Invisible Man
Encyclopedia
Invisible Man is a novel written by Ralph Ellison
, and the only one that he published during his lifetime (his other novels were published posthumously). It won him the National Book Award
in 1953. The novel addresses many of the social and intellectual issues facing African-Americans in the early twentieth century, including black nationalism
, the relationship between black identity and Marxism
, and the reformist racial policies of Booker T. Washington
, as well as issues of individuality and personal identity.
In 1998, the Modern Library
ranked Invisible Man nineteenth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Time
magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.
, Vermont in the summer of 1945 while on sick leave from the Merchant Marine
and that the novel continued to preoccupy him in various parts of New York City. In an interview in The Paris Review 1955, Ellison states that the book took five years to complete with one year off for what he termed an "ill-conceived short novel." Invisible Man was published as a whole in 1952; however, copyright dates show the initial publication date as 1947, 1948, indicating that Ellison had published a section of the book prior to full publication. That section was the famous "Battle Royal" scene, which had been shown to Cyril Connolly
, the editor of Horizon
magazine by Frank Taylor, one of Ellison's early supporters.
Ellison states in his National Book Award
acceptance speech that he considered the novel's chief significance to be its experimental attitude. Rejecting the idea of social protest—as Ellison would later put it—he did not want to write another protest novel, and also seeing the highly regarded styles of Naturalism
and Realism
too limiting to speak to the broader issues of race and America, Ellison created an open style, one that did not restrict his ideas to a movement but was more free-flowing in its delivery. What Ellison finally settled on was a style based heavily upon modern symbol
ism. It was the kind of symbolism that Ellison first encountered in the poem The Waste Land
, by T. S. Eliot
. Ellison had read this poem as a freshman at the Tuskegee Institute and was immediately impressed by The Waste Land' s ability to merge his two greatest passions, that of music and literature, for it was in The Waste Land that he first saw jazz
set to words. When asked later what he had learned from the poem, Ellison responded: imagery, and also improvisation—techniques he had only before seen in jazz.
Ellison always believed that he would be a musician first and a writer second, and yet even so he had acknowledged that writing provided him a "growing satisfaction." It was a "covert process," according to Ellison: "a refusal of his right hand to let his left hand know what it was doing."
The story is told from the narrator's present, looking back into his past. Thus, the narrator has hindsight in how his story is told, as he is already aware of the outcome.
In the Prologue, Ellison's narrator tells readers, "I live rent-free in a building rented strictly to whites, in a section of the basement that was shut off and forgotten during the nineteenth century." In this secret place, the narrator creates surroundings that are symbolically illuminated with 1,369 lights from the electric company Monopolated Light & Power. He says, "My hole is warm and full of light. Yes, full of light. I doubt if there is a brighter spot in all New York than this hole of mine, and I do not exclude Broadway
." The protagonist explains that light is an intellectual necessity for him since "the truth is the light and light is the truth." From this underground perspective, the narrator attempts to make sense out of his life, experiences, and position in American society.
. Having written and delivered an excellent paper about the struggles of the average black man, he gets to tell his speech to a group of white men, who force him to participate in a series of degrading events.
After finally giving his speech, he gets a scholarship to an all-black college that is clearly modeled on the Tuskegee Institute.
During his junior year at the college, the narrator takes Mr. Norton, a visiting rich white trustee, on a drive in the country. He accidentally drives to the house of Jim Trueblood, a black man living on the college's outskirts, who impregnated his own daughter. Trueblood, though disgraced by his fellow blacks, has found greater support from whites. After hearing Trueblood's story and giving Trueblood a $100 bill, Mr. Norton faints, then asks for some alcohol to help his condition, prompting the narrator to take him to a local tavern. At the Golden Day tavern, Norton passes in and out of consciousness as World War I veterans being treated at the nearby mental hospital for various mental-health issues occupy the bar and a fight breaks out among them. One of the veterans claims to be a doctor and tends to Mr. Norton. The dazed, confused Mr. Norton is not fully aware of what’s going on as the veteran doctor chastises the actions of the trustee and the young black college student. Through all the chaos, the narrator manages to get the recovered Mr. Norton back to the campus after a day of unusual events.
