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Invisible Man Author: Ralph Waldo Ellison
Published: 1947 Country of the author: United State of America as an African American Identification of character: invisible man
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-invisible man: The narrator is a southern young man when the story begins. The prologue’s striking prose is the result of a jaded man, who has apparently gone through his tale. The story is tinged with his cynicism and self-reproach. The popular interpretation of the narrator’s missing name is one I agree with. One of the ironies of his discoveries of being invisible is the limited freedom that accompanies invisibility. The entire book is a protest against the society and himself for imposing invisibility upon him, but the fluidity that comes with being invisible is one he takes advantage of. By remaining invisible to the readers, he freely invites them into the intimate and embarrassing workings of his mind. Almost, the narrator’s tale is an everyday one, a man’s search for his individuality. But Ellison compounds with a black man’s ambiguous conflicts as he walks between two grotesque worlds that both demand he play certain roles to be used as instruments to their means. He is desirous of the physical things that define a successful life, definitions which have been set by white predilections. His weakness temporarily blinds him from seeing the true state of things. As the narrator matures, his awareness of key themes evolve with each scenario he is thrust upon. Ambiguous conflicts mentioned become more clear to him as he sheds his blindness. Unwittingly however, he is in search of something beyond the scope of conventional success. He wants to unearth his unique humanity buried underneath the heaps of roles he has assumed as a way of survival and ambition. -Trueblood: A truly appalling character
despite his brief involvement in the story, he is the first black person
readers are introduced to. Trueblood represents the chaos that comes with
relinquishing the narrator’s desires. Trueblood has impregnated his
daughter and is a fascinating outcast of the town. Ellison here incites
much perverseness: incestuous urges in all fathers, the ax-swinging
mother, sexual fascination between white and black people. In a strange
way, Trueblood is not given the status of degraded character. He might
even be called a hero for surviving chaos. -Rinehart: He does not make an
appearance in the novel, but his significance is great. Rinehart is the
narrator’s experimentation with freedom of identity. When the narrator
feels physically threatened, he assumes a disguise with a pair of
sunglasses and a hat. The street is packed with people recognizing him,
some as a pimp, some a preacher, some a gambler. As the narrator steps
completely into Rinehart’s skin, he grabs the power that is given to him
through his anonymity. But he also realizes the limitation of that freedom
found in tucking away the self. “Keep the nigger running.” The white
system is designed to keep the hamster running in his wheel as long as
profit is there. He realizes the men claiming to help him have only taken
from him, asked him to play someone else to suit their purposes. Rinehart
broke that. 5. Setting: with sensory descriptions
of each and its effect on the reader:
The story is one that moves through an extended period, so the
setting constantly changes. Accompanying this change, however, is the
author’s emotional and psychological self. The time setting can be
anywhere from 1960’s to 1970’s. White people seem to be fascinated by
blacks, and vice versa. It is also at a time when both knew virtually
nothing of each other. The primary setting is New York. Having grown up in
the south, with pork chops and grit, the invisible man is dazed by the
sharpness of America’s greatest city. His blind belief in the rewards of
humility is reinforced by the need to maintain a tighter grip on himself
to survive in the city, and his fear of chaos does not recede. The
prologue and the epilogue is a ‘hole’ in the ground. He has lined his
walls with light bulbs, and calls his home the brightest spot in New York
City. The hole correlates to his claim that he is in hibernation. All the
while, the reader senses that the themes of the book have not been
resolved by the narrator, and that it is an ongoing battle. 6. Plot outline, brief: (must read like
a paragraph when completed) -Exposition: From childhood, the
narrator lived between two worlds with ambiguous conflicts. His method of
survival had been to show humility and to truly believe in its merits.
However, even as he followed the doctrine, he is expelled from college and
banished to the north, convinced he will work his way back to his college.
The baffled blindness of the narrator is shattered repeatedly throughout
the novel, and in the process, the invisible man becomes more visible to
himself. He joins a political organization as a key black orator at
Harlem. He eventually finds that organization had regarded Harlem itself
as a big instrument to their political means, as they had used him,
discarding his humanity as if it was the most right thing to sacrifice for
the ‘common purpose’. -major conflict: An individual’s
search for his identity conflicts with the very beliefs society teaches.
