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The protagonist alienates his gaze on the self by identifying with the power and internalizing the power gaze. He accepts the definition of himself by power and tries to succeed and find an identity within the framework set by white power as if it were natural and logical. His identification with power went through two stages.

2.1.1 Identification with Educational Leadership in Schools

The protagonist was convinced that his existence depends on gaining the support, recognition and approval of white people — whom he has been taught to see as powerful, superior beings who control his destiny. This belief was so internalized and ingrained that he placed his hope in the white men that they could change his destiny and thus obeyed them blindly. The idea of the essence of progress being humility expressed by the protagonist in the speech he gave at the graduation ceremony at the beginning was not what he really thought, but he “believed that it worked” (Ellison, 1995: 16) to whites. It did. He accepted the arrangement of battle royal in an obedient manner. The fight raged on, while he was still fretting about the speech he was going to give next. He was worried about whether the white men would appreciate him, and at the same time was looking forward to receiving some reward. Even though the whites didn’t care about his speech, and the blood in his mouth due to boxing almost choked his throat, he still tried to swallow the blood and spoke with enthusiasm. The briefcase and scholarship he received for delivering his speech seem confirming his assumption that if he does what the world expects of him, he will be respected and accepted in return. This is when the black body was subjected to “a technology of docility.” (Yancy, 2016: 125-126)

2.2 Negation of Self

After internalization of the gaze, the protagonist’s identification with the power and blindly pursing a false social identity led to the negation of the self, triggering alienation of racial identity and personal identity. He became someone else rather than himself, a party hack with an assumed name, someone arbitrarily forced to deny his past. (Callahan, 2004)

2.2.1 Negation of His Own Race

At the beginning of the novel, when asked to fight a battle royal with his schoolmates, the protagonist did not find anything wrong with this arrangement, except that fighting with those tough boys might “detract from the dignity of [his] speech.” (Ellison, 1995: 18) He resents participating in the Battle Royal, not because the competition itself is degrading, but because he is disgusted by the notion of mixing with other black boys. (Callahan, 2004) After all, he saw himself as “a potential Booker T. Washington.” (18)

The black student’s mind and eye were still “glued to the white line” (38–39) at college. He felt ashamed of Trueblood, a black sharecropper impregnating his teenage daughter, which “brought disgrace upon the black community” (46). He felt embarrassed by his primitive animal harmonies singing for the white visitors in the chapel, and felt resentful of the black community being pulled down by those like Trueblood. To stop Norton from asking for more details abo本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。