The end of the narrator's Liberty Paints journey - "I had lost irrevocably an important victory"

 The entirety of the Liberty Paints chapter was a metaphor-filled, wild adventure that resembled the same absurdist dream-like scenarios we saw in previous chapters. The narrator was thrown from one task to another, encountering obstacle after obstacle that only got more outlandish as it went on. Putting the wrong substance into the buckets of paint, getting almost ambushed by first the union workers, then by Brockway, and finally culminating with a literal explosion. We talked some in class about what the chapter, and Liberty Paints as a company, represented as an allegory, and there were many interesting blog posts I read about it. In addition to that, I think it's interesting to think about what the narrator's day at Liberty Paints meant for his story.

The chapter ends with the narrator laying in the rubble of the explosion, hearing an old man say that "these here young Nineteen-Hundred boys ain't no good for the job. They ain't got the nerves" (Ellison 230). The narrator then thinks, "I tried to speak, to answer, but something heavy moved again, and I was understanding something fully and trying again to answer but seemed to sink to the center of a lake of heavy water and pause, transfixed and numb with the sense that I had lost irrevocably an important victory" (Ellison 230). What is this "important victory" that the narrator had lost? In the light of the idea that the narrator was taking his life into his own hands for once, and making his own way in life instead of being a puppet, this monumental failure of a first day at a job - even if it wasn't entirely his own fault - would be a huge blow to any sense of direction or drive. He had already been hit hard with the news of what basically amounted to his expulsion from college, and had thrown himself back into the "game" with a vengeance and a drive to make the first move this time. That "first move" lasted all of a day and ended up with him in the hospital (appearing to have very dubious experimental procedures performed on him???). 

In the chapters after Liberty Paints and the hospital, you can see how the narrator was drifting kind of aimlessly - "I had lost my sense of direction... Sometimes, when there was still money, or when I had earned a few dollars waiting table, I'd eat out and wander the streets until late at night" (Ellison 258). The entirety of his Liberty Paints experience was what truly disillusioned him and left him without a purpose or an ideal to pursue. Which makes me wonder, what would have happened if he had won that "important victory"? What would "winning" look like, and would the future narrator, with his more developed view of the world, still see that as winning? 

Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. New York: Vintage International, 1995. Print.