Upon returning to the school he is fearful of college president Dr. Bledsoe's reaction to the day's incidents. Insight into Bledsoe's knowledge of the events and the narrator's future at the campus is somewhat prolonged as an important visitor arrives. The narrator views a sermon by the highly respected Reverend Homer A. Barbee. Barbee, who is blind, delivers a speech about the legacy of the college's founder with such passion and resonance that he comes vividly alive to the narrator; his voice makes up for his blindness. The narrator is so inspired by the speech that he feels impassioned like never before to contribute to the college's legacy. However, all his dreams are shattered as a meeting with Bledsoe reveals his fate. Fearing that the college's funds will be jeopardized by the incidents that occurred, Bledsoe immediately expels the narrator. While the Invisible Man once aspired to be like Bledsoe, he realizes that the man has portrayed himself as a black stereotype in order to succeed in the white-dominated society. This serves as the first epiphany
among many in the narrator realizing his invisibility. This epiphany is not yet complete when Bledsoe gives him several letters of recommendation to help him get a job under the assumption that he could return upon earning enough money for the next semester.
Upon arriving in New York, the narrator distributes the letters with no success. Eventually, the son of one of "possibilities" takes pity on him and shows him an opened copy of the letter; it reveals that Bledsoe never had any intentions of letting the narrator return and sent him to New York to get rid of him. On the son's suggestion, the narrator eventually gets a job in the boiler room of a paint factory in a company renowned for its white paints. The man in charge of the boiler room, Lucius Brockway, is extremely paranoid
and thinks that the narrator has come to take his job. He is also extremely loyal to the company's owner, who once paid him a personal visit. When the narrator tells him about a union meeting he happened upon, Brockway is outraged, and attacks him. They fight, and Brockway tricks him into turning a wrong valve and causing a boiler to explode. Brockway escapes, but the narrator is hospitalized after the blast. While recovering, the narrator overhears doctors discussing him as a mental health patient. He learns through their discussion that shock treatment
has been performed on him.
After the shock treatments, the narrator attempts to return to his residence when he feels overwhelmed by a certain dizziness and faints on the streets of Harlem
. He is taken to the residence of Mary, a kind, old-fashioned, down-to-earth woman who reminds him of his relatives in the South and friends at the college. Mary somewhat serves as a mother figure for the narrator. While living there, he happens upon an eviction of an elderly black couple and makes an impassioned speech decrying the action. But when the police arrive soon after, the narrator is forced to escape over several building-tops. Upon reaching "safety," he is confronted by a man named Jack, who implores him to join a group called The Brotherhood--a thinly-veiled version of the Communist Party that clamies to be committed to social change and betterment of the conditions in Harlem. The narrator agrees.
At first, the rallies go smoothly and the narrator is happy to be "making history" in his new job and making a difference in history. Soon, however, he encounters trouble from Ras the Exhorter, a fanatical black nationalist in the vein of Marcus Garvey
who believes that the Brotherhood is controlled by whites. Ras tells this to the narrator and Tod Clifton, a youth leader of the Brotherhood, neither of whom seem to be swayed by his words.
The narrator continues his work in Harlem until he is called into a meeting of The Brotherhood. They believe he has become too powerful and reassign him to another part of the city to address the "women question." After the narrator gives his first lecture on women's rights, he is approached by the wife of another member of The Brotherhood. She invites him to her apartment where she seduces him. The narrator is soon called to return to Harlem to repair its falling membership in the black community.
When he returns to Harlem
, Tod Clifton has disappeared. When the narrator finds him, he realizes that Clifton has become disillusioned with the Brotherhood and quit. Clifton is selling dancing Sambo
dolls on the street, mocking the organization he once believed in. Soon after, Tod is shot by a police officer and dies. At his funeral, the narrator delivers a rousing speech, rallying crowds to reclaim his former widespread Harlem support. He's criticized in a clandestine meeting with Brother Jack and other members for not being scientific in his arguments at the funeral; he angrily retaliates and Jack loses his temper to the extent that a glass eye flies out of its socket. The narrator realizes that the half-blind Jack has never really seen him either, and that The Brotherhood has no real interest in the black community's problems.
He is trailed by Ras the Exhorter's men as he returns to Harlem; buying sunglasses and a hat, he's mistaken for a man called Rinehart in several scenarios: a lover; a hipster; a gambler; a briber; and finally, a reverend. He sees that Rinehart has adapted to white society at the cost of his own identity. He decides to take his grandfather's dying advice to "overcome'em with yeses, undermine'em with grins, agree'em to death and destruction...." and "yes" the Brotherhood to death by making it look like the Harlem membership is thriving when it's actually crumbling. He seduces Sybil, the wife of another member, to learn of the Brotherhood's new activities. He soon realizes the cost of this action: Ras becomes a powerful demagogue.
