Chapter 24 Summary
The following day, the narrator began acting deferentially toward the rest of the Brotherhood in an attempt to begin rendering himself invisible. The community’s initiatives continued to fail, and the narrator watched with secret glee as the group’s imminent dissolution became more and more apparent.
At a celebration for Jack’s birthday, the narrator attempted to charm a woman named Sybil into revealing confidential information to him. She invited him to her place, but his plan went awry—they drank too much and started arguing about politics. Realizing Sybil didn’t have the information he sought, and also that she’d like him to engage in a sexual practice he found distasteful, he started drunkenly planning his exit. He drugged Sybil, and when she woke up, he lied and told her that he had already performed the requested sexual act and that she must not remember it. When he left, Sybil followed him down to the street, barely lucid, and continued to trail him until he hailed a cab. He put her in the cab and sent her back home, continuing on his own.
Catching a bus, and much drunker than he meant to be, the narrator finally returned to Harlem and realized he wasn’t sure what he was doing there. Hearing a muddled commotion in the distance and without any particular goal, he began to run.
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