Hampered by race and personal ambition, the search is all the more
difficult. -Climax: The narrator faces Ras the
Destroyer in a burning Harlem. Lynched mannequins hang from the ceiling
and the Destroyer has amassed a mob behind him. Dressed in a costume, Ras
the Destroyer remains blind to the fact that he is merely an instrument to
the Brotherhood to finish off the narrator. -Denouement: The narrator burns all the
remains of society’s hold on him. The demands he’d followed, the roles
he’d played for it, his blind allegiance incinerated to provide him
light. Now hidden from the city’s darkness in hibernation, the invisible
man finally decides it is time to wake up. 7. Major theme:
Grandfather confesses to the narrator before death. He has been a
traitor all his life. He has been the meek slave on the outside but
inside, he had been teeming with anger and bitterness. Such duplicity was
the way of survival for slaves and subsequent generations. But the
narrator believes in the duplicity, and practices it with hopes of
penetrating the white circle and attaining what power can seeps from it.
But as he finds out, duplicity is not enough. He must play many other
roles to satisfy the white and black fantasy of how things should be. The
role-playing buries and perhaps erodes his real self, and the more
strives, the more invisible he becomes to himself. 8. Symbols
The piece of paper with the narrator’s alias written on it is one
of many motifs. When the invisible man decides to join the Brotherhood, he
is given another name by the organization to sever all connection to the
past and be reborn. However, severance pushes away his heritage and
individuality, and he must become the man they want him to be, they way
they want him to speak, to act. His way of embracing his role is a
betrayal to himself, as the acceptance of a new identity symbolizes. In
the end however, one of the things he burns is that piece of paper,
shedding the unnecessary role. 9. Imagery
The two introductions of the white world and the black are bizarre.
One is an orgy and the other is in an incestuous setting. Not only does
Ellison apply masterful imagery in both instances, but he inputs sensorial
analysis that really assail the reader’s senses on all fronts. The
atmosphere becomes thick with perverse fascination even as the urge to
vomit rises. The author’s portrayal of these worlds paint the picture of
our solitary narrator, caught between two worlds to please. 10. Significance of title:
The title is without the article ‘the’. It is given as the name
of the narrator. He is invisible to the readers. As explained earlier,
this gives him the freedom to influence the readers without restrictions
or obligations. 11. Literary techniques: -motifs: Ellison is a genius at this.
Several complex motifs are used throughout the novel. Keep the nigger
running, the badges of his identity, certificates, Grandfather’s
betrayal. Their uniqueness is that their meaning evolves with the
narrator’s own evolution. -symbolism: It is a strong part of the
novel. Almost every character the narrator encounters becomes symbols in
his nightmares. Blindness, light, darkness, etc. -allusion: Homer’s blindness is
alluded to several times as the pandemic of his race. At one point, a
prestigious speaker at the narrator’s college is given the name of Homer
and is blind. 12. Structural technique: Bildungsroman: It was the popular form
of novels in the eighteenth and the nineteenth century. Authors traced the
evolution of a character from childhood to adulthood. It is carried out in
the first person. Our invisible man is laid out in similar fashion, and as
for his evolution, there is a striking change of attitude. But there is a
difference in our narrator from Pip or Jane Eyre. His conflict has not
been resolved. He is still struggling and thus, his narrative takes on a
more introspective attitude. The tone itself changes with the change in
age, but the attitude remains cynical and self-caustic. 13. Two quotes: -“When they approach me they see only
my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination. Indeed,
everything and anything except me.” It is the root of the matter. The real
person does not exist. What the world chooses to see is for its own
interests, and it becomes dangerous for the victim when he, too, comes to
believe in the blindness. -“Live with your head in the lion’s
mouth. I want you to overcome ‘em with yeses, undermine ‘em with
grins, agree ‘em to death and destruction, let ‘em swoller you till
they vomit or bust wide open.” A slave’s method of survival, the
narrator’s fault is in genuinely believing in humility. But towards the
end, he awakens because to the world he is invisible. He influences those
around with yeses and grins and agreements. 14. Discuss your feelings for the book:
This was a difficult book to read. There was so much in it to find
that when I read a chapter twice, I found different aspects the second
time. I feel as if I have insulted Ellison somehow, by daring to read his
work without the ability to fully comprehend what the heck he was talking
about. If verbal comprehension did not come, at least I understood the
part about search for identity. This conflict is an everyday person’s
ambiguity. Life is a constant compromise between the worlds, and to
prevent compromise of individuality, I have to be free of all worldly
obligations. I do not wish to be beholden to anyone or anything. I think
that it a way the narrator was searching for that, too. He was embarking
on his own odyssey to find the stuff he’s made of, and form his own
destiny, tired of believing in occasional treats from our own apartheid
system. |
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