Invisible Man

Ralph Ellison, one of the most famous black writers of the twentieth century, was virtually unknown as a writer when, in 1952, his novel Invisible Man won the National Book Award and made him an instant celebrity. Ellison later discovered that his father, who had died when he was three years old, had often told people he was raising his boy to be a poet.

Ellison was born on March 1, 1914, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, a relatively progressive town during the 1920s in which black and white people mingled freely. Although he spent most of his childhood poor and fatherless, Ellison grew up believing that life offered limitless possibilities; like the narrator of Invisible Man, Ellison arrived at college full of naive optimism. He spent three years at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, studying literature and pursuing his serious interest in music as a composer and trumpet player.

At first Ellison appeared headed for a career as a jazz musician, but upon moving to New York City in 1936, he was befriended by another renowned writer, Richard Wright, who became his mentor. With Wright's help Ellison began contributing pieces to Common Ground, Cross Section, Direction, New Challenge, New Masses, Negro Quarterly, Negro Story, and Tomorrow. While serving in the Merchant Marine Corps at the end of World War II, he received encouragement from a publisher to begin work on a novel. Between 1945 and 1952 he worked steadily on Invisible Man, pausing only briefly to write a novella that was never published. After achieving instant success with his first novel, Ellison has since published only one full-length book, a collection of essays, Shadow and Act (1964). Ellison has also published some short stories and selections from a novel in progress, but his reputation as a major American novelist rests entirely on one book, Invisible Man.

Although Ellison has expressed doubts about Invisible Man's enduring worth, critics have been almost unanimous in ranking it among the best post-World War II American novels. By universalizing the experience of American blacks, Ellison is often credited with having transcended more political works of social protest. The "invisibility" referred to in the title is the end result of an existential search for identity. The unnamed narrator slowly realizes that people see only what they wish to see in others and are themselves defined by concepts imposed upon them. Ellison is often quoted for having said, "I wasn't and am not primarily concerned with injustice, but with art," a statement that paradoxically implies that Invisible Man be read as a philosophical or aesthetic statement rather than a statement about racial intolerance. His position has inevitably invited attacks that he "copped out" and embraced an unjust establishment by not focusing his book strongly enough on the problems of racial injustice.

The story takes place in a small southern town, at the nearby college for blacks, and in New York City during the late 1930s. Although Ellison denies any autobiographical elements in the novel, the town and college are reminiscent of his own Tuskegee Institute. More important than the place is the time of the setting. The narrator arrives in New York during the rise of socialism, expecting to contribute to and benefit from the changing times. Instead, he is continually duped. He lives in a basement apartment illuminated by 1,369 light bulbs, which provide, symbolically, enough light to examine his identity but which physically would produce enough heat to destroy life. Through a mistake, the power company pays his electric bill. A cave dweller, invisible to the world, the narrator searches for enlightenment within a supposedly enlightened society.

Invisible Man's most important theme is the individual's quest for identity. The narrator moves from a state of ignorance to a state of enlightenment, represented by the profusion of light bulbs in his underground hiding place. He comes to see that his identity, as a black person, is wholly determined by other people's perceptions—and that, as a result, he is invisible. Whether as a student, an employee, or a political spokesman, he is an instrument of those who would see him only as a member of his race.

In the tradition of the bildungsroman, or coming-of-age novel, the narrator is an innocent who gradually comes to recognize other people's corruption, self-deception, and deviousness. At first he believes that others are genuinely interested in him; later he recognizes that they are looking through him to whatever preconception they have of his race. Ellison has noted that minorities in particular face this problem, losing individual identity through classification as members of a group. Blacks, of course, can be stereotyped simply by the color of their skin. The narrator, after struggling to make society recognize him, ultimately embraces the quality of "invisibility." His experience illustrates both the dehumanizing nature of racial prejudice and the agonizing loneliness that often triggers or accompanies the search for self-knowledge.

