Being invisible (in the case of this class) isn't about being literally invisible, it's about your true self being invisible to another person. They don't see you for you, they see whatever they want to see. This is an issue brought up both by Ellison and Young (the author of "A Poem for Players"). In his poem, Young riffs on the idea of being allowed to do things, e.g. being allowed to be sports stars or jazz musicians or even politicians. However, these are very specifically and carefully chosen players; namely, they're players who are deemed "acceptable" by the society at large, specifically white society. This is where Mr. Mitchell brought up the idea of being "licensed", meaning that you're allowed to live with some terms and conditions. You're allowed to be certain things as long as you color inside the lines. To me, being licensed and being invisible are very similar things. If you're licensed, you're allowed to go about your life doing whatever you want so long as you stay in the boundaries. This means that society as a whole is free to ignore you for who you are and slot you in as whoever they want to see you as, since you meet the status quo. However, this deal breaks once your license is revoked and you're seen as breaking the status quo. You're still invisible, as no doubt you'll still only be a figment of whatever the other person wants to see, but you'll be invisible in plain sight. This insight is what I see as the final stanza of "A Poem for Players", which ends with "They'll let you play anybody but you / That's pretty much what they will do".
But who is "they"?. We got to this in discussion in class, but at a first glance it seems like "they" is white people/societal norms, which makes sense, but there's another side to "they", which is also the black community. While you can be invisible to an outside community from your own quite easily, you can just as easily be invisible to your own. We briefly talked in class about how Wright talked about the inevitability of black critics towards Bigger Thomas, seeing him as a bad example of the black community. Likewise, we see our narrator in Invisible Man being ashamed and scoffing at the lower class non-educated black members of society. Thus, it is important to note that the figures mentioned in "A Poem for Players" are all very safe-for-families members of the black community, which members of both the white community and black community valued.
So ... Yeah !
