The Thematic Content of Ellisons Novels - Literature review Example

Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man and Juneteenth Ralph Ellison is widely regarded as among the most ingenious and complicated African American author. He was born in the city of Oklahoma and studied at the now Tuskegee University, yet failed to finish his studies, and then relocated to New York in the 1930s. He became closely affiliated with the Community Party for some time, until he found out that the communists was only taking advantage of the aspirations of the Negroes to fulfill its own craving for power (Turner 655). He became a political liberal later on in his life. He is very popular for his work Invisible Man, which presents a unique perspective of the American society and, more importantly, of racial identity—a perspective he includes and also modifies in Juneteenth. Much of Juneteenth was created between the 1950s and the 1970s. A Christian, classical realists, Ellison tried to make Negro experiences admirable to the American people by situating it within the stroke of Western literature and the realities of American society (Booth 683). This grand mission ultimately called for two conflicting depictions of Negro life. This essay analyzes the thematic content of Ellison’s two most famous novels--Invisible Man and Juneteenth—and how these narratives reveal his true life and works. Invisible Man is a philosophical account of the American ‘color line’ (Morel 103). The Negroes of Ellison are strong and adaptable beings, if one remains tormented by racial prejudice and mesmerized by deceiving prophets and total quacks. Juneteenth, on the contrary, tries to restore the connection of the Declaration of Independence and existential freedom with the virtue of Christianity. Although the belief of Reverend Hickman on the commandments of Jesus Christians seems opposed to the Invisible Man’s call for freedom, both features of American experience were merged in Abraham Lincoln. Ellison believes that Lincoln embodied the conviction of the Founding Fathers that a religious nation embraced the ideals of the Declaration and Constitution. This link was also explained by Alexis de Tocqueville, who notably claimed that “Religion sees in civil freedom a noble exercise of the faculties of man;… Freedom sees in religion the companion of its struggles and its triumphs, the cradle of its infancy, the divine source of its rights” (Morel 103). Juneteenth brings back the connection of Invisible Man’s quest for freedom with the Christina tradition and beliefs. Ellison’s interpretation of the connection of liberation and Christianity, reason and faith, are shown in the effort of Hickman to train Bliss to become a new Lincoln. Ultimately, Hickman absolves the huge fall of his son, and through his word, virtually brings Bliss back to life by bringing back his affinity for the heaven formed by Christianity. Ralph Ellison journeyed long on his voyage to the enigmatic soul of America. The breadth of his new spiritual and intellectual knowledge is revealed in the complicated literary, religious, and political suggestion and representation. His ultimate understanding of America’s distinctive fusion of reason and faith puts Ellison among a group of writers who liberated themselves from the scientific modernism of the 20th century (Rice 28). If sometimes missing the literary refinement of Invisible Man’s fascinating social parody, the frequent humorous and vulgar prayer of the enigmatic American fusion of liberation and faith in Juneteenth is a huge progress over the hygienic individuality of the Invisible Man. In 1953, when Ellison received the National Book Award, he proclaimed that the “chief significance of Invisible Man as a fiction” (Rice 64) is its “experimental attitude, and its attempt to return to the mood of personal moral responsibility for democracy which typified the best of our nineteenth-century [American] fiction” (Rice 64). Although social responsibility and narrative experiment are strongly connected in this declaration, the novel’s early supporters publicly applauded Invisible Man for surpassing the protest novel and social realism. Social and political leadership filled the thoughts of Ellison throughout the writing of Invisible Man. He said once to an interviewer, “This was the late forties and I kept trying to account for the fact that when the chips were down, Negro leaders did not represent the Negro community” (Bloom 128). To locate epitomes of leadership, he returned to the 19th century, to the political personalities of W.E.B. Dubois and Frederick Douglass, both of whom came to be the dominant souls of his novel. The image of social reality in the novel upon which a great deal of criticism has been concentrated is almost incomprehensible without the experimental approach numerous detractors have seen to be politically indifferent (Turner 663). For the democratic power of the novel—its ability to get in touch with human culture—emanates specifically from its firm denial of any reality excluding its own existence as a work of fiction. In order to make sense of how Juneteenth portrays the Negro identity and the life of Ellison, it is vital to first examine briefly the opinion of the Invisible Man of the same issue. Practically