The Invisible Man - Essay Example

Full Submitted The Invisible Man Divided into three parts Invisible Man’s (IM) schooling at a fictionalized version of Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee University in Alabama (Bishop 46); (2) IM’s involvement with the Brotherhood – a euphemism for the Communist Party (Ellison xxi); and (3) IM in the Harlem race riot, inspired by the author’s own life (xxi), the plot of Ellison’s Invisible Man outlined the painful process IM undergoes in understanding who he, a Black, really is in a dominantly superior White society.

How he in belying himself tried hard to be just like what his superiors told him who he is – “You are important because if you fail, I have failed by one individual, one defective cog” (45) – only to be disillusioned; only to find out he is not after all who they say he is; only to know that even Dr. Bledsoe, a Black just like him, who he trusted fooled him, giving him falls hopes to which he has dedicated his life: “To Whom It May Concern: Keep This Nigger-Boy Running (33). Yet it is in his disillusionment that he begins to confront the lies he naively accepted, driving him to search and carve for his own name.

He then worked against the system, he once believed. But again, he is betrayed. He begins to understand the opposing social forces that drive him to invisibility. So he receded from all these, living underground in a “hole in the basement” (7). He begins then to understand what is meant for an invisible man, like him, become visible. Yet with all these conflicting experiences, he is not still sure how to fathom his grandfather’s parting words to his father: “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.” (14). Does it mean, remain invisible to become visible? Or does it mean to become what you are (become visible) whatever it takes? There are many possibilities. The theme of the novel, depicting the life of a black man in the Harlem during the restoration period, centers on the life of Black Americans in a dominantly white American society, symbolically touching many issues confronting African Americans such as black nationalism, Booker T.

Washington’s reformist model minority ideal, black’s individuality and personal identity, specifically the man, and communism in the struggle of the Blacks. This theme is symbolically presented in the title itself – Invisible Man, told as the story of the narrator, who simply calls the protagonist, Invisible Man. He has no name that is why he regards himself the Invisible Man. He is the Invisible Man because he does not cast any shadow, as no one bothers to know the real him; his color says it all; he is merely stereotyped; he is simply a machine to the utility of the Whites.

“To you, he is a mark on the scorecard of your achievement, a thing and not a man…” (Ellison 95). And he knowing his difference hates himself and adores them: “And you, for all your power, are not a man to him, but a God, a force: (95). Just like B. T. Washington (18), who upholds the model minority ideal, IM believes in the system and works hard to be just like them. He studies, proving himself a self-defined orator. His graduation address, which he is allowed to give only after the battle royal (White entertainment), resounded just like B. T. Washington’s famous Atlanta speech (1895) upholding the model minority ideal (Early 71).

He believes he can be like B. T. Washington, a leader, by which he can change his lot. But he is advised to be silent, when he knows it is by speaking that he can effect change. He is advised to remain invisible, when what he wants is to be equally visible just like the rest. To him such advice is unfathomable; it sounds to him like “a curse” (17). Works Cited Bishop, Jack. Ralph Ellison. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988. Early, Gerald Lyn. Writers and their works. Ralph Ellison: Invisible Man.

 Tarrytown, New York: Marshall Cavendish Benchmark, 2010. Ellison, Ralph Waldo. Invisible Man. New York: Random House, 1952.