One thing that confused me in Invisible Man was why the narrator wants to return to Mary at the end of Chapter 25. As he flees from the riot he “ran expecting death between the shoulder blades or through the back of [his] head, and as [he] ran [he] was trying to get to Mary’s” (560). He continues to think of Mary’s as his destination until at the end of the chapter he realizes that “I couldn’t return to Mary’s or to any part of my old life” (571). The narrator is never specific about the logistics of returning to Mary. On the one hand, he’s running in a panic so that makes some sense. On the other hand, he just dropped out of Mary’s life months ago without saying goodbye or contacting her at all since then. If she saw the narrator again, Mary could very well be angry with him and at the very least she would want some sort of an explanation, which the narrator would struggle to give, given that he tells his story for the first time in the book. So the narrator probably doesn’t