Analysis of Ralph Ellisons Invisible Man - Essay Example

Invisible Man Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man deals with the complex issues related to the African American existence in a white dominated, post-war environment. Though the novel can be branded as one that projects a minority issue, it veers from the usual ‘writing back’ that takes place in such discourses. Ellison uses a very powerful narrative that embraces both the African American issues as well as the numerous issues related to power that leads eventually to the major theme of the novel – invisibility. It can be considered a work that explores the inner recesses of human mind in a psychoanalytic manner as well, with its rich fabric of archetypal images and nuances. The forces of power and exploitation Ellison attacks are not necessarily that of the dominant white community over the African Americans, but those that can be found within any human community, including the ones that are generally oppressed. The narrative technique Ellison follows is an extensively premeditated one that has a convincing power to connect to the sensibilities readers from all sects. If it had been something based solely on a minority issue in a radical manner, it would have failed to address the various issues related to the unequal world order that exists in this world through centuries. Saul Bellow observes in his “Man Underground”, a review of the novel: I was keenly aware, as I read this book, of a very significant kind of independence in the writing. For there is a way for Negro novelists to go at their problems, just as there are Jewish or Italian ways. Mr. Ellison has not adopted a minority tone. If he had done so, he would have failed to establish a true middle-of-consciousness for everyone. (Bellow) The novel starts with the Invisible Man recounting his present life in a basement where he steals electricity and keeps many bulbs on to create a blinding effect. He is leading a life of self-captivity, ostensibly to escape from those who are trying to follow and capture him. In a way, the prologue presents Invisible Man at the end of the story and the preceding chapters are a kind of flashback. The story traces the journey that Invisible Man, had to take up from a bright African American schoolboy to the present state. It is a difficult journey that involves many deaths and rebirths. He remembers himself as the black boy who delivers his high school speech after the Battle Royal where he and his classmates are blindfolded, made to fight among them and then forced to collect counterfeit coins from an electrified rug. He does not realize it then that the esteemed white gentlemen from all respectable walks of life who watched this game and later his speech were creating their own idea of equal rights. After receiving a scholarship to the Negro college, Invisible Man undergoes a number of traumatic experiences that involves an expulsion from the college after he is accused of taking the white trustee of the college, Mr.Norton to places where he should not have been taken. Mr. Norton does not even bother to know his name, which could be the reason why the invisible man does not bother to tell it to his readers as well. He realizes that for people like Mr.Norton, he is just their ‘fate’ and nothing else. This hint at the idea of a ‘white man’s burden’ where the civilizing mission for the entire world is presumably taken up and considered a heavy burden by the dominant white community is portrayed here. After his expulsion from the college, the invisible man leaves for a job in Harlem, believing that the seven letters of recommendation that Dr.Bledsoe, the president of his college has given him, will serve him good. But these letters turn out to be letters of deception, much like the character of Dr.Bledsoe who skillfully hides his past and finds solace in his double personality to maintain his power. Invisible Man finds employment under radical whites and undergoes horrible experiences that end up in an accident. After this episode, an impoverished woman who is passionate about the black issues looks after him. He hears about the Brotherhood from her and eventually meets with those involved in the radical movement that follows some communist ideals. He gets involved with this movement out of his necessity, but soon realizes that he cannot really trust them. The divide among the Brotherhood teaches him the hypocritical stature of such revolutionary movements. Their preference of society over individuals disappoint him and he finally shows his allegiance to the rebellious fraction in the movement who lead a people’s movement in Harlem that ends up in violence, which leads to his self-exile. The major theme of the novel is related to the shifting nature of power and oppression. The words of hi grandfather at his deathbed to Invisible man’s father haunts him throughout the narration: ….after I’m gone I want you to keep up the good fight. I never told you, but our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy’s country ever since I give up my gun back in the Reconstruction. 