Invisible Man JOURNALS
You will need to turn in 7 journal entries in order to receive full credit for your reading of the text. Check your
calendar for due dates. Listed below are possible prompts for your writing. If you choose to respond to one of
these prompts for your journal, make sure the prompt is relevant to the chapters you have read for that day’s
class (ie., don’t write a prompt about chapter 11 if you’re on chapter 3). Remember the purpose for your
writing is to engage with what you feel is significant about the part of the text you have read. Journals will be
due at the beginning of class on the dates indicated on your calendar. Journals may be sent by email or posted
on the Wiki.
1. Describe your reaction to the violence described in the beginning chapters. What does this violence tell us
about the culture it describes? Our protagonist?
2. What things or characteristics do you see being used symbolically? Explain how this symbolism is used and
why it might be significant.
3. How do you think our narrator would define success? What obstacles are revealed in your reading so far?
Which of these obstacles are external? Which are internal? How are they related?
4. How is the “twoness” described by W.E.B. Dubois evident in the characters in this text? Do you think any
character negotiates this “twoness” more effectively than other characters?
5. How is the advice the narrator gets from his grandfather, Dr. Bledsoe and the vet similar? How is it
different? What part of the advice he receives do you think the narrator should heed?
6. In what ways does the change in setting change the narrator’s story? Does his conflict change or remain the
same? What additional obstacles, if any, does he face? What additional freedoms, if any, does he encounter?
7. Chapter 11 appears to be stylistically very different from the rest of the book? What is it about the style that
makes it different? What is the chapter about? Do you think the style reflects the content of the chapter? How
does this chapter fit with the rest of the book.
8. In what ways do you see the narrator becoming more invisible? Visible? What is the significance of these
changes?
9. How is Mary different from the rest of the characters we have encountered so far? Is she a symbol of
authenticity or a symbol of retreat?
10. Do you think the narrator becomes more or less visible in these chapters?
11.What is the significance of the yams in chapter 13?
12.What is the significance of the bank in chapter 14?
13.What is the significance of the objects owned by the evicted tenants specifically described by the narrator?
14.Do you think the Brotherhood provides a place where our narrator can become visible?
15.What do you think Tod Clifton means when he says, “I suppose sometimes a man must plunge outside
history…”. In what ways are the characters choices confined by history? In what ways do the characters resist
history?
16.Choose a character that acts as a foil to our narrator? What does the comparison between the two tell us
about the narrator?
17.How are female characters portrayed in this book? What might the portrayal of female characters tell us
about the narrator, the culture, or Ellison’s views about gender?
18.Why do you think Clifton turns to selling the dolls?
19.What does the Brotherhood’s reaction to the narrator’s action in Chapter 22 reveal about them?
20.Describe the imagery of blindness used throughout the book. What do you think is the overall effect of this
imagery?
21. Wrap up your thoughts on the novel? What questions do you think this book raises? How does Ellison use
the craft of writing to explore these questions? What, if any, answers does it provide to these questions?