Mary

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 actually want to return to live with Mary but instead to something that Mary represents and I’m not sure what that is.

On the one hand, to the narrator Mary represents being cared for. When the narrator first meets her, she lets him sleep at her house and feeds him simply because he needs help and without asking for anything in return. When he lives with her, she continues to feed him, makes sure he’s eating enough, and loans him money. As the narrator is feeling confused and alone, it makes sense that he would want someone to take care of him and the obvious connection is to the woman who took care of him that last time his goals were annihilated.

But Mary also represents the pressure the narrator feels to do something that’s in her words “a credit to the race” (255). When the narrator lives with her, he notes that “Mary reminded me constantly that something was expected of me, some act of leadership, some newsworthy achievement; and I was torn between resenting her for it and loving her for the nebulous hope she kept alive” (258).

 So maybe the narrator’s longing to return to Mary’s could be a longing to be taken care of. But in the end, he can’t reconcile being taken care of with the responsibility to the care-er and to society. I think this realization may be a large part of why he drops out of society. He wants to understand himself without his view being distorted by the pressures of social responsibility and by realizing that he can’t return to Mary’s, he realizes that the only way he can avoid social responsibility is by dropping out of society.