The nameless narrator is the most fully drawn character in Invisible Man. Since the reader experiences the entire novel from his point of view, the other characters appear, ironically, as "invisible" to him as he does to them, for he, too, is incapable of looking beyond preconceptions. Continually misinformed or-self-deceived, the narrator learns, through a series of revelations, that people are seldom what they seem.

The earlier parts of the book focus on Dr. Bledsoe, president of the college that the narrator attends. An "example to his race," Bledsoe seemingly enjoys the respect of both whites and blacks. The narrator fantasizes about ascending someday to Bledsoe's position. But Bledsoe reveals his true character when the narrator accidentally exposes Mr. Norton, a white New England benefactor, to aspects of black life that Bledsoe has spent his life concealing. Norton comically passes out when confronted with an incestuous farmer, mental patients, and prostitutes. Bledsoe is furious, for he has spent his life exploiting liberal white preconceptions about black culture in order to gain power over the very people he purports to represent.

Another fascinating character is Jack, the man who recruits the narrator into the Brotherhood, a political organization based on the Communist party. Along with the other members of the Brotherhood, Jack claims to be interested in a world of equality but is guilty of lumping all blacks into a category. His political dogma limits the scope of his vision, a fact that the narrator finally realizes in a climactic scene where Jack's glass eye pops out. Others connected with the Brotherhood are equally guilty of stereotyping. One man thinks he understands Harlem because he married a black woman, and a woman married to an important "Brother" propositions the narrator because of notions about black males' sexual potency.

The most sympathetic character is Mary Rambro, a boarding house operator. Kind, suffering, and patient, she does not press the narrator for money when he loses his job. Her extraordinary patience ultimately angers and embarrasses the narrator, who comes to consider her a stereotypical, impoverished black saint. Less sympathetic is Ras the Exhorter, a flamboyant militant who reveals the Brotherhood's deceptions but is consumed by notions of total separation from or destruction of whites.

Other characters include Lucius Brockway, the narrator's co-worker at Liberty Paints; Mr. Sparland, owner of Liberty Paints; DuPree, who decides to burn down the Harlem tenement where he lives; Trueblood, the incestuous farmer; Tod Clifton, a member of the Brotherhood who becomes disillusioned; and Brother Tarp and Brother Maceo.

As in the naturalistic novels of Emile Zola, Theodore Dreiser, and Frank Norris, characters in Invisible Man are limited by the circumstances of birth, intelligence, and social upbringing. The naturalistic tradition raises serious questions about the existence of free will in human beings. Critics have pointed out that each turn in the fate of Ellison's narrator is based not upon willed action but upon accidental occurrence. Only the narrator's acceptance of invisibility seems an act of will. Also in the tradition of naturalism is the characters' general tendency to represent types rather than unique individuals. Despite the book's fascinating array of characters, most can be generalized: Ras is a typical back-to-Africa extremist, Bledsoe an establishment black leader, and Norton a deluded philanthropist. Invisible Man operates on a near-mythic level where the interplay of symbols and meaning creates greater insight than a work of strict realism could provide.

Ellison exhibits greater flexibility than most naturalistic writers. Invisible Man is often described as surrealistic because of the otherworldliness of certain passages. As a whole, however, the novel cannot properly be labelled surreal; its distortions are not sufficiently disorienting, and Ellison strongly evokes a realistic sense of place. His vivid descriptions of Harlem and of the black college in the South capture the corresponding realities of such places. Despite Ellison's occasional forays into the more adventurous literary technique of the dream landscape, he keeps Invisible Man within the limits of naturalism.

Another literary device is Ellison's frequent use of puns, allusions, and blatant symbolism to create a sense of detachment in the reader and a strong awareness of the novelist's presence. Tod Clifton's first name, for example, means "death" in German. In light of Clifton's fate, Ellison's choice of name can be considered either a clever stroke or a contrivance. Characteristic of postmodernism, such deliberately playful, self-conscious techniques do not necessarily earn Invisible Man classification as an "experimental" novel, but they do add another level of complexity to an already complex book.

