Lila Mae Intuitionism

“The ferry across Earth to Heaven…: an Intuitionist black box” (Whitehead 98). In The Intuitionist, the black box, believed to be finished by James Fulton (63), is treated as a messiah, a panache to every problem every character faces. The protagonist of the book, Lila Mae, is a colored female Intuitionist elevator inspector with a perfect record. However, after her inspection, the elevator Number Eleven falls into a “total freefall [which] is a physical impossibility” (35). The fall damages Lila Mae’s reputation as well as reputation of those who identifies with her: Intuitionists and colored people. To redeem her and her colleagues’ names, Lila Mae is convinced by Mr. Reed, an Intuitionist campaign manager, to find a black box, “the second …show more content…
These people including Lila Mae represent different factions with binary opposition: black and white, Intuitionists and Empiricists, Arbo and United. This binary opposition is a structure used throughout the book. Against its opposition, each faction tries to get its hands on the black box first to prevent its opposition from the black box, even though the black box is a messiah for both sides. It is only after Lila Mae realize Natchez is a disguised to gain her trust (211), Chancre is not behind the fall of Number Eleven (228), and, Arbo and United are the actual puppet masters (208) that she starts to separate herself from the struggle of opposing factions. By trying to understand Fulton without the ideas from any factions, Lila Mae understands that “[Intuitionism] was all a big joke” (232). Lila Mae reaches for “a truth behind that [the opposing factions] couldn’t see for the life of them” (239). In the end, Lila Mae rises above “petty squabbling” of factions and becomes “the keeper” (255) of the black box. The Intuitionist is about an ascension beyond the superficial conflicts of factions into the world of