“A Vanishing Act: Ellison’s Portrayal of
Being Black in American Society and the
roles of Race, Gender and Socioeconomic
Status in Invisible Man.”
Erin Wilcox
ENG 537 – Ethnicity and Cultural Difference in Literature
Professor Patricia Clark
Table of Contents
Title Page – Pg. 1
Table of Contents – Pg. 2
Paper Proposal – Pgs. 3-4
“A Vanishing Act: Ellison’s Portrayal of Being Black in American Society
and the roles of Race, Gender and Socioeconomic Status in Invisible Man.”
Pgs. 5-15
Annotated Bibliography – Pgs. 16-19
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Paper Proposal
Ralph Ellison opens the doorway into a bleak, racist world of the past through the
eyes of an unnamed narrator, and the reader of his tale is left in the position of
determining the flawed structure of the world he has created. Though the book takes
place decades into the past, during very different times, the same pursuit of equality
survives today. The roles of other differences such as gender and economic status,
however, must also be taken into account in order to get a full perception of what it is that
Ellison’s narrator is up against, and what it is he is striving to gain for himself.
Though race is inarguably the most important factor of the story, gender and one’s
place in society and the economy also play important roles in the book as well and should
received some credit as well for shaping the narrator. He is several times placed in a
position of unemployment, poor and destitute, and interacts with various female
characters that can be contrasted to the countless male figures of the book. Ellison’s own
point-of-view on these particular issues also plays a large role in how he writes them out
in his novel and has been the center of studies in the past. Carolyn Sylvander analyzes
Ralph Ellison’s own perceptions of gender in her essay “Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man
and Woman Stereotypes” and points out that even Ellison reinforces some established
stereotypes of different sorts (as we all inevitable do.) This is only one example of the
mounds of research that have been compiled that relate to Ellison’s famous novel. All of
these factors however play their own important role in the entire scope of his story and
must be taken into account. Gender and socioeconomic struggles played major parts as
well in the roles of race and racism in the time period that Ellison is writing in, and the
interconnections between all these factors must be analyzed in order to fully understand
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the scope of what Ellison was attempting to show to the reader. His world is a complex
story that involves far more than just race and the role it plays, but the other societal roles
and statuses that are present in the time period that the narrator is struggling to exist
within.
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“A Vanishing Act: Ellison’s Portrayal of Being Black in American Society and the
roles of Race, Gender and Socioeconomic Status in Invisible Man.”
Though the main focus of Ellison’s novel Invisible Man was to show the struggles
that are associated with race and racism primarily, there are several other factors that
exist within society that can be found in his writing as well. A lot of research has been
committed to the perspective of the female in Ellison’s work (or arguably, the invisibility
of the woman in general) and socioeconomic status also plays a part in the book during
scenes like the eviction of the older couple and the battle royale scene. Though race is
still by far the largest focus of his writing, and Ellison was mostly preoccupied with its
place in society, there are other elements that can also be examined as well that Ellison
provided some sort of commentary on in this fiction work.
Beginning first with the issue of race in the novel, there is a lot to be said about
Ellison’s perception of stereotypes of black people. Stereotypes exist as a mockery of all
different kinds of people, but throughout history there has always been a variety
associated with African-Americans as a means to keep the race oppressed. Ellison is very
much aware of the sort of propaganda that stereotypes could produce, such as the
minstrelsy shows that were so popular in the early twentieth century primarily and are
still a very researched topic today. The section of the novel regarding Trueblood,
however, was a very interesting instance where Ellison attempted at a new
personification of the stereotype. Houston Baker Jr. has done an insightful essay on the
strength of this particular incident in the book, and the significance that it has about the
perception of the black race. Part of his argument is that Trueblood’s predisposition to
have commenced such an incestuous event to occur was partially caused by the white
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people around these pockets of blacks, who live isolated in old cabins amidst the
wilderness. “One reason for the sharecropper’s singular sexual prerogatives is that the
other Afro-Americans in his area are either so constrained or so battered by their
encounters with society that they are incapable of a legitimate and productive sexuality.”
