As was the case for many blacks, the narrator left the agrarian South and moved North. This symbolised the road to freedom and enlightenment as the North of America was not involved in slavery and fought during the civil war to bring an end to it in the South. This northward movement, the upward movement was a move from badness to goodness. The text is enormously symbolic and we see it used in vision: light, colour, perception, sight, insight. Charles I. Glicksberg in his book "The Symbolism of Vision says "These, his master symbols, are organically related to the dualism of black and white, the all-absorbing and bafflingly complex problem of identity." (Glicksberg, Charles.The Symbolism of Vision. P.386).
At the paint factory the narrator introduces that character of Lucius Brockway who is as black man who appears to have sold his soul to the .
white man in order to become master of his own kingdom of the basement. ""none of them thinks he's going to git me out of here, when he ought to know he's wasting his time Everybody knows I been here ever since there's been a here - even helped dig the first foundation. The Old Man hired me, nobody else; and, by God, it"ll take the Old Man to Fire me." (Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. p.209) This character views himself as an important and pivotal part of the factory ""we the machines within the machine."" (ibid. p.217) He is an unseen part of the entire operation, working underground and unseen but in full control, even to the extent that he cannot be permitted to retire. Our narrator, however, perceives his job in .
a very different way - as a job "probably too filthy and dangerous for white men to be willing to do even for money." (ibid. p.212) .
The Optic White paint made by the factory is an interesting perception of the melting pot theory of Americanism. The paint made there is Optic white - ""White! The purest white that can be found. Nobody makes a paint whiter.