Riots break out in Harlem and the narrator gets mixed up with a gang of looters. Wandering through a ravaged Harlem, he encounters Ras, who now calls himself Ras the Destroyer. After escaping Ras's attempt to have him lynched (by throwing a spear Ras had acquired through the leader's jaw, permanently sealing it), the narrator is attacked by a couple of white boys who trap him inside a coal-filled manhole/basement, sealing him off for the night and leaving him alone to finally confront the demons of his mind: Bledsoe, Norton, and Jack.
At the end of the novel, the narrator is ready to resurface because "overt action" has already taken place. This could be that, in telling us the story, the narrator has already made a political statement where change could occur. Therefore, it is storytelling and the preservation of the history of these invisible individuals that causes political change.
Both the main characters in Ellison's Invisible Man and in H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man
are similar in dress. Both Wells' and Ellison's protagonists wear hats and glasses as disguises. Invisible Man has also drawn comparison to Fyodor Dostoyevsky's 1864 novel Notes from Underground
.
Ellison also uses the language of music throughout the novel to characterize the deeper meaning of a scene. Armstrong's jazz
, the street blues
of Peter Wheatstraw (Peetie or Pete Wheatstraw was the stage name of blues
singer William Bunch
), and a heartfelt solo by a gospel
singer all become central metaphors for interpreting the message behind Ellison's meandering and sometimes surreal
plot.
Another allusion used by Ellison occurs after the main character discovers he has been deceived by the school master, which subsequently leads him to acquire an interim occupation at Liberty Paints. At his new job, the character is instructed to add ten drops of a black liquid to a can full of discolored paint. After the paint is shaken, the main character peers into the can and beholds a "pure white" paint. This could illustrate that what is considered "pure white" isn't exclusively white. This is also a vague reference to Jim Crow-era laws that were based on the percentage of "black blood" one had in order for such to apply.
Motifs of blindness and darkness also run through the novel, often alongside the metaphors of light and sight as truth and knowledge. For example, the Reverend Homer A. Barbee, a speaker who comes to the Narrator's school, and whose story glorifies Dr. Bledsoe and the purpose to the school (a purpose the Narrator finds to be false and subservient to the white benefactors), is blind. Perhaps his blindness can be seen as an indicator of the school's blindness, or even the blindness of the Narrator before he learned to despise the school. Later in the novel, the Narrator discovers that Brother Jack, whom he had revered and respected as a true visionary, is blind in one eye, thereby losing philosophical respect for the brother who, he comes to learn, used him as a poster-boy to earn the support of Harlem.
Invisible Man contains numerous references to Homer
's books. The Odyssey. Homer Barbee's blindness mirrors that of Homer of Khios, the legendary poet. During the "Battle Royal" scene, when the Narrator faces the dancing white woman, she is described as "a fair bird-girl girdled in veils calling to me from the angry surface of some gray and threatening sea," a reference to a Greek siren
, beautiful women (usually portrayed with scaled feet or with a fish tail for their lower extremities) who sing from a rock at sea in order to lure sailors to their deaths.
Ralph Ellison
Ralph Waldo Ellison was an American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer. He was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Ellison is best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953...
, and the only one that he published during his lifetime (his other novels were published posthumously). It won him the National Book Award
National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
in 1953. The novel addresses many of the social and intellectual issues facing African-Americans in the early twentieth century, including black nationalism
Black nationalism
Black nationalism advocates a racial definition of indigenous national identity, as opposed to multiculturalism. There are different indigenous nationalist philosophies but the principles of all African nationalist ideologies are unity, and self-determination or independence from European society...
, the relationship between black identity and Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
, and the reformist racial policies of Booker T. Washington
Booker T. Washington
Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, orator, and political leader. He was the dominant figure in the African-American community in the United States from 1890 to 1915...
, as well as issues of individuality and personal identity.
In 1998, the Modern Library
Modern Library
The Modern Library is a publishing company. Founded in 1917 by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright as an imprint of their publishing company Boni & Liveright, it was purchased in 1925 by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer...
ranked Invisible Man nineteenth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.
