The novel Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison (1914–1994), was published
in 1952. It spent sixteen weeks on the best-seller list and was awarded the
National Book Award in 1953. Some critics deemed the book the most
important novel to be published after World War II (1939–45).
Plot
The novel is set in the late 1920s and early 1930s in the South. The narrator, who is African American, says other people refuse to see him, and
so he has gone underground to write the story of his “invisible” life. In
an echo of his invisibility, he remains nameless throughout the book.
When he gives a speech to a group of prominent white men, he is rewarded with a scholarship to a reputable African American college.
However, to get that scholarship, he is forced to fight, blindfolded, in a
boxing match against other African American youths. They are then
made to run over an electrified rug.
Three years later, the narrator, now a college student, is asked to
drive a wealthy white trustee of the college around campus. The narrator takes him to a bar that serves only African American men. A fight
breaks out among a group of mentally imbalanced war veterans at the
bar, and the white man faints. He is taken care of by one of the veterans,
who claims to be a doctor. The veteran accuses both the narrator and the
trustee of ignorance regarding race relations.
Back at college, the founder hears of the narrator’s misadventures
and expels him from the school. He writes seven letters of recommendation and sends him to New York City to find a job. There, the narrator
is repeatedly turned away until he reaches the office of Mr. Emerson, another college trustee. Emerson tells the narrator that he has been duped;
the letters actually describe the expelled student as dishonorable and unreliable. Emerson helps the narrator get a low-paying job at a paint factory whose main product is the color “optic white.” The narrator gets
into a fight and wakes up in the paint factory’s hospital.
The white doctors use this newly arrived African American patient
to conduct electric shock experiments. When the narrator is discharged,
he collapses on the street. A woman named Mary takes him into her
Harlem home and helps him nurture his sense of black heritage.
The narrator eventually takes a job with the Brotherhood, a political organization that supposedly helps the socially oppressed. To take the
job, he is forced to change his name, leave Mary, and make a complete
break from his past. He complies.
He is successful at his job, but one day he receives an anonymous
warning to remember his place as a lowly African American in the
Brotherhood. Shortly after that, he is accused of trying to use the organization to advance his own desire for recognition. He is moved to another post but eventually returns to Harlem. There he realizes that many
African American members have left the Brotherhood because the
Harlem community feels the group has betrayed their interests. He finds
one of the youth leaders on a street corner, selling dolls. But this man
does not have a permit to sell, and he is shot dead in front of the narrator. After giving a speech in which he calls the slain leader a hero, the
narrator is sent back to a white leader to learn the new strategies for outreach in Harlem.
The narrator learns that the Brotherhood is not what it appears. The
group believes individuals are just tools to be used in meeting the goals
of the Brotherhood. The narrator decides to leave the group, but he becomes involved in an act of arson. While running to escape capture, he
falls into a manhole. He remains underground, and begins to understand
that one must remain true to one’s self and beliefs and yet find a way to
be responsible to the community at large.
Themes
The novel’s main theme is that racism prohibits people from forging individual identities. As an African American man living in a racist society,
the narrator finds that each community (or community within a community) has different ideas as to how he should behave and think. These
imposed ideas prevent him from discovering who he is, and allow others
to see him as they want to see him. Without his realizing it, he comes to
live within the limitations set by others, forged out of prejudice. After his
time living underground, he comes to understand that he will be proud
of his racial heritage and make important contributions to society, which
will force others to acknowledge him for the man he truly is. At the end
of the novel, he says, “And my problem was that I always tried to go in
everyone’s way but my own. I have also been called one thing and then
another while no one really wished to hear what I called myself. So after
years of trying to adopt the opinions of others I finally rebelled. I am an
invisible man.”
Another theme is the danger of using stereotypes to fight other
stereotypes. All African Americans in the book feel the imposed limitations of racism. The narrator tries to escape these impositions as an individual, but he meets others who believe that all African Americans
should fight prejudice in the same way. Disagreement with the majority
is taken as a betrayal of the entire race.
This theme is illustrated in a passage in which the narrator finds a
coin bank at Mary’s home, just before he decides to join the
Brotherhood. The bank is a symbol for the hurtful racial stereotypes the
narrator has spent his life trying to escape. “The cast-iron figure of a very
black, red-lipped and wide-mouthed Negro … stared up at me from the
floor, his face an enormous grin, his single large black hand held palm
up before his chest.” The bank symbolizes the African American man as
an object whose sole purpose is to entertain and amuse.
Ellison’s novel addressed the social realities of racism but also exposed the way racism corrodes a person’s sense of self and outlook on existence.