Ellison's concept of the art of writing is strongly grounded in the tradition of Western literature. Critics have identified possible influences on Ellison's work ranging from the Russian authors whom he admired to other black American authors. One obvious literary precedent is Feodor Dostoevski's Notes from the Underground, in which the narrator becomes "The Underground Man" in order to distance himself from conventional society and thereby find his true self. Similarities in theme and structure create strong parallels between Dostoevski's short novel and Ellison's longer one. Further connections have been drawn with Richard Wright's short story "The Man Who Lived Underground." The nameless narrator of Invisible Man is clearly a descendant of Franz Kafka's Joseph K. in The Trial, particularly in his complicity in his own abuse. Invisible Man also contains numerous allusions to T. S. Eliot's poem "Ash Wednesday" and drama Family Reunion.

Because of its subject matter, Ellison's novel naturally draws upon the work of many American authors—among them nineteenth-century writers such as Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson's philosophy of transcendentalism, in particular, forms a foundation for the narrator's quest for independence and his eventual acceptance of invisibility.

Ellison and Richard Wright grew to be close friends upon Ellison's arrival in New York in 1936. The older author encouraged Ellison to write, and Invisible Man bears the strong marks of Wright's influence. Other black Americans who influenced Ellison's work include James Weldon Johnson, W. E. B. Du Bois, Countee Cullen, Claude Mc-Kay, and Jean Toomer.

Of universal appeal in its reflection of the human condition, Invisible Man is deeply rooted in the social problems faced by blacks in the United States. After World War II race relations began to shift dramatically: the military was desegregated, the color barriers in sports broke down, and, in 1954, the Supreme Court made its historic ruling against racial segregation in Brown vs. Board of Education. More than thirty-five years after its publication, Invisible Man remains a timely book because of its ongoing contributions to breaking down prejudice. Subtler than most works dealing with racial oppression, the book employs symbolism and deliberate distortions to make its points, and successfully avoids being labeled a political harangue or a simple allegory. Ellison refrains from turning any of his characters into one-dimensional paradigms of good or evil, and readers of all races can identify with the main character's humiliations, disappointments, and anger.

One of Ellison's primary concerns is the extent to which black culture has been absorbed and ignored by an American culture it helped form. Two episodes at the paint factory where the narrator works are emblematic of this relationship. First, the narrator must mix black dope into white paint; the dope disappears without darkening the white paint, but the paint will not dry properly without the additive. Second, the narrator discovers that an old black man who works deep in the bowels of the factory intuitively understands how the boilers operate and makes the paint's production possible. Ellison weaves similar light and dark imagery through the book.

In an interview with John Hersey, Ellison explains, "What makes for a great deal of black fury is the refusal of many Americans to understand that somebody paid for the nation's peace and prosperity in terms of blood and frustrated dreams." He adds that underprivileged citizens of all races have become "invisible" as they are absorbed into mainstream white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant culture. Invisible Man treats the plight of all "invisible" citizens with sensitivity but challenges the society that continues to deny them full individuality.

1. Why do the men who are giving the narrator a scholarship put him through such an ordeal at the club?

2. Why does President Bledsoe give the narrator unfavorable letters of recommendation without telling him about the content? Why does Bledsoe consider the narrator dangerous?

3. Compare the narrator's experience at the white men's club with Norton's at the Golden Day.

4. What is the symbolic significance of the narrator's working in a paint factory?

5. Why does the narrator first adopt, then reject the persona of Rinehart? In what ways does Rinehart restrict his freedom?

6. Why does the narrator first decline to buy a yarn from the street vendor, then buy a second one?

1. The narrator opens the book by saying that people refuse to see him. Analyze passages throughout the book that reinforce or refute this.

2. Some critics think there is an underlying Marxist philosophy at work in Invisible Man. Research Marxism and explain any parallels you see in Invisible Man.

3. Read Albert Camus's short novel The Stranger and compare it to Invisible Man.

4. Research the philosophy of "existentialism" and discuss how it might have influenced Ellison's views in the novel.

5. Research Ralph Waldo Emerson's philosophy of "transcendentalism" and discuss how it influences the novel.

6. List the various identities or disguises the narrator takes on. What does he learn about his identity from each one?