When does a positive personality trait become a tragic flaw? This major turning point in a person's life can often go unnoticed when you do not have the presence of mind to realize who you are. However, sometimes, someone may think they have a positive personality trait that turned tragic, when all along it has been a tragic personality flaw their whole life and they just now realized its poison in their life. This circumstance takes place in Ralph Ellison's novel, Invisible Man.
The narrator in Invisible Man has the tendency to immediately trust the people that he meets, whether it be a conscious or unconscious decision.
When the narrator encounters Dr. Bledsoe, his reaction is to trust him since he is the outspoken president of the college he attends. The narrator lets Bledsoe lead him into a trick of going to New York, never to return, with the trust that Bledsoe's letters of recommendation will help him get where he needs to go. The narrator trusts him enough to go to New York only to find that inside the letters are words of damnation and the proof that Bledsoe sabotaged him. At this stage in his life, the narrator should've learned not to trust everyone immediately because you never know what their true intentions are. He doesn't. And he continues down a path of false trust for the rest of the novel.
As the narrator continues to live in New York, he searches out work in a paint factory. When he was demoted at that job to work in the basement and mix the paints, he meets his supervisor, Brockway. Mr. Brockway seemed to be nice, relatable, and trustworthy so, naturally, the narrator takes to him and trusts him fully. But that trust is soon shot down when Brockway becomes infuriated with the narrator after a supposed "secret meeting" with other members of the company. Brockway immediately turns against him, and when the pressure sensors in the paint factory indicate an explosion, Brockway leaves the narrator alone in the basement to die. This might have been the turning point in the narrator's life to decide not to trust to easily again if it weren't for the traumatic brain damage that occurred during the explosion and his experimental lobotomy after it. This explosion is probably the reason that the narrator continues to trust when there is no trust to be found.
The narrator also blindly trusts Tod Clifton. With what the narrator thinks to be reasons to trust Clifton (friendship, power, similar enemies) the narrator puts his full trust into him. But as the story continues, the narrator discovers Clifton to be missing during a long period of time, only to find that Clifton is selling dancing Sambo dolls on the street. This act of betrayal to the African American community should be reason enough to no longer trust Clifton and realize how easily it can be for people to betray what little trust you thought you could have in them. But when Clifton is shot, all that would-be-hatred and lesson-learning disappears into guilt and passion toward a new cause.
The narrator sees his trusting ability as a positive personality trait. However he never truly sees its true quality of being a tragic flaw, due to various circumstantial reasons. But the biggest reason; he doesn't want to see himself with a tragic flaw. He sees himself in a negative light far too often for him to be willing to add another negative personality trait on top of that. So the narrator continues to lie to himself about his positive personality trait of being so darn trustworthy.
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