Bledsoe’s Betrayal
In Chapter 9 we found out that Bledsoe has told each of the addressees that the narrator has earned permanent expulsion from the college and that he had to send the narrator away under false pretenses in order to protect the college. This event was extremely disturbing because as a reader, I felt betrayed by Bledsoe as well. I was under the impression that as a Black man, Bledsoe would not fall into the White man’s trap and betray his own race, but in fact he does.
Bledsoe requests that the narrator be allowed to “continue undisturbed in [his] vain hopes [of returning to college] while remaining as far as possible from our midst.” This is a traumatic experience for the Invisible Man as he realizes that people are not as faithful as they appear to be and that even Blacks are capable of turning on their race. I wonder if the narrator will encounter similar situations in the future as the novel progresses.
I too really felt bad for the invisible man after finding out that his letters of recommendation were really letters of un-recommendation. I can’t even imagine how awful that betrayal must have felt like. A young kid putting himself out there in NYC, hopeful of a bright future only to find out that he was sabotaging himself and any type of connections by handing out said letters. This sabotage really speaks to the evil of Bledsoe’s character. It is one thing to kick the invisible man out of college, but to go even further to purposely and sneakily try to ruin his entire future is beyond awful. What does he have to gain from such an act?
Maybe Bledsoe felt threatened by the Invisible Man? He knew that he was a good kid just trying to follow in his footsteps and wanting to be just as successful as Bledsoe. I feel like Bledsoe saw him also as a threat against the school’s image to the white millionares who donate to the school, because he obviously didnt want to lose their donations.