Punctuation Analogy 

Victor compares his father to punctuation marks to show the transformation that happens when he drinks. “During those long drinks, Victor’s father wasn’t shaped like a question mark. He looked like an exclamation point.” Aside from the physical shape of his father there is a deeper meaning to this description.

The obvious meaning of the analogy is that Victor’s father goes from being hunched over and just kind of there, to fully alert and upright. He becomes aware of life around him as he forgets the past with alcohol.

A question mark is placed at the end of a sentence to replace a full stop and makes the sentence and interrogative one. It is also used to replace unknown or missing data. Sober, Victor’s father embodies a question mark. He is questioning his life and his choices. Victor’s father questions himself and questions his past and who he is as a person and an Indian living on the reservation. “Victor’s father remembered the time his own father was spit on as they waited for a bus in Spokane.” Following a question mark there is usually and answer, a question cannot stand on its own, it needs something else to make it whole. The way that Victor’s father needs alcohol to cope.

An exclamation point is used at the end of a sentence to show strong feelings or loud volume. It’s a definitive mark that brings a sentence to an end. The origin of the exclamation mark comes from the Latin exclamation of joy, and was seen as a symbol of admiration. Victor’s father turns into an exclamation point, showing that he goes from uncertain to strongly emotional and comes to terms with his life. He doesn’t love his life but he accepts it or at least forgets it while he is drunk.

The analogy of the exclamation point works for Victor’s uncle’s too. When they are drunk they literally beat each other out of love. They feel in extremes, the way that an exclamation point is used to show something is more extreme than a period.

The Blood Butterfly

In the first chapter of the Invisible Man, the narrator is punched in the head and when he falls to the ground his blood forms a butterfly that soaked into the canvas. The butterfly is a symbol as well as the action of it “soaking into the gray world of canvas”. Emphasis is placed on the color of the canvas and the shape his blood takes on it. Ralph Ellison specifically chose a red butterfly and a grey canvas, giving the colors and the shape of the invisible man’s blood deeper meaning.

                Red is the color of passion and love. It’s often associated with rage and war, fitting into the fighting scene the butterfly is presented in. Butterflies are symbolic for new beginnings and freedom, and the butterfly is made of the invisible man’s blood, making it his freedom and new beginning. His beginning stems from his grandfather’s words from the start of the chapter, basically telling him to kill the white man with kind yeses and that their life as black American’s was a war. The invisible man’s beginning would be his revelation about their quiet resistance to the white man and his understanding that their new “equality” was not actually equal. The invisible man would have to become a traitor to the people he seeks acceptance and praise from, forcing him to see that what he is working hard towards, college and becoming an outstanding citizen,  is exactly what the white population wants him to do.

                Grey is a color often associated with negativity. It’s is a mix between black and white, good and bad, and in this case is symbolic for black and white relations. The canvas that the invisible man is fighting on is gray; he is figuratively and physically fighting on race relations. Gray absorbs light and colors, but does not reflect them back. It absorbs what is around it and makes it its own, the way that the invisible man is being absorbed into his surroundings and being made into what the white people want him to be. The originality and individuality that is the invisible man is lost when he is absorbed into the battle royal.  

                The butterfly is absorbed into the gray canvas, the fight and passion that the invisible man has to follow his grandfather’s words of wisdom is lost to the conformity forced upon the blacks in the battle royal. The canvas is described as a “soiled world” by the invisible man, he recognizes that the norm forced on him is wrong but his fight against it is lost along with the butterfly when it seeps into the canvas and blends into it. The blood that made the butterfly literally came from his body and is a part of him; the invisible man saw a physical manifestation of what was happening within every black man in the battle royal, the internal fight that they all lost, and the same way he lost the fight with Tatlock.

Feminism in The Piano Lesson

August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson is ruled by strong male characters who view women in a negative light. They are seen as objects to be conquered or as conniving and deceitful. The women of the Charles family contradict this by being strong and independent, giving the play a feminist undertone primarily through Berniece.

In Act 1, scene 1 Lymon’s view of women is made clear: Boy Willie: "All [Lymon] want to talk about is women. […] Talking about all the women he gonna get when he get up here." Lymon spends a large portion of the play focused on women and sees them as objects in the beginning. Doaker views them as gold diggers after their money: "I ain't thinking about them women. […] All them women want is somebody with a steady payday." Willie Boys’ treatment of Grace also shows that he doesn’t view women with equality and respect. He talks back to Berniece, who is the matriarch of the household, and often talks down to her.

Berniece stands against Willie Boy when he wants to sell the piano, and doesn’t concede to Avery’s attempts to marry her. In her monologue in Act 2, scene 2 she questions Avery why a woman isn’t a woman without a man, and why a man is still a man without a woman.  She points out the obvious double standards society has in place. This specific monologue shows feminine strength and independence but right after it we are given the reason for her refusal to remarry, she is still in mourning over her deceased husband. The women of the Charles family are forced into independence by being widowed. Her mother was the same way; she never remarried after he husband died either. The role of mourning widow is the norm of their family now and is a part of their history symbolized through Mama Ola’s blood rubbed into the piano: "Mama Ola polished this piano with her tears for seventeen years. For seventeen years she rubbed on it till her hands bled. Then she rubbed the blood in…mixed it with the rest of the blood on it."