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Review Invisible Man Introduction The Invisible Man addresses the various social and intellectual factors that existed during the post civil war period including the Black peoples identity and their relationships between Marxism and Black Nationalism that was advocated through the racial reformist policies of Booker T. Washington. This is the only novel ever written by Ralph Ellison which won him the National Book Award in the preceding year after it was published in 1952. This novel is a first person narration of an unnamed African-American man who considers himself to be a socially invisible person based and inspired by perhaps the authors own life. The novel is written in a form of autobiography yet it is structure in such a way that the book starts its narration while the invisible man in the middle years of his life. Importantly, through this book the narrator consciously makes an effort to make himself visible and be heard by his audience.
When the novel was published it revealed in a new way the existence of racial tensions in American in an unapologetic manner that left the reader wondering if racial justice would finally be achieved or not for the Black people. The Invisible Man as a novel was successful in having a lasting effect on society for the achievement of social acceptance through he building up of unity amongst the Black population for a better future for themselves. The theme of the novel is suggestive of the fact that solutions for the normalization of relationships between races might not be imminent, while at the same time it states that the uplifting of the Black people could be possible through the mediums of art and literature. However, we also can not consider the Invisible Man to be absolutely promoting the art and literature movements only of the Blacks because in general the writing is not as extreme or militant as we come across some of the books written in the times after it was published.
Therefore, this book can comparatively be considered as a much milder and transitional literature expression of ideas. Analysis & Plot The story-line of this book begins with the introduction of the Invisible Mans self-narration where he portrays himself as a model Black student living in a small town in the South. Here he successfully delivers a written speech about the humility required for the eventual progress of the Black people before some important White men. This speech is delivered in a type of a battle with other Black students from a stage that is similar to a boxing ring where their self-humiliating orations are enjoyed with amusement and enjoyed by the superior Whites listeners. As a reward for his efforts, the Invisible Man recipes a scholarship to a Black college modeled on the Tuskegee Institute. While at the college during his junior year, the Invisible Man has to give a guided tour to a White trustee whom he by mistake leads to a Black mans house whose daughter had because of an affair with the trustee got pregnant.
During the conversation between these two characters of the novel, the trustee faints on hearing first hand the disgrace he had brought to the Black man and he is somehow taken from here by the Invisible Man for aid in a bar. While a Black veteran doctor chastises the trustee and the Invisible Man, he still attends to the trustee who passes in and out of consciousness while fighting breaks out amongst the Black customers in the bar. It is on the next day that the trustee in a recovered state is brought back to the campus after having experienced unusually chaotic events. The Invisible Man is fearful of the action that would be taken against him by the college president because of the experience he had with the trustee. However, it is after some time that his future at the college is decided and after a sermon by a Black blind but highly respected reverend is delivered at the campus. The sermon is all about the legacy of the college founders and delivered with such impact fullness that it inspires and influences the Invisible Man tremendously.
It is thereafter that the college president experts him and he suddenly realizes that the success the blind Black reverend had was because he had stereotyped himself in adapting to the whims of the White dominated society by speaking only those things that the While people wanted to hear. This is amongst the very first revelations that comes to the Invisible Man as he realizes when he is also given letters of recommendations to help him find work in the North, where upon arrival he learns that the college president had written letters to all the addresses to keep on deceiving him about the possibility of his getting readmitted in university while keeping him busy with such employment that he would remain occupied and away from education. The Invisible Man finds work in a paint worker where he has to work in the boiler room where the man in-charge is an paranoid person loyal to the factory owner and thinks that he is to be replaced with the new worker. When the Invisible Man makes a mention of the factory unions meeting, a fight breaks out between them during which the boiler explodes in which he is injured and hospitalized. During his treatment he hears the doctors discussing him as if he was a mentally retarded person similar to a laboratory rate on which experiments could be carried out. He also learns that he had been given shock treatment and after getting released from the hospital he goes though bouts of dizziness and faints while on his way home on the streets.
He is taken to the home of an elderly kind lady who like a mother figure cares for him and reminds the Invisible Man of his relatives and friends in the South. As he has lost his job at the paint factory, in his wandering on the New York streets he across an elderly couple being force full evicted from an apartment. He rallies a crown by giving a speech to passers by who turn upon the marshall in charge of the eviction and a riot ensues. The Invisible Mans oration is noticed by the equality minded Brotherhood that has communist undertones and their leader recruits and trains him as their speaker with the intent of bringing together the Black community of New York on one platform.
