We’re introduced to the Invisible man at the start of the novel as a figure who struggles with the worlds view on him. In his mind, the world has turned his existence into a meaningless venture. “You ache with the need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world, that you’re apart of all the sound and anguish.” (pg.4) Racism and the thirst to be equals in an unfair world represents the conflict that our protagonist must endure within the novel. Throughout the novel, there’s a search to please the world around him and to create this perfect version of himself as a black man. This in turn manifests itself as a recurring theme that appears through symbolism and other motifs.
The novel provides his journey to becoming the Invisible man and as readers we discover how a loss of one’s self through the conflicts of the world within the protagonist. There’s a moment in the middle of the novel that struck me as significant in this regard. Walking the streets of New York, he stumbles upon a man selling yams. A staple of the south, the yams bring back memories of culture and a freedom to the invisible man as he eats. He declares, “I walked along, munching the yam, just as suddenly overcome by an intense feeling of freedom.” He becomes connected with a sense of culture and the ability to accept what the culture means for him. He also reveals how these symbols like yams and other foods have altered his mindset in terms of living his life. “I no longer had to worry about who saw me or what was proper. To hell with all that.”(264)
Much like present day, where food items like fried chicken, watermelon, and kool aid hold a haunting symbolism to them, the invisible man acknowledges that same ideal that are placed within the yams. Society has used these objects as an oppressing force. A means to break apart the culture of one’s people and turn them in to nothing. He later states, “What a group of people we were… Why you could cause us the greatest humiliation simply by confronting us with something we liked.”(264) There’s an anguish to succumbing to this affliction from American society, an anger at everything for allowing this to happen. However, as the protagonist eats the sweet syrup of the yam, he realizes the potential of forgetting those ill affections and accepting who you are. “What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?”(266)
Great post on this moment of reflection on what an un-self-conscious embrace of one’s racial identity might mean. Food is used throughout as a coded reference to racial identity, from the bland white break served at the school, the the illicit sneaking of yams in the chapter you describe, to the narrator’s recurring use of chitterlings at first as mode of revenge on Bledsoe to unveil his duplicity and later as a sort of absurd reflection on Jack’s horror at the protagonist being asked to sing a spiritual, to the scene in the diner where the protagonist bristles at the cook’s assumption about what he might like to eat. Indeed, one could write a whole paper on the use of food as a symbol for certain cultural markers throughout the book. Here, though, you’re right that this serves as a moment of awakening for the author. It is ironic as this moment precedes his act of advocacy for his own people, which is also his entrance into the brotherhood that would ultimately discredit such race-focused advocacy.