Rebirth: The Significance of Chapter 11


As we discussed in class, Chapter 11 seems to serve as a type of “rebirth” of the narrator in multiple ways. The doctors electrocute the narrator in an attempt to modify his behavior and “cure” him. They are trying to make him new; trying to rebirth him. As they wished, the narrator does experience a rebirth, but in a very different way from what they were expecting. Rather than erasing the rebellious nature of the narrator, this experience finalizes the process that has been in the works for the past ten chapters. The narrator is finally completely “awakened”. He has now completely thrown away his hope in relying on other people to succeed, and is now beginning a quest to understand himself and become his own father, as the vet urged him to do earlier. This chapter serves as an ending and a beginning of a new character.  

An interesting aspect of this portion of the text is the repeated reference back to the first chapter, in which the narrator participates in the battle royal. The electrocution and lack of autonomy that the narrator faces hearkens back to what he experienced in Chapter One. I saw this as Ellison putting the narrator in the same (symbolically) situation that he was in before, and displaying the difference in the way that the narrator responds. In contrast to the naïve boy depicted in the first chapter, the narrator is now much more seasoned and even above the situation at hand.

By creating a scene that reflects so closely to the beginning of the book, Ellison seems to be signifying that this is another beginning; another beginning for the narrator, as well as for the book. As the narrator, for the first time, begins to very closely resemble the narrator we met in the Prologue, it almost seems like it is a sign saying that the narrator we’ll be seeing in the following chapters is nothing like the character we’ve seen up until this point. What do you guys think? Did you also see Chapter 11 as a major turning point in the book?

Comments

  1. Mayahuel MalikSeptember 11, 2019 at 7:51 PM

    I agree that chapter 11 is a major turning point in the novel. The 'rebirth' the narrator experiences clearly changes and as parallels are made to the very first chapter (electrocution, lack of autonomy, etc.) it is clear this is symbolic of a "new beginning". I like the point you make about Ellison putting the narrator in a similar situation as to when he was "born" the first time, and I wonder if there will be another turning point in which he is "reborn" again, or if this is the final stage in his development and this "new narrator" will be the final version that we follow for the rest of the book.

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  2. DanbiSeptember 11, 2019 at 9:12 PM

    I totally agree that chapter 11 is the "rebirth" of the narrator in the sense that he becomes a "new" and more aware character. He is clearly moving closer towards the narrator we see in the Prologue, rather than the submissive, naive boy we see in the earlier chapters of the book. Personally, I thought the little snippets referencing a hospital or like an actual birth of a child was really interesting. I also feel that not only in the narrator "awakened", but he is also moving towards Emerson's idea of self-reliance in the way that he lost his job which also seems to be his only other connection to Bledsoe and the college. Through this, the narrator is kind of completely starting over and putting his college life behind him and therefore can move on to become more like the narrator we see in the Prologue.

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  3. HadiyahSeptember 12, 2019 at 5:35 PM

    I agree that Chapter 11 is a major turning point in the novel. The narrator's "rebirth" is really important because of how he moving towards becoming more self reliant and he's now starting to look beneath the surface of things. You can really see how he's becoming a different person. He eats yams at the beginning of Chapter 13 and he comments on how he shouldn't care how other people view him, unlike earlier in the diner where he was very self conscious about what he ordered. They tried to "cure" him, and in a way they did, just now how they expected to. He was "cured" of being naive and is now able to really think for himself.

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  4. Geoffrey DingSeptember 14, 2019 at 2:57 PM

    I agree with this idea of getting reincarnated in chapter 11. Yet before this critical point, we see the character starting to already make changes. Our narrator, after finding out he was trick by Bledsoe, vowed to kill Bledsoe. This is something that I can't believe the narrator would think in the earlier chapters. I also think that even after this "awakening" at chapter 11 that there are still a lot of things that the narrator needs to continue to work on about himself. Yet in chapter 13 we see another move in the right direction as he eats yams and doesn't care about the people around him and what they might think of that action. I think these are all steps that he is moving to get to what we will soon see as his final self.

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  5. MitchellSeptember 15, 2019 at 12:22 PM

    The very idea of a "new beginning" is treated with a degree of irony by Ellison, even as it's pretty clear that chapter 11 represents a pretty explicit case of 'rebirth'. He loves to play with paradoxes like "the beginning is in the end and the end in the beginning," and his favorite metaphor for history is a boomerang. "Starting over" can seem optimistic and forward-looking, but at the same time, Ellison keeps suggesting that the narrator might likewise be "right back where he started from." Is the "new identity" given to him by the Brotherhood a fresh start? Or is this just a repetition-with-difference of him being handed a scholarship after giving an impressive (or "correct") speech in the Battle Royal?

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