(Baker, 78) Baker is arguing here that Trueblood’s own sexual deviancy was created by
this isolation that has been forced onto these figures of Ellison’s imagination. His theories
are relevant in that this isolation and division between these black families poised in the
woods, and the whites around them, appear to have this unseen barrier that keeps the two
worlds apart. Baker’s observation can also be closely tied to the arguments made in the
past that at least a part of white people’s apprehension against blacks is that they were
afraid of a sort of raw sexuality that they believe is present in the other race. There is also
an insinuated incestuous passion that several theorists have noticed present in Mr.
Norton’s character, who appears both horrified and mesmerized by Trueblood’s
admission. Mr. Norton talked at length with the narrator about the perfection of his
deceased daughter, implicating that perhaps he held something more than fatherly
affection for her. In this instance, Trueblood is symbolic of a stereotype that blacks
represent both heightened sexuality and deviancies that white people could barely
comprehend, but perhaps were tempted by.
Ellison himself, however, was also interested in the shift that the black race
eventually underwent with the coming of the Second World War, which gave an entirely
new perspective to African-Americans who were expected to go and fight on the
frontlines. The country that had for so long oppressed and demeaned their race suddenly
needed their aid, and Ellison discusses the effects that it had on the race as a whole:
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“Arising out of a type of Negro nationalism which, in a sense, is admirable, it would
settle all problems on the simple principle that Negroes deserve equal treatment with all
other free beings.” (Ellison, 235) Here Ellison makes an interesting observation about the
changes that occurred with the coming of the second World War; with America suddenly
in need of soldiers to go overseas, there had to be some admission of equality on the part
of white people in order to recruit black people to serve in their military. Though the
Civil Rights Movement did not gain the renown its famous for today until decades after
the war, Ellison makes a good point that the second World War could be considered a
point in history where there was a change in the attitude of black people about their rights
in the United States. The fact that so many of them had served in the military would later
become a powerful force behind the Civil Rights Movement. Their role in the war helped
fuel many of the accusations of injustice that the black people involved in the movement
were resisting. If black people had given their lives and sacrificed so much in order to
defend this country, why could they not have the same rights as the white people when
they had fought just as hard as them? This shift in the attitude of African-Americans is
what Ellison wanted to emphasize in his essay, because it became one of the most
powerful motivations behind the Civil Rights Movement and the goals that it was trying
to accomplish. The reader can also see the irony of Ellison’s statements, however, when
the sections of Invisible Man involving the Brotherhood are analyzed in this context.
They appear to be an example of what happens when a movement fueled by racial issues
goes terribly wrong; instead of having men who are focused on permanent change for the
better, we have the Brothers of the organization who are more concerned with being in
their established rungs of power. In the novel Ellison seems to be working his way
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through how this kind of motivation through the suffering of the past can manipulate the
minds and wants of those in power, such as Brother Jack and the other Brothers who
follow his lead.
Ellison’s perception of race in his novel Invisible Man has also sparked research
into his own manner of viewing the black race. Many scholars who have delved into
Ellison’s writing and life have discovered just what Ellison was trying to accomplish.
Both John Stark and Jerry Watts dedicated their studies of Ellison around the principle of
heroism in different aspects, Watts focusing on Ellison’s own role as a hero amongst the
black people of America, and Stark preoccupied with comparing the role of Ellison’s
unnamed protagonist as a sort of Homer-esque hero. Focusing first on Watts’s analysis of
Ellison, the reader begins to see some of the scholarly response to Ellison’s writing and
how he operated as a writer in his time. Jerry Watts does a thorough investigation into the
mixed critical response to Ellison’s work, and what kind of role he played in spreading
the struggle of black people in America.
