Tuesday, December
th
8 , 2015
Please take out your copy of “Hidden Name and Complex
Fate.” You will also need a few clean sheets of paper and a
pen or pencil.
Learning Target
On the board
Homework: Invisible Man
Chapters 11 – 15 ; By Friday, please
bring in a quote that encapsulates
who you are (for the yearbook).
Please also know who originally said
it.
Invisible Man Chapter 6
– 10 Annotations
Major or Minor Grade Discussion
Invisible Man Essay
 In Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison explores a number of different
themes throughout the novel. Write a well – organized essay in
which you analyze how Ellison develops one of these themes
through his use of characterization.
Race and Racism
Identity and Invisibility
Power and Self – Interest
Dreams and the Unconscious
Ambition and Disillusionment
“Hidden Name and Complex
Fate”
 In a well – developed, constructed response, explain the “unity
between [your] self and [your] name.” Also, explain how we
see the opposite portrayed in Ellison’s Invisible Man. Please
utilize textual evidence to support your assertions.
What type of novel is
Invisible Man?
Besides Existentialist
The Bildungsroman
Bildungsroman
 A bildungsroman is a novel that traces the psychological and
moral development and maturation of the main character or
characters.
 Sometimes also referred to as a ‘coming of age’ story.
 Usually, this presentation pertains to the protagonist. It can also,
however, show the inverse development of the antagonist.
Plot of Bildungsroman
1) Emotional
loss for youth
2) Youth leaves
home on “journey”
4) Youth learns,
matures
5) Young adult accepts
values of society.
Society accepts him.
3) Encounters
many conflicts
External - man
vs. society
Internal - man
vs. himself
6) Adult returns home
with new knowledge to
benefit society.
Construction of the Bildungsroman
The writer creates situations that allow the
reader to see the young protagonist grow
and experience struggles in this journey to
adulthood through formal education,
personal experience and various kinds of
relationship.
The writer often shows the protagonist
struggling with the transition between the
innocence of childhood and the
responsibility that comes with adulthood.
Think: how might these struggles relate to the
title of the novel?
Examples of the Bildungsroman
 Charles Dickens's Great Expectations
 Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre
 James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
 J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye
 S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders
 Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird
Invisible
Man
by
Ralph Ellison
Jeff Wall
 Canadian artist
 Cover page is a display that Wall did from a famous
scene in Invisible Man. This exhibit was at the
Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.
 “In my hole in the basement there are exactly 1,369
lights. I’ve wired the entire ceiling.”
 “The truth is the light and light is the truth.”
 It has been suggested that the 1,369 equals Ellison’s
age squared at the time he finished the novel: age
37. With numbers transposed, it could also represent
the year (1936) that Ellison came to New York City.
Author’s
Background
Ralph Waldo Ellison
 1914 – 1994
 Born in Oklahoma City
 Attended Tuskegee
(Alabama) and studied music
 Invisible Man was published in
1952.
 He has been a professor and a
lecturer.
 He views himself as an “artist
recording the human
condition.”
 In
1936 after three years at
Tuskegee, Ellison went to New York
City to earn money before his senior
year. He never returned to college; he
remained in Harlem where he met
Langston Hughes and Richard
Wright. Wright encouraged Ellison to
write—and he did.
 Ellison joined the Federal Writer’s
Project in 1938, which introduced him
to “the richness of black urban
culture.”
 During WWII, he served as a cook
on a merchant marine ship. After the
war he moved to New Hampshire
where he began writing Invisible Man.
 With the help of a grant, Ellison spent all his
time writing Invisible Man. It was published in 1952.
 In 1958, Ellison began teaching at Bard College;
he also taught at Rutgers, the University of Chicago,
Yale and New York University.
 Reaction to Invisible Man was harsh—attacked by
“militants as reactionary and banned from schools
because of its explicit descriptions of black life.”
 However, in 1965, a poll of literary critics named
Invisible Man the most outstanding work by an
American author in the past twenty years.
 Ellison continued to write; he published essays—
but never another novel.
 In 1992, he was awarded a special achievement
award.
“Invisibility is Mr. Ellison’s central metaphor…a profound
explanation of what it is like in the black experience to feel
alienated…invisibility speaks for all of us---for anyone who
sits at the margin of society, who feels voiceless, whose
humanity is not acknowledged.”
--A first
edition
--1952
--$4000
Harlem
Renaissance
Harlem Renaissance
 Intellectual movement by African-American artists and
writers during the 1920s and 1930s
 Migration of African-Americans to northern cities
 “A flowering of Negro literature” per James Weldon
Johnson
 An explosion of creativity in literature where art and
music “uplifted” the Negro race
 The Negro used his creativity to be “heard” and a
demand for equality
 The Harlem Renaissance would lay the foundation for the
Civil Rights Movement.
A Time To Dance
Jazz and Blues
Jazz and the Blues
The Jazz Age was a
period in the 1920s that
expressed a “spirit of
unconventionality,
gaiety and dissipation
that followed World War
I.”
Harlem Renaissance
FAMOUS WRITERS
--Zora Neale Hurston
--Langston Hughes
--Richard Wright
FAMOUS ENTERTAINERS
--Louis Armstrong
--Duke Ellington
--Bessie Smith
--Josephine Baker
Zora Neale Hurston
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
1891 - 1960
Known as an African American writer and
folklorist
Best known for her 1937 novel, Their Eyes
Were Watching God.
She studied anthropology and traveled
extensively in the Caribbean and the
American South, where she immersed
herself in local cultural practices to conduct
her anthropological research.
Collected folklore in Jamaica, Haiti,
Bermuda, and Honduras
As a fiction writer, Hurston is noted for her
symbolic language, story – telling abilities,
and her interest in and celebration of
Southern Black culture in the U.S.
Her book, Of Mules and Men, remains one
of the few writings to chronicle folk tales
thoroughly.
Richard Wright
• 1908 – 1960
• Well known for the 1940
bestseller Native Son and
his 1945 autobiography
Black Boy
• His novel, Native Son,
became the first book by an
African American writer to
be selected by the Book – of
– the Month Club.
• His writings had profound
influence on his
contemporaries as well as
the writers that followed.
Langston Hughes
 1902 – 1967
 A significant figure in
the development of
black literature
 His poetry is known
for its “simplicity,
directness and
musicality.”
 His poems deal
“with the tribulations
and joys of the
American black.”
I, too, sing America
Langston Hughes
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—
I, too, am America.
Louis
Armstrong
“What did I do to be so black and blue?”
Louis Armstrong
Song Clip
“What Did I Do to be so Black and Blue?”
sung by Louis Armstrong
Old empty bed…springs hard as lead
Feel like ol’ Ned…wished I was dead
What did I do…to be so black and blue
How would it end…ain’t got a friend
Even the mouse…ran from my house
My only sin…is in my skin
They laugh at you…and scorn you too
What did I do…to be so black and
blue
What did I do…to be so black and blue
I’m white…inside…but that don’t help
my case
‘Cause I…can’t hide…what is in my face
How would it end…ain’t got a friend
My only sin…is in my skin
What did I do…to be so black and
blue
Duke
Ellington
"It Don't
Mean A
Thing"
Bessie
Smith
American Blues
Singer
"Nobody Knows You
When You're Down
and Out"
Invisible
Man
Major Literary Elements in Novel
 bildungsroman - novel of formative education, the
story of a single individual’s growth (the narrator’s
journey)
 metaphor – a comparison between two unlike things
(the metaphor of invisibility)
 symbolism – a person, place, object or activity that
stands for something beyond itself (Note the many
symbols discernible in the novel; see slides on
symbols.)
 motif – a recurring literary element that is repeated
within a literary work (e.g. blindness)
 structure – the way in which the parts of a literary
work are put together (How does Ellison “narrate” the
story?)
 stereotypes - characters who conform to a fixed
pattern or are defined by a single trait
 irony – contrast between expectation and reality
 juxtaposition - two contrasting elements side by
side
 foreshadowing – the use of clues that suggest
events that have yet to occur
 prologue – an introduction to a literary work
 epilogue – the final part of a work that completes
it
 imagery – descriptive language to recreate
sensory experiences relating to sight, taste, touch,
hearing and smell
 tone – an expression of a writer’s attitude toward
a subject – The writer’s choice of words and details
helps establish the tone.
ELLISON’S STYLE & Setting
 Ellison’s style echoes that of other African-American writers,
particularly those involved in the Harlem Renaissance.
 His writing contains many sound devices—particularly alliteration—
and utilizes anaphora to highlight some of his most poignant
points.
 Ellison employs an impressive vocabulary, his style is not formal. It is
almost lyric with its considerable use of sound devices.
 The reader feels like he or she is riding down a river, rather than
sitting on a chair.
 Similes and metaphors, particularly in the “battle royal,” the
Golden Day, and the Liberty Paints scenes, extend the effect of
the sound devices as far as emphasizing particular thematic
points.
ELLISON’S STYLE, SETTING AND
THEMES