Historical background
In his introduction to the 30th Anniversary Edition of Invisible Man, Ellison says that he started writing the book in a barn in WaitsfieldWaitsfield, Vermont
Waitsfield is a town in Washington County, Vermont, United States. The population was 1,659 at the 2000 census. It was created by Vermont charter on February 25, 1782...
, Vermont in the summer of 1945 while on sick leave from the Merchant Marine
United States Merchant Marine
The United States Merchant Marine refers to the fleet of U.S. civilian-owned merchant vessels, operated by either the government or the private sector, that engage in commerce or transportation of goods and services in and out of the navigable waters of the United States. The Merchant Marine is...
and that the novel continued to preoccupy him in various parts of New York City. In an interview in The Paris Review 1955, Ellison states that the book took five years to complete with one year off for what he termed an "ill-conceived short novel." Invisible Man was published as a whole in 1952; however, copyright dates show the initial publication date as 1947, 1948, indicating that Ellison had published a section of the book prior to full publication. That section was the famous "Battle Royal" scene, which had been shown to Cyril Connolly
Cyril Connolly
Cyril Vernon Connolly was an English intellectual, literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine Horizon and wrote Enemies of Promise , which combined literary criticism with an autobiographical exploration of why he failed to become the successful author of...
, the editor of Horizon
Horizon (magazine)
Horizon: A Review of Literature and Art was an influential literary magazine published in London, between 1940 and 1949. It was edited by Cyril Connolly who gave a platform to a wide range of distinguished and emerging writers....
magazine by Frank Taylor, one of Ellison's early supporters.
Ellison states in his National Book Award
National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
acceptance speech that he considered the novel's chief significance to be its experimental attitude. Rejecting the idea of social protest—as Ellison would later put it—he did not want to write another protest novel, and also seeing the highly regarded styles of Naturalism
Naturalism (literature)
Naturalism was a literary movement taking place from the 1880s to 1940s that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character...
and Realism
Realism (arts)
Realism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...
too limiting to speak to the broader issues of race and America, Ellison created an open style, one that did not restrict his ideas to a movement but was more free-flowing in its delivery. What Ellison finally settled on was a style based heavily upon modern symbol
Symbol
A symbol is something which represents an idea, a physical entity or a process but is distinct from it. The purpose of a symbol is to communicate meaning. For example, a red octagon may be a symbol for "STOP". On a map, a picture of a tent might represent a campsite. Numerals are symbols for...
ism. It was the kind of symbolism that Ellison first encountered in the poem The Waste Land
The Waste Land
The Waste Land[A] is a 434-line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922. It has been called "one of the most important poems of the 20th century." Despite the poem's obscurity—its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location and time, its...
, by T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
. Ellison had read this poem as a freshman at the Tuskegee Institute and was immediately impressed by The Waste Land
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
set to words. When asked later what he had learned from the poem, Ellison responded: imagery, and also improvisation—techniques he had only before seen in jazz.
Ellison always believed that he would be a musician first and a writer second, and yet even so he had acknowledged that writing provided him a "growing satisfaction." It was a "covert process," according to Ellison: "a refusal of his right hand to let his left hand know what it was doing."
Plot introduction
Invisible Man is narrated in the first person by the protagonist, an unnamed African American man who considers himself socially invisible. His character may have been inspired by Ellison's own life. The narrator may be conscious of his audience, writing as a way to make himself visible to mainstream culture; the book is structured as if it were the narrator's autobiography although it begins in the middle of his life.The story is told from the narrator's present, looking back into his past. Thus, the narrator has hindsight in how his story is told, as he is already aware of the outcome.
In the Prologue, Ellison's narrator tells readers, "I live rent-free in a building rented strictly to whites, in a section of the basement that was shut off and forgotten during the nineteenth century." In this secret place, the narrator creates surroundings that are symbolically illuminated with 1,369 lights from the electric company Monopolated Light & Power. He says, "My hole is warm and full of light. Yes, full of light. I doubt if there is a brighter spot in all New York than this hole of mine, and I do not exclude Broadway
Broadway (New York City)
Broadway is a prominent avenue in New York City, United States, which runs through the full length of the borough of Manhattan and continues northward through the Bronx borough before terminating in Westchester County, New York. It is the oldest north–south main thoroughfare in the city, dating to...