Watts admits in portions of his essays to having some amount of difficulty in
analyzing Ellison’s writing; he blames this mostly on Ellison’s tendency to write out of
his time, focusing on places and time periods that existed in the past and emphasized the
strength of folklore that did not exist with such intensity in his own lifetime. Because of
this, Watt feels that sometimes Ellison’s writing can feel strangely disconnected from the
people of the time periods he is writing within for the sake of enhancing the customs and
developments that were made by said people. He does note, however, that Ellison’s
writing makes up for the problems that its has through what it did manage to achieve
during the time that Ellison composed it in. Whereas many theorists have wanted to argue
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that Ellison’s writing were his attempts at black nationalism, Watts sees Ellison’s works
as something else: “ He is a Negro nationalist and insofar as he believes that Negro
culture is an American phenomenon and occupies a centrality within American culture,
Ellison is an American nationalist.” (Watts, 107) Whereas Richard Wright and other
Afro-American writers were more focused on making the black race an independent
entity from the identities established by white society, Ellison was more concerned with
establishing a black racial identity that coexisted with white society and relied on the
traditions that were developed from the mingling of the two cultures. Watts emphasizes
the importance of Ellison’s perspective because it truly set him apart from many other
black writers, both his contemporaries and black writers that came before him. Through
Watts’s argument the reader can begin to see perspectives of Ellison’s writing where he
exemplifies scholarly heroism. He offers in this novel a way for the black people to strive
for the plane of racial equality through different means than what had been emphasized
before his time.
John Stark talks more thoroughly about heroism with regard to the fictional
characters of Invisible Man, primarily the unnamed protagonist of the story. His
argument for Ellison’s writing correlates partially with Watts’s argument in that he
believes as well that Ellison was attempting to give a representation of the black race and
how they should establish their racial identity: “Like other epics, The Odyssey portrays a
hero who embodies the identity of a nation. Ellison’s hero, too, is representative of his
people, Black Americans.” (Stark, 60) Stark’s argument is well supported by Ellison’s
writing; the protagonist experiences many of the struggles that nearly all black people
encounter in their existence in white culture and society. He faces the tyranny of other
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black men who exploit their power, such as Brother Jack and Bledsoe, white men that
manipulate their authority, such as Norton, who at the end disowns the protagonist as his
prodigal son by claiming to have never known him, and so on. Ellison casts his hero as
unnamed because it is meant for the reader to be able to step into his shoes; even people
who are not black and perhaps have never experienced these troubles now have the
opportunity to see what it is like to have such an identity. The protagonist can be
identified as heroic because he eventually manages to severe his ties to these detrimental
forces, which have manipulated him, and comes to represent the whole of his race
through shunning his own identity.
Race, however, is not the only issue that has been discussed about Ellison’s book;
gender is another factor in the story that has been the topic of several essays surrounding
Invisible Man. The presence of women – or rather, the lack of any prominent women – in
the story has made for many arguments that Ellison was fighting for racial identity while
simultaneously shutting out the presence of females almost entirely. Smethhurst regards
this topic with as a somewhat ironic twist in Ellison’s novel, since he was trying to
convey his take on how to assert one’s identity.
“As Carol Sylvander pointed out in one of the earliest essays examining
the representation of women in the novel, Ellison relies on familiar female
types or stereotypes in a relatively straightforward manner that seems
strange for a work so taken with ‘the peculiar disposition of the eyes’ of
Americans, black and white, when it comes to truly seeing the unnamed
narrator-protagonist as an individual human. (77)” (Smethhurst, 117)
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Carol Sylvander is a theorist that will be taken into account later on in this essay,
but Smethhurst’s observations using her research has made a crucial point about Ellison’s
work. The fact that the women of his stories are portrayed as being nameless for the most
part (with the exception of a handful) can be taken more than one way. It could be that
Ellison wanted to leave his female characters nameless because it would help the reader
to associate themselves with these unnamed personas as well, to establish the same kind
of connection he was striving for with regard to his narrator. But Smethhurst’s argument
isn’t without its own strength; the fact that Ellison gives women so little a role in his
story is alarming. The reader gets glimpses of female characters in the novel, but they are
usually just incidental characters or lack a very solid personality to tie them to, unlike the
narrator who has a fluid but noticeable identity.
