Examples Of Racist Stereotypes In Invisible Man

During the narrator’s last morning at Mary’s house in chapter 15 of the novel Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, he spots and is enraged by a racist coin bank that is in his room. He smashes the bank against a pipe and unsuccessfully attempts to dispose of the pieces of the coin bank twice before giving up and taking them with him to his next destination. To me, the coin bank and the fact that narrator can’t dispose of it symbolizes both racist stereotypes and their relatively permanent nature. The coin bank itself demonstrates a racist stereotype. It is described as a “wide-mouthed Negro” with a dark black face and a large smiling mouth (Ellison 319). This portrays African Americans as eager to consume any spare change that is given to them by white people, which is a very racist assumption. …show more content…
When the narrator sees it, he feels “hate charging within” himself and begins to think that the face looks more like a look of “strangulation than a grin” (Ellison 319). If the coin bank is a symbol for racist stereotypes, the offense that the narrator takes to the bank demonstrates the recognition of the hurtfulness of stereotypes to those that are stereotyped. His recognition of the changed expression of the bank symbolizes the falsehood and deceptive nature of stereotypes. While the bank initially appears to be smiling and happy to accept what it is given by white people, the narrator sees the bank as strangling from what it is given by white people. The narrator then breaks the bank, symbolizing the effort of people to dismantle and prove false the stereotypes that offend them. When he tries to get rid of the bank, it is returned to him twice. First, he throws the package in a trash can, but is stopped by the