Andrew Hurst – Writer and SEO professional

In chapter seven of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, the Invisible Man speaks with an old black veteran on a bus going to the northern United States. The veteran gives the Man these words of advice before disembarking from the bus:

Play the game, but don’t believe in it—that much you owe yourself. Even if it lands you in a strait jacket or a padded cell. Play the game, but play it your own way—part of the time at least (155).

The piece of advice in this passage is meant to serve the Man in his struggle for agency. That the man giving the advice is a veteren is an attempt by Ellison to emphasize the warlike aspect of the struggle for agency by the blacks against the whites. The “game”—whose existence Dr. Bledsoe made known to the Invisible Man in the previous chapter—refers to the show of ingratiating servitude that the Southern black man must play to the white man in order to keep him ignorant of the black man’s potential for power of true control. Since the powers that be have become complacent, as the vet tells the Man on the following page, there is opportunity for him and other black men to change the status quo. In order for there to be some sort of power shift in society, the Man must be aware that his obsequious façade is indeed false, and he must maintain an educated and focused head. This is where the notion of playing the game only “part of the time” becomes very important. This aspect of the vet’s advice suggests that if a man loses focus, he gives up his agency to the powers that be, and his undistinguished false front becomes an actual lifestyle lacking purpose and true control.  The Man’s own liberation—and possibly the rest of the black race’s liberation—is dependent upon whether or not he realizes his own potential and takes advantage of the opportunity at hand since, as the veteran puts it, “they [those in positions of authority] wouldn’t see you because they don’t expect you to know anything, since they believe they’ve taken care of that . . .” (154).