Robert Stepto's From Behind the Veil: A
Study of Afro-American Narrative (Urbana, Il.: University
of Illinois Press, 1979) identifies two basic types of narrative
expressions: the narrative of ascent and the narrative
of immersion.
The classic ascent narrative launches
an "enslaved" and semi-literate figure on a ritualized
journey to a symbolic North; that journey is charted through
spatial expressions of social structure, invariably systems of
signs that the questing figure must read in order to be increasingly
literate and increasingly free. The ascent narrative conventionally
ends with the questing figure situated in the least oppressive
social structure afforded by the world of the narrative, and
free in the sense that he or she has gained sufficient literacy
to assume the mantle of articulate survivor. As the phrase "articulate
survivor" suggests, the hero or heroine of an ascent narrative
must be willing to forsake familial and communal postures in
the narrative's most oppressive social structure for a new posture
in the least oppressive environment--at best, one of solitude;
at worst, one of alienation. This last feature of the ascent
narrative unquestionably helps bring about the rise and development
of an immersion narrative in the tradition. . .
The immersion narrative is fundamentally
an expression of a ritualized journey into a symbolic South,
in which the protagonist seeks those aspects of tribal literacy
that ameliorate, if not obliterate, the conditions imposed by
solitude. The conventional immersion narrative ends almost paradoxically,
with the questing figure located in or near the narrative's most
oppressive social structure but free in the sense that he has
regained sufficient tribal literacy to assume the mantle of an
articulate kinsman. As the phrase "articulate kinsman"
suggests, the hero or heroine of an immersion narrative must
be willing to forsake highly individualized mobility in the narrative's
least oppressive social structure for a posture of relative stasis
in the most oppressive environment, a loss that is only occasionally
assuaged by the newfound balms of group identity . . .(p. 167)
Assignment:
Discuss Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man as a combination
of both ascent and immersion narratives.
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