In chapter 15, the Invisible Man is subjected to a series of events that remove his narrative agency in favor of setting up a metaphor for the reader. He smashes a coin bank in the shape of a racist, stereotypical image of an African American, “very black, red-lipped and wide-mouthed” (319). It seems at first that he does indeed have control over this detail of plot, in that he picks it up and smashes it, symbolizing a response to the stereotype. However, as he tries to rid himself of the broken remnants, he finds that bad luck prevents him from leaving it behind despite his purposefulness, thus preventing him from exercising his agency. He first throws the bank away in a trashcan, “casually… and moving on” (327), with the expectation that this choice will hold. A white woman berates him and threatens to call the police on him until he removes it from her trash. He then drops it in the snow, “thinking, ‘There, it’s done.’” A black man picks it up and gives it back to him, and threatens to call the police, so the Invisible Man takes it back. The parallelism, the contrast between two types of characters making similar threats, and the image itself all point to a metaphor for the difficulty of leaving racist stereotypes behind in a society that won’t allow it. This is despite the Invisible Man’s own preferences to simply drop a package, and mirrors instead his lack of narrative agency in non-metaphorical instances of racism. As a fictional character, the Invisible Man is at the mercy of the intended meaning, and although he believes he can, he cannot simply throw a piece of trash away without some coincidence, orchestrated by the author, intervening.