Initially the Invisible Man is happy in a role that he believes would in some way make history as he delivers successful speeches and is promoted to head the Brotherhood work in Harlem. However, he encounters trouble when he comes across a Black fanatical nationalist. In fact he becomes so popular in Harlem that a magazine interviews him and when his thoughts of the Brotherhood are published, he is criticized by one of the brothers for taking the credit of the work being done by the Brother as a whole. Despite his work being faultless, the Brotherhood committee transfer him to work in another newer part of the city instead of continuing to work in Harlem. When he eventually returns back to Harlem he finds that the radical Black nationalist has taken over the Brotherhood and one his like-minded brother from the Brotherhood having quitted from the organization and selling Sambo dolls on the streets as a way of expressing his disgust over the way the Brotherhood was being run.
This brother is shot and killed during a scuffle with a policeman and his funeral the Invisible Man delivers a powerful speech to win back his former support in Harlem. He is however censured by the Brotherhood for praising the deceased who had turned against the organization. One day while he is walking the streets on New York, he is recognized by the radical new leader of the Brotherhood and beaten up by his men. Thereafter he disguises himself by wearing a hat and sunglasses and is mistaken for another Black person who apparently had adapted to the White society with success. The Invisible Man realizes that his personal identity is that of a person who does not matter to anyone and he use to the Brotherhood is only because his color is Black.
His dying grandfathers advise begins therefore to make perfect sense to him which was that the Brotherhood was in fact dying and its Harlem membership which appeared to be thriving was in reality crumbling away. Conclusion The story of the Invisible Man concludes with a major race riot in Harlem that is fueled by anger over the death of the Sambo doll selling ex-members supporters within the Brotherhood and the extreme followers of the radical Black nationalist who while being dressed up in tribal regalia and riding a horse orders the Invisible Man to be hanged and throws a spear at him which misses and when hurled back pierces his cheek. The realization thereafter sets in that in trying to subvert the Brotherhood aims and interests the infighting instead had aided the interests of the Whites. The Invisible Man therefore flees and falls down a manhole where he is abused by his pursuers.
The Invisible Man therefore in the end decides to make himself in the real sense invisible to the world and begins a new life in the basement of a building under a Whites only building and taps into the electric power supply to light up his collection of 1, 369 bulbs unknown to the power supplying company. Thus his electric power supply theft and new hidden rent free abode under the White peoples residents symbolizes the invisible rebellion he exercises against the world and specifically towards the White society. The author Ralph Allison has freely used metaphors, allusions and images to give credence to the storylines emotional and intellectual appeal in this novel. He has also used music throughout the book to further give character to the meaningful sequencing of incidences and also used color to portray the American flags red with sloe gin, the white with color of the paint that the factory in which he worked produced.
The references to music such as Louis Armstrong's jazz, "What Did I Do to Be so Black and Blue?" and street blues of the singer William Bunch, a heart moving solo by a gospel singer all serve as metaphors for the meandering and at times surreal plot drawn up by the author in the novel. While this book continues to provide enjoyable reading, the allusion factors have also been used cleverly such as the one where the college principles character is depicted as that of a deceiver; the adding of ten drops of greyish material into every can of White paint and on the shaking of the paint thereafter turning the color of the paint further into a beholding pure white color. Furthermore the character of the blind Black reverend also comes across as one who glorifies with so much false pretext and purposeful subserviency that the reverand's real blindness of every sense can perhaps be compared with the colleges blindness towards justly treating its students. The Invisible Man in the prologue narrates to the reader that, 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 secluded safe place he creates an atmosphere that is symbolically lighted up with 1, 369 lights and he goes on to explain, 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. " Light is therefore represented as a necessity because "the truth is the light and light is the truth. " The Invisible Man tries to explain with some logic the meaning of live and to make us think in a new way about how we should relate to the existence of racial tensions in American society. Works Cited: Classic Note on Invisible Man (Accessed: May 22, 2007) web Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison (Accessed: May 22, 2007) web Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (Accessed: May 22, 2007) web The Invisible Man, from Wikipedia the free encyclopedia (Accessed: May 22, 2007) web
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Research essay sample on Invisible Man Ralph Ellison
