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.