Ellison’s focus is the alienation of the African-American in an ostensibly free
society.

He analyzes the ways in which race is used as a mechanism of power—not only
by whites over blacks, but by some blacks (such as Dr. Bledsoe) over other
blacks.

This alienation becomes apparent through the frenzied tone (driven by syntax) of
much of the book.

The central question of the novel is: “How can one person make a difference
when all of the avenues to power are occupied by the duplicitous?”

No matter where the narrator tries to pursue success and autonomy in an
authentic manner, he finds the road ahead of him blocked by those who have
decided to collude against those below.

His initial solution, to hide in a basement and steal power from the electric
company, fails to solve the problem, so he ultimately decides to come forth and
pursue change.
SETTING: HARLEM DURING
THE 1930’S
 Details of the period are accurate, including descriptions of
apartment housing, public transportation, and working conditions.
 The descriptions of the college that the narrator attended, as well
as the trip around the city and the Golden Day, accurately reflect
conditions and expectations placed on black students in the
South.
 Contemporary problems in racial relations are reflected.
 The benefits (and drawbacks) of the Communist party in American
are well represented by the Brotherhood’s machinations in Harlem.
 The conflict between the assimilationists and the separatists within
the black community are represented by Dr. Bledsoe and by Ras
the Exhorter.
What should look for?
 Music References: jazz, musicians
 Tone: Shifts in tone accompany changes of plot direction
 Ellison’s use of descriptive passages
 Songs: “feet like a monkey..”, “Poor Robin”
 Southern motifs
 Blindness/sight/eyes references
 Quote Topics: identity , power, truth, winning the game and
playing the game, ambition, freedom
What else should I look for?
 1) The Tuskegee Institute
 (2) The Communist Party in America (pre Mc Carthy era)
 (3) Jazz music and its influence on America
 (4) Influences on Ralph Ellison (literary and otherwise)
 (5) The Harlem Renaissance
 (6) Booker T. Washington vs. WEB DuBois (their competing
theories/ideas)
Symbols
As you read the novel,
consider the
importance of the
following symbols
.
The Infamous
Briefcase
The Battle
Royal
Narrator’s
ability to
make
speeches
Optic
white is
the best
white
Hot
buttered
yams
Cast
iron
bank
Ball and
chain
Sambo
dolls
Seven
letters
Invisibility
Ralph Ellison
ends his novel
with
this question.
“Who knows
but that, on the
lower
frequencies,
I speak for
you?”