Bird Poop Parallel
Something that I found interesting was that in chapter 24, a flock of birds flies over the narrator and he gets pooped on as he his headed to the riot scene. An interesting parallel is made with an earlier scene in chapter 2 when the statue of the founder of the college is also covered in bird droppings, and the narrator felt that with the bird poop the statue had more meaning than without. The statue is worth nothing, just like the narrator’s identity given to him by the Brotherhood.
Maybe it says something about his character. Like the founder, he too has become tainted with other people’s ideas and identities that are far from his own. He has been stained with the grotesque realities of the manipulation of the Brotherhood. It is in this scene that he finally realizes his identity and the experiences that help form it.
I think that is a really interesting point. I feel that this is a theme throughout the whole book; getting dirty to find your true identity. Our narrator only starts to really find his own identity when he chooses to live dirty and underground. Earlier in the book, when the narrator takes Norton to the bar, Bledsoe gets angry because he isn’t showing him the “clean” side of black life, only the dirty side at a bar with some mentally ill veterans. I think this is a really fascinating thing to point out and really rings true in the novel that when things are neat and clean, they aren’t always real