." The protagonist explains that light is an intellectual necessity for him since "the truth is the light and light is the truth." From this underground perspective, the narrator attempts to make sense out of his life, experiences, and position in American society.
Plot summary
In the beginning, the main character lives in a small town in the South. He is a model student, even being named his high school's valedictorianValedictorian
Valedictorian is an academic title conferred upon the student who delivers the closing or farewell statement at a graduation ceremony. Usually, the valedictorian is the highest ranked student among those graduating from an educational institution...
. Having written and delivered an excellent paper about the struggles of the average black man, he gets to tell his speech to a group of white men, who force him to participate in a series of degrading events.
After finally giving his speech, he gets a scholarship to an all-black college that is clearly modeled on the Tuskegee Institute.
During his junior year at the college, the narrator takes Mr. Norton, a visiting rich white trustee, on a drive in the country. He accidentally drives to the house of Jim Trueblood, a black man living on the college's outskirts, who impregnated his own daughter. Trueblood, though disgraced by his fellow blacks, has found greater support from whites. After hearing Trueblood's story and giving Trueblood a $100 bill, Mr. Norton faints, then asks for some alcohol to help his condition, prompting the narrator to take him to a local tavern. At the Golden Day tavern, Norton passes in and out of consciousness as World War I veterans being treated at the nearby mental hospital for various mental-health issues occupy the bar and a fight breaks out among them. One of the veterans claims to be a doctor and tends to Mr. Norton. The dazed, confused Mr. Norton is not fully aware of what’s going on as the veteran doctor chastises the actions of the trustee and the young black college student. Through all the chaos, the narrator manages to get the recovered Mr. Norton back to the campus after a day of unusual events.
Upon returning to the school he is fearful of college president Dr. Bledsoe's reaction to the day's incidents. Insight into Bledsoe's knowledge of the events and the narrator's future at the campus is somewhat prolonged as an important visitor arrives. The narrator views a sermon by the highly respected Reverend Homer A. Barbee. Barbee, who is blind, delivers a speech about the legacy of the college's founder with such passion and resonance that he comes vividly alive to the narrator; his voice makes up for his blindness. The narrator is so inspired by the speech that he feels impassioned like never before to contribute to the college's legacy. However, all his dreams are shattered as a meeting with Bledsoe reveals his fate. Fearing that the college's funds will be jeopardized by the incidents that occurred, Bledsoe immediately expels the narrator. While the Invisible Man once aspired to be like Bledsoe, he realizes that the man has portrayed himself as a black stereotype in order to succeed in the white-dominated society. This serves as the first epiphany
Epiphany (feeling)
An epiphany is the sudden realization or comprehension of the essence or meaning of something...
among many in the narrator realizing his invisibility. This epiphany is not yet complete when Bledsoe gives him several letters of recommendation to help him get a job under the assumption that he could return upon earning enough money for the next semester.
Upon arriving in New York, the narrator distributes the letters with no success. Eventually, the son of one of "possibilities" takes pity on him and shows him an opened copy of the letter; it reveals that Bledsoe never had any intentions of letting the narrator return and sent him to New York to get rid of him. On the son's suggestion, the narrator eventually gets a job in the boiler room of a paint factory in a company renowned for its white paints. The man in charge of the boiler room, Lucius Brockway, is extremely paranoid
Paranoia
Paranoia [] is a thought process believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning a perceived threat towards oneself...
and thinks that the narrator has come to take his job. He is also extremely loyal to the company's owner, who once paid him a personal visit. When the narrator tells him about a union meeting he happened upon, Brockway is outraged, and attacks him. They fight, and Brockway tricks him into turning a wrong valve and causing a boiler to explode. Brockway escapes, but the narrator is hospitalized after the blast. While recovering, the narrator overhears doctors discussing him as a mental health patient. He learns through their discussion that shock treatment
Electroconvulsive therapy
Electroconvulsive therapy , formerly known as electroshock, is a psychiatric treatment in which seizures are electrically induced in anesthetized patients for therapeutic effect. Its mode of action is unknown...
has been performed on him.