Claudia Tate has a somewhat different take on the importance and role of women
in Ellison’s novel, which she discusses in her own essay “ Notes on the Invisible Women
in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.” Instead of arguing that their role as usually nameless
characters lessens their characters, Tate takes a different approach and argues that there is
significance to the female characters that Ellison was trying to convey. She dedicates a
good portion of her argument to discussing the role of Mary Rambo in the novel; some
theorists in the past have argued that Mary is actually supposed to represent a
stereotypical mother figure. Tate, however, believes that Mary’s character contains a lot
more essence than just a stereotype: “She is the nurturer of a black child, not the master’s
white child. She is the young protagonist’s surrogate mother who bears this son to fulfill
a similar destiny, outlined in the old slave woman’s story.” (Tate, 168) Tate’s defense of
Mary’s character is strong; Mary could be seen as a sort of mirror image to the slave
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women that are so often portrayed in stories during times of slavery. During the times of
plantations and cotton fields, it was very common that an older black woman, usually a
woman who had children of her own, would help care for the children of the
slavemaster’s wife. They could serve as wet nurses and helped keep the children in line
whenever their parents were unable to. In this instance with Mary, however, this role
seems to be entirely in reverse. Though the protagonist is black, struggling both
financially and idealistically throughout the novel, she cares for him without the
boundaries of race ever seeming to interfere with her personality. Her characteristics and
care for him do seem to place her on a similar level to those of the “Mammy” personas of
past stories and accounts, but the fact that she is white changes the perception that Tate
has of her. She wants to argue that perhaps there are some women who are shunned in
Ellison’s works, but Mary is the one redeeming, feminine factor of the story that Tate
wants to argue is an attempt at a white motherly figure who acts as a sort of hybrid
between the two races.
Going now to Carolyn Sylvander’s argument, we can see her perspective on
Ellison’s women was not as positive as Tate’s; she insists an even more extreme view
than even Smethhurst introduced in his writings. She argues instead that the view of
women in Ellison’s novel is very negative and enforced by their nameless status, because
it forms them into stereotypical figures that can easily horrify the reader. For example,
she talks about the role of what she calls the “white bitch goddess America”, the nude
white female that’s seen by the protagonist at the beginning of the battle royale scene.
Sylvander argues that this woman has been reduced to a purely abstract, symbolic level
of existence; she is described in the book as being composed of different objects as
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witnessed by the unnamed protagonist. Sylvander was also very disturbed by the image
of Sybil that comes in near the end of the novel. Sybil insists on wanting to be raped in
the novel, and Sylvander argues that her character becomes a clown-like figure because
she becomes the object of mockery to the protagonist:
“The narrator is right when he writes with her lipstick on her belly,
“SYBIL, YOU WERE RAPED…” (p. 452) Though he has done nothing
to her physically, Sybil has been raped. Mockingly, he finally sends her
away – she is not useful to him after all – telling the taxi driver, “Take her
straight home and don’t let her get out of the cab. I don’t want her running
around Harlem. She’s a precious, a great, lady.” (p. 160) Exit Sybil the
clown.” (Sylvander, 78)
Sylvander’s argument is harsh but exceptional; her close analysis of the female
characters was so strong that it influenced theorists like Smethhurst and Tate, who have
already been discussed, and both of whom refer to her at least once in their essays on
women in Invisible Man. Sylvander is convinced strongly that the female characters of
the novel, however, were created in order to be wretched symbols of either the negative
white woman, which is shown through the “white bitch goddess America”, or as objects
to be made fun of and ridiculed, such as Sybil. The only woman that she observes that
does not fit entirely into this mold is Mary Rambo, who she argues is still supposed to
represent the stereotypical black motherly figure, but at the same time does not carry as
many of the monstrous attributes that the other women of the book do.
Socioeconomic status in Ellison’s novel also deserves at least a brief look,
because it does appear in the novel and it has garnered some attention from scholars who
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have analyzed the book. We see instances of poverty and the struggling finances that
blacks underwent in the story; the protagonist himself suffers at times because of lack of
money, he regards Mary’s own struggles with money as she stirs some cabbage stew, and
he makes his first big speech that gets him involved with the Brotherhood by initiating a
rallying cry as an old couple are evicted from their home ruthlessly. Socioeconomic
struggles are a bit of a backdrop with regard to the issues of race and gender, but there is
still some regard of how hard it was in this time period for black people to make a decent
living. Ellison shows this primarily through his protagonist’s inability to hold down a job
for too long in the novel as he shifts between identities. Robert Washington talks briefly
about the role of economic status in Ellison’s novel, and how Ellison portrays it as some
sort of untouchable status that no one of black status, at least in his world, can truly
obtain. He talks about this with regard to the battle royale scene: “Aside from
representing the malevolence of provincial white racism, this scene reveals the paradox
posed for blacks by the American dream. As one commentator has aptly noted, “All of
the prizes of white society (women, money) are thus held out to them, only to be denied”
(Bone 1958, 203)” (Washington, 207) The socioeconomic stability enjoyed by whites is
thus fittingly described as a sort of fantasy, an unattainable goal for black people who
always have the things they want held out of their reach. The protagonists instability in
society only affirms this notion, because it signifies the fact that no matter how hard he
tries, the white culture and economy just does not have a place for him in it, and so he
moves from job to job, home to home, throughout the novel, until he finally realizes that
he is truly invisible.
