Is Dr. Bledsoe a Sellout?
One discussion that we had in class that I found particularly interesting was the debate about weather or not Dr. Bledsoe is a sellout to his race. We talked about it after reading the passage where the Narrator sees Dr. Bledsoe raise and lower his mask in front of Mr. Norton. Most people in our class agreed that Dr. Bledsoe was a sellout but I disagreed with that idea at the time of the discussion. Apart from the following passage “I'll have every Negro in the country hanging on tree limbs by morning if it means staying where I am,” I felt that, while Dr. Bledsoe acted poorly, he was in no way a sellout (Ellison 143). I would define a sellout to be someone who actively puts down other black people for their own gain. I think of someone like Daniel Cameron, the attorney general of Kentucky, when I think of a sellout, but I wasn’t ready to brand Dr. Bledsoe one.
When we discussed this passage, I saw Dr. Bledsoe as someone who manipulated the system for his own gain. However, this system was not constructed by him nor was he someone who benefited from it. He merely wanted to better himself and was willing to do a lot to get that. These things included lying to powerful white people and making them think he was giving them what they wanted so that he could retain his power. I don’t disparage him for this, in fact, I had some respect for him for acknowledging that’s what the system wanted and recognizing how he could use it to his benefit. He possesses a lot more critical consciousness than our narrator and I wasn't willing to brand him a sellout solely because of his “hanging on trees” statement (Ellison 143).
However, as the book has gone on, I’ve begun to regret my previous stance. The way Dr. Bledsoe was willing to kick our beloved narrator to the curb instead of helping him made me lose the small amount of respect that I had for him. Dr. Bledsoe was totally willing to use any means - including putting down other black people - to preserve his and the university's image. While I agree that the Narrator needed to be schooled on what he did wrong with Mr. Norton, Bledsoe should have taught him instead of screwing him over. At the end of the day, the university’s mission should have been to educate all black people - even if it made some white people mad. Dr. Bledsoe only wanted to preserve his own power, even if it meant hurting another Black person.
I loved your progression of thoughts and how your reaction to Bledsoe changed as time went on. I had similar thoughts, but I've always had an initial negative response towards Bledsoe, even after seeing the narrator's blind, immense adoration towards him. Trying to emphasize with the narrator, I definitely felt heart-broken and betrayed when the truth behind Bledsoe's letters revealed itself, leading me to also consider Bledsoe a sell-out.
ReplyDeleteI think that Dr. Bledsoe is a complex character and I find it difficult to form a definite opinion on him. I do agree with you that I initially praised him for making this racist system work to his advantage, but after all of the hurtful things he has explicitly done to the narrator, I see him as much more selfish. I doubt that Dr. Bledsoe would act this way if he existed in a different society, but in this situation now, his actions of purposefully harming other people of color are definitely not ones I can get behind.
ReplyDeleteIf we do see in Bledsoe a kind of tragic or pathetic picture of the kinds of compromises he's had to make in order to maintain his "success," the Vet might be viewed as a kind of counterbalance to this picture. On the surface, Bledsoe is a "winner" and the Vet a "loser," and Bledsoe literally exerts power over the Vet (he can get him transferred to another hospital with a simply phone call). But the Vet (to many readers) seems "happier," and more free (to speak his mind), and more generally self-actualized. He has been victimized profoundly by racism, apparently chased out of town by the KKK for practicing his profession, and he resents this fact: but he expresses that resentment through ironic humor and mockery, and he is totally unintimidated by Norton (which impresses the narrator). There's a kind of *freedom* represented by the Vet, where we see Bledsoe as confined by the image he has to maintain. As with so much in Ellison, this is a paradoxical kind of freedom, in that the Vet is literally confined and must be accompanied by an "attendant", while Bledsoe seems to be at the top of the social heap. But the utter lack of a "mask" (which the Vet represents) seems to many readers a more appealing prospect.
ReplyDeleteThis is really interesting. I think I always had a negative first impression of Bledsoe, maybe even to the point of seeing him as a sellout, yet you make some good points and I'm not sure if I should have. He is really just working within the system and using it to his advantage. This is especially true if we believe what he says about having power even though nobody thinks he does - that he would "pretend to please are big white folk, and even those I control more than they control me." Yet I also agree that his later actions make him seem more like a sellout.
ReplyDeleteI agree, it's a difficult topic to be completely decided on especially as we see our own narrator whom we've followed for half the book, start to be led down the same path as Bledsoe. I think that something else to consider is whether people would hold him responsible for not doing more, that is, as much as he possibly could, to help black people who weren't in as good of a position as he. Not even to say that he did that much that was detrimental throughout most of his career, but having an opportunity to help and not taking it, when it would not have hurt him, could be seen by some as immoral.
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