All 16 Uses of

affirm

in

Invisible Man by Ellison

It was my affirmation of life and they couldn't send me away for something I didn't do.†
Chpt 4

…with the young around you, your eyes closed, face ecstatic, as I toss the word sounds in my breath, my bellows, my fountain, like bright-colored balls in a water spout-hear me, old matron, justify now this sound with your dear old nod of affirmation, your closed-eye smile and bow of recognition, who'll never be fooled with the mere content of words, not my words, not these pinfeathered flighters that stroke your lids till they flutter with ecstasy with but the mere echoed noise of…†
Chpt 5

Even when the shirt-sleeved crowd cried out in angry affirmation of some remark of the speaker, they paid no attention.†
Chpt 7

This I had believed with all my being, but now, though still inwardly affirming that belief, I felt a blighting hurt which prevented me from trying further to defend myself.†
Chpt 18

They had to investigate the charges against me, but the assignment was their unsentimental affirmation that their belief in me was unbroken.†
Chpt 18

Because we gave them the opportunity to express their feelings, to affirm themselves.†
Chpt 22

All they wanted of me was one belch of affirmation and I'd bellow it out loud.†
Chpt 23

I've never been more loved and appreciated than when I tried to "justify" and affirm someone's mistaken beliefs;
Chpt Epil. *

affirm = demonstrate support or the truth of something

So I became ill of affirmation, of saying "yes" against the nay-saying of my stomach-not to mention my brain.†
Chpt Epil.

Could he have meant-hell, he must have meant the principle, that we were to affirm the principle on which the country was built and not the men, or at least not the men who did the violence.†
Chpt Epil.

Did he mean to affirm the principle, which they themselves had dreamed into being out of the chaos and darkness of the feudal past, and which they had violated and compromised to the point of absurdity even in their own corrupt minds?†
Chpt Epil.

Was it that we of all, we, most of all, had to affirm the principle, the plan in whose name we had been brutalized and sacrificed-not because we would always be weak nor because we were afraid or opportunistic, but because we were older than they, in the sense of what it took to live in the world with others and because they had exhausted in us, some-not much, but some-of the human greed and smallness, yes, and the fear and superstition that had kept them running.†
Chpt Epil.

Or was it, did he mean that we should affirm the principle because we, through no fault of our own, were linked to all the others in the loud, clamoring semi-visible world, that world seen only as a fertile field for exploitation by Jack and his kind, and with condescension by Norton and his, who were tired of being the mere pawns in the futile game of "making history"?†
Chpt Epil.

Sometimes I feel the need to reaffirm all of it, the whole unhappy territory and all the things loved and unlovable in it, for all of it is part of me.†
Chpt Epil.

I condemn and affirm, say no and say yes, say yes and say no. I denounce because though implicated and partially responsible, I have been hurt to the point of abysmal pain, hurt to the point of invisibility.†
Chpt Epil.

Definitions:

(affirm as in: her actions affirm my concerns)
to demonstrate support or demonstrate the truth of something