmanism. With his father's humiliating experience in "integration," we see him allowing himself to be the butt of racist jokes, much as he does later in life at the LAPD. But Gunnar is not the butt of the jokes in grade school--he's the "funny, cool black guy" who makes subversive, smart-ass, critically astute jokes that puncture the pretensions of the school's multicultural agenda. His "white" style of surfer-talk and his admitted unfamiliarity with black culture make him seem like an anomaly, perhaps, but he consistently depicts himself as wise to the limitations of the school's good intentions. He's aware of how he's treated differently, even by those who like him and think he's "funny."
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