Observation

This question requires candidates to bring out the irony of Dr. Bledsoe’s letter of recommendation to the Narrator. Most candidates merely narrated the events leading to the issuance of the letter.

Candidates were expected to discuss:

• The themes of racial discrimination, invisibility, identity crisis and philanthropic pretences
• The character identification of Dr. Bledsoe and the narrator.

• The visit of Mr Norton to the college:  the Narrator, having distinguished himself academically, earns Dr. Bledsoe’s trust to drive Mr. Norton about; the Narrator gets into trouble for granting Mr. Norton’s request to be driven to ‘the Quarters’ and their ending up ‘at the sinkhole, that Golden Day’; the narrator is sent out of the school but given letters to take to the college’s trustee to assist him in getting a job.
• The irony: the ‘letters of recommendation’, for which the Narrator expresses profound appreciation to Dr. Bledsoe, actually condemn and denigrate the Narrator; it takes Young Emerson to unveil the damaging content of Dr. Bledsoe’s letters; despite Dr. Bledsoe, the Narrator does get a job; it takes the intervention of a white man for the narrator to secure a job at Liberty Paints Company.
• The significance of the irony: it advances the plot of the novel; it exposes the hypocritical intentions of blacks towards fellow blacks; Mr. Norton’s fake inability to speak for the Narrator shows his pretensions to philanthropy; it highlights the Narrator’s invisibility.

Most candidates gave shallow answers.