Physicality and Tod Clifton

Physicality and Tod Clifton

Tod Clifton’s funeral scene is an interesting scene in which a character barely discovered and without much significance is endowed meaning by the protagonist in its absence. In a way, Tod Clifton as a character is an analogy to a corpse; a living human being, before insignificant and one of many and now dead and rotting, suddenly gains interest in form of grief or/and disgust from others. A corpse is significant and provoking because of its contradictory state: it shows the same form as a life but at the same time reveals the striking fact that it is very much dead and gone from this world.

The protagonist emphasizes the fact that Tod Clifton is now a goner, and he would have nothing to do with the audience’s lives if they were to ignore his absence. At the same time, he identifies the respective individuals in the audience as another Tod Clifton, living in “the box and [they’re] with him, and (…) it’s dark in this box and it’s crowded (…) cracked ceiling and a clogged-up toilet in the gall (…) rats and roaches” (458). In other words, every single African Americans in the audience are not only a non-existing goner, but they are corpses. They do not exist, but they are repulsive beings to other humans, which must refer to the whites.

Although I have not finished reading the entire book, it would be reasonable to assume that the vagueness in the identity of Tod Clifton is not unnecessary. He is a representative of the African Americans in the plot, only more superior and respectable than other laymen. Yet he was shot and killed. His being garners meaning to the whole community as the character loses physicality. Tod Clifton is a character more significant without presence.

RESPONSE (ADA)- “A corpse is significant and provoking because of its contradictory state…”

This posting does really well in highlighting the contradiction of Tod Clifton coming alive through his death but also the black community recognizing the own fragility of their individual/collective life through the taking of one of their own. The quote that you mention reflects the feeling of being collectively buried alive despite each individual being alive. The living corpse image that you’ve put forth is really apt because it encapsulates how the Invisible Man was conceptualizing the black experience as being a part of the walking dead. It takes physical death to realize all the various ways in which black life is suppressed and squashed even when black bodies are breathing. Rather than thinking of their walking dead as a sign of systemic non-existence, it seems that Ellison is proposing an existence that is very much tethered to the concept of death rather than death being the removal of existence. Tod Clifton came “to life” after “death.” The linearity of living as one lives then dies is dramatically complicated with how Clifton is used in the text.