Friday, November 15, 2019

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison


Invisible Man
By Ralph Ellison
Image Credit: Encyclopedia Britannica

1.      Bibliography

Ellison, R. (1952). Invisible Man. New York: Vintage International. ISBN 0808554123

2.      Plot Summary

“The narrator of Invisible Man is a nameless young black man who moves in the 20th-century United States where reality is surreal and who can survive only through pretense. Because the people he encounters "see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination," he is effectively invisible. He leaves the racist South for New York City, but his encounters continue to disgust him. Ultimately, he retreats to a hole in the ground, which he furnishes and makes his home. There, brilliantly illuminated by stolen electricity, he can seek his identity.”
An unnamed black narrator strives to understand both himself and what it means to be black in America. In the prologue, we are introduced to the narrator who lives rent-free in an abandoned basement of a New York City apartment.  It is the present and the following chapters are told retrospectively about how he became “invisible”. He tells how he grew up in a Southern town where blacks cater to whites.  He tells about his grandfather, a slave, who said on this deathbed to “overcome with yeses”. He is invited to speak at a hotel and is awarded a scholarship to a black college. At the college, he is given the responsibility to drive one of the trustees but things go horribly wrong and he is kicked out of college.  The college president gives him letters of introduction to trustees in New York City.  He is turned away from these men and ends up working at a paint factory. An explosion at the factory puts him out on the street where he is taken in by a kind lady in Harlem.  Coming across an eviction in process, he comes to the aid of the evicted couple giving a speech the stirs the crowd into action.  This speech is overheard by “The Brotherhood” who asks him to work for them using a scientific method to bring about action in the community. The narrator and The Brotherhood clash in ideology.  Things go wrong culminating in a riot that brings our protagonist to find his hidden home and discover his invisibility.

3.      Critical Analysis

Invisible Man is Ralph Ellison’s first novel.  It is a story of self-discovery and is widely recognized as one of the great novels examining the African-American experience. The invisibility of Ellison’s title character is about the invisibility of identity (above all, what it means to be a black man) and its various pretenses, confronting both personal experience and the power of collective misconceptions. The novel’s special quality is its skillful combination of inquiry into identity and what it means to be socially or racially invisible. It is a metaphor for the history of the African-American experience in America. The first-person narrator remains nameless, looking back at his moves through the dreamlike reality of surroundings and people from the racist South to the no less unwelcoming world of New York City.
Key characters include the Invisible Man who acts as the narrator.  He is a young naïve black man and everything is seen through his eyes.  Dr. Bledsoe, the college president, pretends to be humble and subservient to whites, yet is intent on having power.  Mr. Norton, a college trustee, and northern white businessman is obsessed with love for his daughter and brags about his generous monetary gifts to blacks. Lucius Brockway, an old black man who works in the basement of the paint factory. Mary Rambo, a kind black lady who dedicates herself to others.  Brother Jack a white leader of the Brotherhood.  Outwardly calm and nonracist but in reality, he uses people and betrays them.  Tod Clifton, and intelligent, sensitive, handsome and idealistic black youth.  He is a man of action, popular in the Brotherhood but he cannot tolerate the reality that he is no more than a puppet to the organization. Brother Tarp, and older black man and fatherly toward the narrator.  Ras the Exhorter, a black militant who believes in the total separation of the races.
The themes of the novel include invisibility.  The narrator discovers that people neither see nor understand him.  No one sees the individual underneath all his labels and he does not see his full potential.  Quest for identity is explored.  As a young man, the narrator tries to be what he thinks others want him to be. He discovers, after much struggle, that freedom lies in finding out who he really is as a human being and as a black man. Another theme is the stereotyping of African-Americans. The protagonist responds to whites’ prejudices by using lots of deodorants, always being punctual, and eating traditional American food. The novel also explores the rejection of Marxism.  The primary character rejects the Brotherhood’s Marxist view of history as a rational, scientific process moving in a straight line toward the ultimate goal of a classless society.  And, most certainly, the novel explores black pride. The narrator knows that his position of “invisibility” is absurd.  He is human but is seen as less than human. Ellison claims that blacks have sometimes responded to whites’ racism by showing a passive, yet constant hatred (like the narrator’s grandfather), by adopting amoral behavior (like Rinehart), or by deceiving and using whites (Bledsoe). Ellison’s alternative is to assert black cultural pride.
The main symbols used in the story include the blindfold which represents those barriers that prevent people from seeing themselves and others.  Another symbol is the battle royal which symbolizes the struggle of blacks in a society controlled by whites.  The sambo dolls represent those blacks who are easily manipulated by whites.  The possessions of the evicted couple represent the black American past and animals stand for primitive human instincts that lie beneath the civilized surface. The briefcase stands for the narrator’s past life.  It contains papers from his past and he has to destroy it to illuminate his present and move into the future. The author uses rich, powerful, superbly controlled language. A first-person narrator gives an overall impression of events rather than a detailed, analytical view.  A tone of detachment keeps the narrative from sounding bitter.
While Invisible Man bears comparison with other existential novels, it also maps out the story of one man’s identity against the struggles of shared self-definition. The novel takes the central character through the limited possibilities offered to African-Americans, from enslaved grandparents through southern education, through to all the Harlem politics. Ellison’s precision in the way he shows his narrator-protagonist working through these possibilities is skillfully worked into a novel about particular people, events, and situations, from the terrifying world of the mockingly named Liberty Paints to the socialist scheming of the Brotherhood. In the process, Ellison offers sensitive but harsh critiques of the resources of the black culture, such as religion and music.

4.      Expert Reviews

-         -  National Book Award for Fiction
-        -   Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Special Achievement
-        -   Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read
-         -  Kirkus Review: “An extremely powerful story of a young Southern Negro, from his late high school days through three years of college to his life in Harlem. This is Ellison's first novel, but he has complete control of his story and his style.
-          - New York Times: "Invisible Man" is tough, brutal and sensational. It is uneven in quality. But it blazes with authentic talent. No one interested in books by or about American Negroes should miss it.”
-         -  Newyorker: “This complicated kind of progress seemed to me to accurately reflect how, for the marginalized in America, choices have never been clear or easy.”

5.      Connections

Other books by Ralph Ellison:
-          (1986). Going to the Territory. Random House. ISBN 0679760016
-          (1996). Flying Home. Random House. ISBN 0679457046
-          (2000). Trading Twelves. Modern Library. ISBN 0375503676
-          (2010). Three Days Before the Shooting. Modern Library. ISBN 9780375759536

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