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There are countless issues that thrive within Ellison’s novel; the examples
presented in this essay are a mere handful of many documents dedicated to making sense
of just what it is that Ellison wanted to teach his readers. Race may be the main focus of
his writing, but there are other factors at stake in his novel as well, including both gender
and socioeconomic status. Ellison was very interested in writing about the different issues
and struggles that existed in his time period while simultaneously calling back to the past,
into the times of slavery, and all of these factors discussed in this work revolved around
the concept of hardship. The nameless protagonist is witness to many of the injustices
that existed in the times before the Civil Rights Movement, when the principle of equality
and hope for a better world were strengthened. Though change is on the horizon, as
Ellison insinuates in his essay about the influence of World War II, Invisible Man
appears to be hovering on a point where these three issues are still thriving in the cities
and engulfing the protagonist in his travels. All of the issues that he regards in his novel
are still very prominent today and thrive, though in more weaker and subtle forms than in
Ellison’s day. But the roles that they play in his novel show a world that is not so
different from our own, and in the end as the narrator says, he does speak for all of us
after having experienced all of this for himself.
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Annotated Bibliography
Baker, Houston. “To Move Without Moving: An Analysis of Creativity and Commerce
in Ralph Ellison’s Trueblood Episode.” The Critical Response to Ralph Ellison.
(Ed.) Robert J. Butler. 73-93. Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000.
Baker is very preoccupied with the role of Trueblood in Ellison’s novel; how he
represents many of the stereotypes of black people but also, in part, embodies the
essences of the culture that was created for blacks in the South during slavery.
Baker then extends his argument out from Trueblood’s story to other issues that
are present in this story, such as the enigmatic presence of sexuality, the role of
taboos, and so on. Baker covers a wide variety of research in his essay that will
help in order to see how Ellison has dealt with the sometimes confusing,
sometimes entrancing roles of the black race in his works. He also provides a
wide variety of topics to chose from that relate to sexuality (including the
masculine fears of castration) that will also add some fuel to the gender issues in
question within the novel.
Ellison, Ralph. “The Negro and the Second World War.” Cultural Contexts for Ralph
Ellison’s Invisible Man. (Ed.) Eric J. Sundquist. 233-240 Boston: Bedford Books
of St. Martin’s Press, 1995.
This is a brief essay composed by Ellison himself where he regards the whole of
the black race during the era of the Second World War, and contemplates the
relationship between the war and the shift of attitude of his people. Ellison is
preoccupied with this viewpoint because there was a lot of debate as to why
blacks would fight in a primarily white war, started by white men and continued
by them as well. His arguments about the psychological stake of black men during
this time period gives the reader some insight as to his knowledge of how the
human mind operates, and also how the black race could be so strongly effected
by a shift in the world’s powers. Suddenly, the black people are enveloped in a
pressure to serve the very country that oppressed them for hundreds of years. It is
an interesting essay to read, and will help give some more insight to what Ellison
considered to be the mental standing of his people during this particular era, and
his sense of the race as a whole.
Smethhurst, James. “’Something Warmly, Infuriatingly Feminine”” Gender, Sexuality
and the Work of Ralph Ellison.” A Historical Guide to Ralph Ellison. (Ed.)
Steven Tracy. 115-142. United States of America: Oxford University Press, 2004.
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Smethhurst, as with some of the later sources on this sheet, is preoccupied with
the invisibility of the female characters in Ellison’s novel. His arguments are
greatly similar to what Sylvander and Tate are attempting to argue, that Ellison
reduces female characters to stereotypical, subhuman characters that are only
there to provide hindrances and distraction to male characters. He argues that
women are attracted in a sort of predatory fashion to the unnamed protagonist,
and that he repels their sexuality as though it is an obstacle to be overcome. He
also indicates that the narrator has no black female peers, no one his own true age
that shares in his struggles. Instead, women are given the role of nuisances
towards the narrator, who all but needs to beat them off with a stick. This speaks
whole-heartedly with the issues of gender in Ellison’s works.
