Question 5
RALPH ELLISON: Invisible Man
Account for the significance of the Jim Trueblood Saga.
Observation
Most candidates merely narrated the story of Jim Trueblood.
Candidates were expected to discuss:
- The problem of social invisibility in a socially segregated society.
- Character identification: The Jim Trueblood saga is the story of a black American sharecropper who impregnates his daughter
- Norton’s attitude to the story as history.
- The significance: sustains the white supremacist’s opinion of the black man as being of low breed; reflects the narrator’s interest in sustaining his conviction about how the invisibility of African Americans is a matter of the mind, and not of the eyes.
Most candidates gave shallow answers.