After the shock treatments, the narrator attempts to return to his residence when he feels overwhelmed by a certain dizziness and faints on the streets of Harlem
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
. He is taken to the residence of Mary, a kind, old-fashioned, down-to-earth woman who reminds him of his relatives in the South and friends at the college. Mary somewhat serves as a mother figure for the narrator. While living there, he happens upon an eviction of an elderly black couple and makes an impassioned speech decrying the action. But when the police arrive soon after, the narrator is forced to escape over several building-tops. Upon reaching "safety," he is confronted by a man named Jack, who implores him to join a group called The Brotherhood--a thinly-veiled version of the Communist Party that clamies to be committed to social change and betterment of the conditions in Harlem. The narrator agrees.
At first, the rallies go smoothly and the narrator is happy to be "making history" in his new job and making a difference in history. Soon, however, he encounters trouble from Ras the Exhorter, a fanatical black nationalist in the vein of Marcus Garvey
Marcus Garvey
Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr., ONH was a Jamaican publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator who was a staunch proponent of the Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements, to which end he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League...
who believes that the Brotherhood is controlled by whites. Ras tells this to the narrator and Tod Clifton, a youth leader of the Brotherhood, neither of whom seem to be swayed by his words.
The narrator continues his work in Harlem until he is called into a meeting of The Brotherhood. They believe he has become too powerful and reassign him to another part of the city to address the "women question." After the narrator gives his first lecture on women's rights, he is approached by the wife of another member of The Brotherhood. She invites him to her apartment where she seduces him. The narrator is soon called to return to Harlem to repair its falling membership in the black community.
When he returns to Harlem
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
, Tod Clifton has disappeared. When the narrator finds him, he realizes that Clifton has become disillusioned with the Brotherhood and quit. Clifton is selling dancing Sambo
Sambo (ethnic slur)
Sambo is a racial term for a person with African heritage and, in some countries, also mixed with Native American heritage .-History:...
dolls on the street, mocking the organization he once believed in. Soon after, Tod is shot by a police officer and dies. At his funeral, the narrator delivers a rousing speech, rallying crowds to reclaim his former widespread Harlem support. He's criticized in a clandestine meeting with Brother Jack and other members for not being scientific in his arguments at the funeral; he angrily retaliates and Jack loses his temper to the extent that a glass eye flies out of its socket. The narrator realizes that the half-blind Jack has never really seen him either, and that The Brotherhood has no real interest in the black community's problems.
He is trailed by Ras the Exhorter's men as he returns to Harlem; buying sunglasses and a hat, he's mistaken for a man called Rinehart in several scenarios: a lover; a hipster; a gambler; a briber; and finally, a reverend. He sees that Rinehart has adapted to white society at the cost of his own identity. He decides to take his grandfather's dying advice to "overcome'em with yeses, undermine'em with grins, agree'em to death and destruction...." and "yes" the Brotherhood to death by making it look like the Harlem membership is thriving when it's actually crumbling. He seduces Sybil, the wife of another member, to learn of the Brotherhood's new activities. He soon realizes the cost of this action: Ras becomes a powerful demagogue.
Riots break out in Harlem and the narrator gets mixed up with a gang of looters. Wandering through a ravaged Harlem, he encounters Ras, who now calls himself Ras the Destroyer. After escaping Ras's attempt to have him lynched (by throwing a spear Ras had acquired through the leader's jaw, permanently sealing it), the narrator is attacked by a couple of white boys who trap him inside a coal-filled manhole/basement, sealing him off for the night and leaving him alone to finally confront the demons of his mind: Bledsoe, Norton, and Jack.
At the end of the novel, the narrator is ready to resurface because "overt action" has already taken place. This could be that, in telling us the story, the narrator has already made a political statement where change could occur. Therefore, it is storytelling and the preservation of the history of these invisible individuals that causes political change.
Major themes
The book's main theme is to never doubt the invisible. As the title suggests, the main character is invisible. While the narrator often bemoans his state of invisibility, he comes to embrace it in the end. Even when he is given a pseudonym for his work in the Brotherhood, he does not reveal his identity to the reader.Both the main characters in Ellison's Invisible Man and in H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man
The Invisible Man
The Invisible Man is a science fiction novella by H.G. Wells published in 1897. Wells' novel was originally serialised in Pearson's Weekly in 1897, and published as a novel the same year...
are similar in dress. Both Wells' and Ellison's protagonists wear hats and glasses as disguises. Invisible Man has also drawn comparison to Fyodor Dostoyevsky's 1864 novel Notes from Underground
Notes from Underground
Notes from Underground is an 1864 short novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Notes is considered by many to be the first existentialist novel...