Stark, John. “Invisible Man: Ellison’s Black Odyssey.” Negro American Literature
Forum, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Summer, 1973) pp. 60-63. St. Louis University. Stable
URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3041271 (Accessed 9 November 2008)
What really got me interested in Stark’s essay is how he manifests it around the
structure of the epic poem “The Odyssey” by Homer. He does a comparison
between the role of the nameless narrator in Ellison’s work, and the character of
Odysseus. He claims that like the classical Greek hero, the nameless narrator in
the story is in pursuit of an identity. I believe that Stark’s argument is unique in
comparing the two works to one another, and that it will give me some new
insight into the workings of Ellison and how he used his nameless narrator in
order to make a point about the ways in which identity works.
Sylvander, Carolyn. “Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and Female Stereotypes.” Negro
American Literature Forum, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Autumn, 1975) pp. 77-79. St. Louis
University. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3041094 (Accessed 9
Novermber 2008)
This article is brief, but I believe that it would help supplement some of the
arguments that I plan to make about the role of gender in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible
Man. She analyzes many of the central women characters in the novel, such as
Emma, Sybil, and even the nameless nude white woman that’s present during the
battle royale scene early on in the story. She argues that the women represent
subhuman characters that are stereotypical symbols of women; she calls the nude
white woman the “white bitch goddess America” and argues that Sybil is nothing
more than a “clown”, an avenue for amusement for the character regardless of the
harsh things that have happened to her. Sylvander’s argument will help to analyze
how Ellison himself utilized stereotypes in his story, even if he was trying to
shake the foundations of others.
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Tate, Claudia. “Notes on the Invisible Women in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.”
Speaking for You – The Vision of Ralph Ellison. Ed. Kathleen W. Benston. 163172. Washington D.C.: Howard University Press, 1987.
Claudia Tate makes several arguments that mirror some of the principles that
Carolyn Sylvander argued in the essay above. She is concerned with the
seemingly nonexistant women that are in Ellison’s Invisible Man and even uses
Carolyn Sylvander’s essay as a source in her work. Tate’s argument will both help
strengthen the principles that Sylvander has already introduced, but also talks
more at length about the role of female characters with regard to the far more
prominent men in the story. She talks about a wider range of characters as well in
her work, including the characters of Mary and some of the unnamed female
characters like the old slave woman that the narrator speaks with in the prologue.
Her arguments will help to shine some more light onto the subject of gender roles
in Invisible Man.
Washington, Robert E. The Ideologies of African American Literature: From the Harlem
Renaissance to the Black Nationalist Movement. New York: Rowman 7
Littlefield Publishers Inc., 2001.
Washington dedicates only a brief section to Ellison in the midst of his wife
research of the varying African-American movements, but what he has to say
about him is important to include in this essay. What was very striking about this
work is that it also relates to Watts’s discussion of Ellison’s interactions with
other African-American writers, primarily focusing on Ellison’s analysis of the
character of Bigger Thomas, a creation of Richard Wright, and appears very
interested in the friendship that Ellison had with Wright during part of their
writing careers. This section will aid in providing more evidence of Ellison’s
resistance to the stereotypical image of black people, and why he was so insistent
on estabilishing a new image for his race through removing the identity of his
protagonist.
Watts, Jerry. Heroism and the Black Intellectual. United States of America: The
University of North Carolina Press, 1994.
In this book, Watts has compiled various essays that he has written on the topic of
Ralph Ellison with regard to his writing style and his influences as well. He
covers a range of topics, including a study into the vernacular influences of Ralph
Ellison (such as the blues, etc.) But perhaps the most fascinating section is the one
he did about the responsibilities of a black writer, principles that he has derived
from reading Ellison and observing his writing patterns. This section focuses
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primarily on Ellison’s interactions with other African-American writers, and
shows some of the views he upheld about black people. It will help to argue about
Ellison’s own perception of his race and give some backing to the personification
of black people in his novel.
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