All right. In regards to the assigned readings to chapter ten I found an important aspect that I would like to touch upon. First, however, I would like to give a brief synopsis of the events that lead up to it.
The narrator first gives us a glimpse of his life when he becomes engulfed with a gambling problem and talks about his philosophy of gambling. This is how many people lose differently but in the end those who lose money go into a state of reform and give it up. Our narrator is one of those people who win some and lose some.
In regards to himself however, this is not the case. His philosophy does not pan out. He actually acquires a job rolling cigars and finally realizes that he cannot keep up with the life of honest work and gambling due to the strain on his body. He decides that instead of giving up gambling and reforming he will give up his job.
While being open to the style of music called "rag-time" at the “club” is where his life actually starts to take hold. A peculiar man who happens to be a millionaire takes him under his wing and hires him to play this style of music for him. This man that hires our narrator and the event that occurs accidentally is what this post will reflect upon.
There was a passage on page 141 that I found strangely intriguing. This is where the millionaire friend has him play the "new American music." When a fellow listener hears him play this style of music this listener bumps our narrarator off his seat. The listener than changes the narrators unique style of incorporating classical music into this style of "rag-time" and reverses it. He changes ragtime music into classical music. This changes how our narrator thinks. This seems to be one of the biggest events that happen to the narrator that changes his life up to this point in the story. This is where he gets the idea to go back to America and start playing for his people of color. He seems to get this notion that this whole time he has been in Europe with the millionaire he has become white. He has been educated and trained to be that of the upper white class through the coaching of the millionaire. This small incident in the narrators life makes him realize that he wants to be an advocate for his race and against the advice of the millionaire he decides to leave Europe and bottle up all the hopes of the American Negroes into his new form of music.
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It is interesting when the narrator tells the millionaire that he will be leaving him. The millionaire states, "you are blood, by appearance, by education, and by tastes a white man. Now, why do you want to throw your life away amidst the poverty and ignorance, in the hopeless struggle, of the black people of...”
I thought it was interesting that now the narrator wants to now advocate for his race, when in the beginning of the book he came across as almost mortified that he is black.
I like how Johnson shows this morphing of the narrator over time and tribulations.
I also find it interesting how the narrator sort of flip flops on weather or not he likes being black. By the end of the novel he realizes that he shouldn't tell anybody that he is black.
Also what sticks out in my mind is the fact that when he was on the train talking to a man about race relations, he said "we" as in reference to blacks. He just looked at the man waiting to see his reaction. Sometimes I think that he would just wait to see what some people’s reactions were.
I actually think he feels he has been "becoming white" his whole life, atleast up to that point. With the way he was educated, dressed, and often treated compared to some of the other characters. Maybe rag time in the south is his way of discovering something of himself he hasn't yet?
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