Ralph Ellison (1914- 1994) is best known for his novel “Invisible Man” (1952).
His collection of essays “Going to the Territory” (1986) is famous and narrates his experiences during his perusal of study of music at the Tuskegee Institute of Alabama.“The Little Man at the Chehaw Station” is the first essay in the above collection and speaks of the essence of American culture and society. Richard Rodrigues has written many essays and a trilogy of autobiography and he makes a study of the American attitude towards race and class and ethnicity.“Blaxicans and other Reinvented Americans” is an essay that is a must read for its take on what it actually takes to shape an essentially American attitude and outlook.
Ralph Ellison begins his landmark essay “The Little man at the Chehaw Station” by taking us back to that evening in Tuskegee when he was made aware of the ‘the little man behind the stove’. The writer was told by a much respected pianist that America is a country where people engaged in performing arts particularly music must be at their best anywhere and everywhere.Even when one is trying to while away time at the derelict and unfrequented Chehaw Station, by playing some notes, one must not drop guard and make mistakes. It is very likely that there may be a little man in the vicinity waiting for any mistake and ready to point out blatantly should any error be made in the performance.To save oneself from such unexpected criticism, a musician must guard against complacency.
This is the amazing nature of America and its audience. The little man had become fixated in the writer’s memory after that and through life and experience, ‘the little man’ became a metaphor for many things and came to symbolize many issues of importance for a musician as well as any American in general.The writer specifically associates the little man with the American audience and their tastes which are new everyday but do contain a semblance of the past.The audience may be mastered and wooed by a clever juxtaposition of old and new, of innovative and tested. The audiences’ vision needs to be reshaped for it to like something new, but it has to be very subtly and with a thorough knowledge of its sense of experience and form.
This is precisely why perusal of performing arts in America is a challenging and alluring task. To cater to an audience which is so alive, so vivid and so rich in taste, is an exhilarating task in itself.The man at the Chehaw station also stands as a representative of people whose penchant and skill for refined arts is belied by their family background and upbringing. It is only because of the American education system (which incorporates an essential freedom of expression) that such people abound in the society and are allowed to flourish and go on.
