Existing

In chapter six the main character meets with Dr. Bledsoe about the repercussions of the events that passed with Mr. Norton during the drive. When the young man gets very upset with Dr. Bledsoe and acuses him of lying about his punishment, the older black man teaches him a lesson about his role in educated society: "you're nobody, son. You don't exist - can't you see that?" (143). This statement calls to mind the title of the book, how the head of the school calls the young man invisible and nonexistent even as he gains an education in an excellent university. Yet then he claims that he does not get told what to do or think by white men - Dr. Bledsoe claims that he is not invisible. And by the events of the novel so far the reader can see that indeed he is not. "Telling white folks what to think about the things [he] know[s] about" is how Dr. Bledsoe describes his life (143). However, Dr. Bledsoe's words seem contradictory. How can he be so visible and the young man so nonexistent? Was Dr. Bledsoe not invisible as well as one point? At some time in his life he must have been in the same place as our main character, just a black man in school. How can Dr. Bledsoe deny the young man's identity so concretely when he has risen from a similar place to be the powerful, respected, and visible black man that he is now?
Dr. Bledsoe calls this reality "a nasty arrangement" that he doesn't always like (143). He emphasizes that it was not his doing: "[he] didn't make it, and [he] know[s] he can't change it" so he worked with the white system to get himself into his position of power and would turn his back on every other person of his race just to stay there (143). Dr. Bledsoe sends a message to the young man about how to rise up to a position of such power as has the older man. I doubt the young man will follow the older man's advice in the end, as we already know he ends of living underground by stolen light, but I will keep an eye out for threads of this passage throughout the rest of the story as I have a feeling that Dr. Bledsoe's strategies and position will appear again.