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...Learn it to the younguns (16). The predicament of a liberated African American to deal with power and thereby deceive his people is reflected in these words. It also shows how Invisible Man has to become a constant runner, moving from one thing to the other, in his quest for true liberation. He keeps losing his identity everywhere he reaches, and instead of becoming a hero of his people, he becomes a sacrificial scapegoat who is depicted as experiencing an existential angst in the end. Invisible Man encounters the double edged character of power from Dr. Bledsoe, the president of his college. In Dr. Bledsoe’s opinion, the Invisible Man was a fool to take Mr. Norton everywhere he wished: "We take these white folks where we want them to go, we show them what we want them to see" (102). This shows the way Dr. Bledsoe has appropriated power and is capable of using it against everyone, including the white trustee. However, he is modesty personified in front of the white authority even as he manipulates everything that concerns them. For Invisible Man, this is a puzzling realization. The meeting with Trueblood, the man who put shame to the Negro neighborhood by impregnating his daughter, presents a strange case too. The fact that Mr. Norton gives him some money in a mood of empathy makes him reflect, "But what I dont understand is how I done the worse thing a man can do in his own family and stead of things gittin bad, they got better. The nigguhs up at the school dont like me, but the white folks treats me fine" (68). The fact that a man’s action can be seen as a blemish on the entire community in the case of blacks is also a new revelation of invisible man. Ellison uses a lot of mythical imagery and the classical elements of tragedy in the novel, which goes against the social realistic emphasis on reliable narration, sticking to the facts with a cultural and political commitment. Earnest Kaiser observes: All good, honest fiction writers create basically out of their own experiences, reworking and embroidering as they build their works. Historical fiction has history as a factual base to build upon. Good fiction has to be experienced and lived. It cannot be contrived and created from symbols and myths as the formalists and the New Critics demand. But Ellison has done this in writing the novel, Invisible Man. (Kaiser) Ellison has shown his disapproval for the radical elements of asserting blackness, which he thinks as something that grows out of despair. As he says, "It attempts to define Negroes by their pigmentation, not their culture. What makes you a Negro is having grown up under certain cultural conditions, of having undergone an experience that shapes your culture” (Corry). The stunning imageries that he uses out of his jobs in the paint factory is representative of the role of black people in a predominantly white community. He notices how the American culture tries to cover every undesirable thing in white paint. And he also observes how the white paint leaves a grey hue once it is set, and how some black paint added to the white paint gives it a sparkle. Though in a slightly excessive manner, the theme of black people being integrated to the successful, attractive image of America without getting due credit for it, either as a community or as individuals, runs through the chapters that deal with the Liberty Paint factory. The most impressive imagery could be the one which describes the machines building and the role played by the blacks there: "They got all this machinery, but that aint everything; we are the machines inside the machine" (217). The most significant underlying theme of the novel is the status of invisibility that the protagonist gains, gradually. From the incident in which he blindfolded and made to fight and the lack of concern from Mr. Norton’s lack of interest in his name, Invisible Man goes through many life experiences where the African American identity is neglected, by the white community, blacks in power, and even the radical black people’s movements. When he tried to speak of the ‘dispossession of nothingness’ of the poor negroes in connection with an elderly couple, Brother Jack of the Brotherhood reminds him: “…you made an effective speech. But you mustnt waste your emotions on individuals, they dont count" (291). He gets to know Ras, the rebellious exhorter who hates all white people, and rejects his ideology after a long time of contemplation. He does not find himself at ease with the two fractions of Brotherhood. He is invisible everywhere he ends up. When he is in New York for the first time, he finds himself in a café where he can be with the white people, yet feels neglected and is reminded of his invisibility. With the white women he has relationships, it ended up as just experimentations from both himself and the women to play with the concept of power. Even as Ellison distances himself from the narrative techniques of social realism, his novel strikes some deep chord in his readers’ hearts with the genuineness of the lives that he narrates. As Irving Howe observes: “Ellison has an abundance of that primary talent without which neither craft nor intelligence can save a novelist; he is richly, wildly inventive; his scenes rise and dip with tension, his people bleed, his language stings” (Howe). For a writer who uses first person narrative to keep the fears, anxieties and revelations of the protagonist close to himself, no other proof is needed to establish him as a genuine narrator. Whatever faults the book is accused of would diminish as the great meanings of it unfurls one by one to its readers, no matter which community of nationality they belong to. There is no other novel that has simply conveyed an abundance of meanings just through its title and then by the narrative that stays as close as possible to it. References Bellow, Saul. "Man Underground”, May 15, 2007. Corry, John. "Profile of an American Novelist, A White View of Ralph Ellison", May 15, 2007. Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. New York: Vintage, 1995. Howe, Irving. “Review of: Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man”, May 15, 2007. Kaiser, Earnest “A Critical Look at Ellisons Fiction & at Social & Literary Criticism by and about the Author", May 15, 2007. Read More