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Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison, 1952
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Invisibility "touches anyone who lives in a big metropolis."
(New Yorker, 5/2/94)
“Black and Blue”
Louis Armstrong & His Orchestra
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Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
(1914-1994)
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published in 1952
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1953 – won the National Book Award
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1965 – named the most distinguished American novel since WWII
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Setting: begins in 1948, flashes back 20 years to begin the
story in 1928
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“The invisible man is just that…neither black or white…he is
a human being in search of his place in history past, present,
and future. He is in search of his own humanity.”
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***KEY IDEA***
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In analyzing the novel, note that IM moves from PURPOSE to
PASSION to PERCEPTION throughout the entire novel
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Modern/Postmodern themes
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Possible Purposes:
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1. to depict man’s search for identity or “visibility”
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2. to explore Blindness (illusions, appearances, masks) vs.
Truth (reality, sight)
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3. to present the stages a man passes through to
enlightenment
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4. to explore the significance of the past on the present
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5. to examine how to retain one’s individuality within the
community
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6. to chronicle the Black experience in America.
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Notes on Ellison’s Style and
Themes
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1. Style: echoes that of other African-American writers,
particularly those involved in the Harlem Renaissance.
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2. Focus: the alienation of the African-American (and, by
extension, the individual) in an ostensibly free society.
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3. Central question of the novel: “How can one person make a
difference when all of the avenues to power are occupied by
the duplicitous?”
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4. PICARESQUE NOVEL
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Notes on Ellison’s Style and
Themes (cont’d.)
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Contemporary problems in racial relations are reflected in
the following ways:
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a. The taboo of white-black romantic relationships
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b. Black power figures were often seen by other blacks as
conspirators with whites.
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c. The problem of stereotypical dolls and images of blacks
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d. The benefits (and drawbacks) of the Communist party in
America
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e. The conflict between the assimilationists and the separatists
within the black community
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In his acceptance speech for the National Book Award of
1952, Ellison asserted that Invisible Man's chief significance 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 fiction” (SA 102).
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Allusions Galore
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Ellison draws from:
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the Bible
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classical works in the European tradition (Dante, Eliot)
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major works in the American canon (Emerson, Hemingway, Huck
Finn)
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African American literature and folklore (Uncle Remus, “Little
Black Sambo”
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African American historical figures (Booker T. Washington, W.E.B.
DuBois, etc.)
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native American mythology
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children's games and rhymes
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his own experience
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Invisible Man concerns the quest of an unnamed young black
man for personal identity and racial community as he travels
from South to North, from innocence to experience, from selfdeception to knowledge, from a spurious visibility to an
existential invisibility. These journeys take place in the
immediate context of the late Depression, but, as they unfold,
their implications extend backward in time to the
Reconstruction, slavery, and the founding of the Republic,
and outward from the protagonist's self to the social situation
of black America and to the very nature of the democratic
experiment.