.
Ellison also uses the language of music throughout the novel to characterize the deeper meaning of a scene. Armstrong's jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, the street blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
of Peter Wheatstraw (Peetie or Pete Wheatstraw was the stage name of blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
singer William Bunch
Peetie Wheatstraw
Peetie Wheatstraw was the name adopted by the singer William Bunch, an influential figure among 1930s blues singers...
), and a heartfelt solo by a gospel
Gospel
A gospel is an account, often written, that describes the life of Jesus of Nazareth. In a more general sense the term "gospel" may refer to the good news message of the New Testament. It is primarily used in reference to the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John...
singer all become central metaphors for interpreting the message behind Ellison's meandering and sometimes surreal
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
plot.
Another allusion used by Ellison occurs after the main character discovers he has been deceived by the school master, which subsequently leads him to acquire an interim occupation at Liberty Paints. At his new job, the character is instructed to add ten drops of a black liquid to a can full of discolored paint. After the paint is shaken, the main character peers into the can and beholds a "pure white" paint. This could illustrate that what is considered "pure white" isn't exclusively white. This is also a vague reference to Jim Crow-era laws that were based on the percentage of "black blood" one had in order for such to apply.
Motifs of blindness and darkness also run through the novel, often alongside the metaphors of light and sight as truth and knowledge. For example, the Reverend Homer A. Barbee, a speaker who comes to the Narrator's school, and whose story glorifies Dr. Bledsoe and the purpose to the school (a purpose the Narrator finds to be false and subservient to the white benefactors), is blind. Perhaps his blindness can be seen as an indicator of the school's blindness, or even the blindness of the Narrator before he learned to despise the school. Later in the novel, the Narrator discovers that Brother Jack, whom he had revered and respected as a true visionary, is blind in one eye, thereby losing philosophical respect for the brother who, he comes to learn, used him as a poster-boy to earn the support of Harlem.
Invisible Man contains numerous references to Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
's books. The Odyssey. Homer Barbee's blindness mirrors that of Homer of Khios, the legendary poet. During the "Battle Royal" scene, when the Narrator faces the dancing white woman, she is described as "a fair bird-girl girdled in veils calling to me from the angry surface of some gray and threatening sea," a reference to a Greek siren
Siren
In Greek mythology, the Sirens were three dangerous mermaid like creatures, portrayed as seductresses who lured nearby sailors with their enchanting music and voices to shipwreck on the rocky coast of their island. Roman poets placed them on an island called Sirenum scopuli...
, beautiful women (usually portrayed with scaled feet or with a fish tail for their lower extremities) who sing from a rock at sea in order to lure sailors to their deaths.
Awards
- 1953 - National Book AwardNational Book AwardThe National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
- 1992 - Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Special Achievement Award
See also
- African American literatureAfrican American literatureAfrican-American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by writers of African descent. The genre traces its origins to the works of such late 18th century writers as Phillis Wheatley and Olaudah Equiano, reaching early high points with slave narratives and the Harlem...
- Black ExistentialismBlack existentialismBlack existentialism or Africana critical theory is a school of thought that "critiques domination and affirms the empowerment of Black people in the world". Although it shares a word with existentialism and that philosophy's concerns with existence and meaning in life, it "is predicated on the...
- Juneteenth (novel)Juneteenth (novel)Juneteenth is the title of African American writer Ralph Ellison's second novel , published posthumously as a 368-page condensation of over 2000 pages written by him over a period of forty years. It was originally written without any real organization, and Ellison's longtime friend, biographer and...
- Three Days Before the ShootingThree Days Before the ShootingThree Days Before the Shooting... is the title of the edited manuscript of Ralph Ellison's never-finished second novel. It was co-edited by John F. Callahan, the executor of Ellison's literary estate, and Adam Bradley, a professor of English at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The book was...
External links
- Ralph Ellison, 1914–1994: His Book 'Invisible Man' Won Awards and Is Still Discussed Today (VOA Special English)
- Full text of The Paris Review
's 1955 interview Mr. Ellison http://www.theparisreview.org/media/5053_ELLISON4.pdf - New York Times article on the 30th Anniversary of the novel's publication—includes an interview with the author http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/06/20/specials/ellison-vivid.html
- Teacher's Guide at Random House
- Invisible Man study guide, themes, quotes, character analyses, teaching resources