all scenes of Invisible Man combine realistic portrayal, representation, metaphor, myth, and fable. In the course of the novel the narrator stumbles upon different images of Black identity, from the middle-class expertise of his university life to the traditional culture of lower-class African Americans to the racial integration and class militancy of the Brotherhood and along the way develops a perception or opinion of his own (Booth 688). In a memorable scene, he witnessed the eviction of an old African American couple, their belongings stacked outside (Ellison 45): I turned aside and looked at the clutter of household objects which the two men continued to pile on the curb. And as the crowd pushed me I looked down to see looking out of an oval frame a portrait of the old couple when a young, seeing the sad, stiff dignity of their faces there… My eyes fell upon a pair of crudely carved and polished bones, “knocking bones,” used to accompany music at country dances… Pots and pots of green plants were line in the dirty snow, certain to die of the cold: ivy, canna, a tomato plant. And in a basket I saw a straightening comb, switches of false hair, a curling iron, a card with silvery letters against a background of dark red velvet, reading ‘God Bless Our Home’… The assortment of belongings of the old Black couple is their Black identity. The argument of Ellison is that Black identity is not an exclusive, one-dimensional aspect, but a constructed culture combining or integrating all other cultures. Ellison views African American identity as self-constructed, flexible, and interwoven to the American culture. Still eventually, the storyteller stumbles upon Rinehart, an erratic fraud who is lover, risk-taker, and minister for various spectators. Rinehart obviously represents the risk of disorder in a totally flexible identity without any collective or self-enforced restrictions. Yet, Invisible Man stresses the unlimited potentials of self-constructed identity in a world whose core irrationality defines it as “concrete, ornery, vile and sublimely wonderful” (Bloom 33). The narrator of the novel, implying his persecutors, refers to this self-constructed, flexible, integrated assortment of cultural forces “the beautiful absurdity of their American identity and mine” (Bloom 33-34). Juneteenth reiterates but also transcends and modifies this perception of Black identity. Besides presenting a much more burning image of a fraudulent, oppressive political structure than Invisible Man, Juneteenth focuses more on community, particularly the nourishing aspect of Black culture and community (Morel 68). It also emphasizes what Ellison identifies as a natural connection between Black culture and values of democracy, as thought by Hickman about himself in the latter part of the novel: “If we can’t cry for the Nation, then who? Because who else draws their grief and consternation from a longer knowledge or from a deeper and more desperate hope? And who’ve paid more in trying to achieve their better promise?” (Ellison 112). Moreover, Juneteenth shifts from satire, the major literary style of Invisible Man, to visionary style, the style required to transform into a racially neutral democracy. The feeling of a culturally unique, nourishing Black identity and fate anchored in American history is the heart of Hickman’s statements and character. Juneteenth talks about a historically created, shared identity of strength and resilience, especially African American in a cultural instead of biological or ‘natural’ terms. Conclusions Those who want to understand American culture, from its historical roots to its present status, can gain remarkable knowledge from Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man and Juneteenth. These two novels talk about not only Black, but also American identity, culture, and existence. Both these novels reveal the true character of Ellison—as an assimilationist, but one that respect and promote diversity. Ellison strongly thinks that African Americans have build and created a historical identity, not entirely Black, African, or American, but a combination of all these. He argues that American culture is in part rooted in Black culture, and he thinks this Black identity has been existent ever since in the shared culture of average, not upper class, African Americans. Ellison reveals in his two novels his aspirations not only for the Black community, but for the larger American nation as well. He believes that ‘Black’ and ‘White’ can exist in perfect harmony, only if both cultures are aware and appreciative of each other’s histories, traditions, and heritages. Works Cited Bloom, Harold. Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 1999. Print. Booth, W. James. “The Color of Memory: Reading Race with Ralph Ellison.” Political Theory 36.5 (2008): 683-707. Ellison, Ralph. Juneteenth: A Novel. New York: Random House LLC, 2011. Print. Morel, Lucas. Ralph Ellison and the Raft of Hope: a Political Companion to Invisible Man. Lexington, Kentucy: University Press of Kentucy, 2004. Print. Rice, Herbert. Ralph Ellison and the Politics of the Novel. New York: Lexington Books, 2007. Print. Turner, Jack. “Awakening to Race: Ralph Ellison and Democratic Individuality.” Political Theory 36.5(2008): 655-682. Read More