Ellison\'s Invisible Man the Classic

Ellison's Invisible Man

The classic American novel, Invisible Man is a demonstrative example of the power of black American literature to transform the ideas of the separation of the outward expression with the inward thought. Ralph Ellison creates a nameless black man that constantly confronts his existence as an "other" in the world. Invisibility is a constant theme in the work, as it is clear that the narrators realization of invisibility is essential to both his objectification and his eventual realization of freedom. Blindness and invisibility are woven through the work as elemental states that transform the narrator and the other characters into complete beings, as apposed to stereotyped caricatures. To become a whole black man in this broken world, one must set blindness aside, but embrace invisibility, to ensure his place in the mechanisms of change. His existence is therefore a complete contradiction, as fighting for rights he does not intend to actually use to challenge the world in his own lifetime, a similar struggle to that of his grandfather, the former slave. The overarching theme of the work is in fact the desire of the narrator to both reject and embrace the deathbed message of his docile and good grandfather,

Son after I'm gone I want you to keep up the good fight. I never told you, but our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy's country ever since I give up my gun back in the Reconstruction. Live with your head in the lion's mouth. I want you to overcome 'em with yeses, undermine 'em with grins, agree 'em to death and destruction, let 'em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open." He had been the meekest of men..."Learn it to the younguns," he whispered fiercely; then he died. (16)

The invisible man, first fought against this demand and then embraced it with the realization that his destiny was to live as his grandfather did, invisible but not blind, agreeing with the white man to understand his ways and eventually break them. He had to be of two minds, taking the arbitrary abuse so he could be invisible, a traitor in the white man's war against the black man.

In the opening of the work the invisible man is thrown into an exhibition of racism that demonstrates the essential nature of the stereotyped black man, as something to be laughed at and fully dehumanized by ideas of his desire for the unattainable, white women, wealth and the respect of the white man, as a representation of his lack of respect for his fellow black man. The battle royal, consisted of several young black men first being exposed to a naked white woman dancing, then being forced to fight one another while blindfolded, for an unnamed prize, which turns out in the end to be money thrown upon an electrified mat. The invisible man, was placed in this position when he went to the all white event to recite his valedictorian speech. He recited his speech, which consisted of a demand for the black man to make friends with his white neighbors, rather than fighting them. During the majority of the fight the invisible man was blindfolded, and therefore disadvantaged and afraid, "I wanted to see, to see more desperately than ever before...Blindfolded, I could no longer control my motions. I had no dignity." (22) During the recitation of his speech, swallowing his own blood and spit, he was invisible to the audience, who only paid attention when he was saying something they disagreed with. "I spoke automatically and with such fervor that I did not realize that the men were still talking and laughing until my dry mouth, filing up with blood from the cut..." (30) These opening messages become a constant theme throughout the work, as do the stereotyped pictures of blacks. In the electrifying scene of the newly beaten black boys there is a scene of one being thrown upon the electrified rug, where upon he, "...heard him yell and saw him literally dance upon his back." (27) This stereotype is even further expressed later in the work when the narrator is exposed to electro-shock therapy and those whites around him commented on the rhythm of his movements during the treatment, "...Look he's dancing," someone called. No, really?" An oily face looked in. "They really do have rhythm, don't they? Get hot, boy! Get hot!" It said with a laugh...." (237)

An angry black man, educated as a doctor but unable to practice as anything but a veterinarian characterizes the invisible man as not only invisible but also blind. The narrator brings a white man to a black school to receive medical care and the doctor assassinates him with characterizations "Behold! A walking zombie! Already he's learned to repress not only his emotions but his humanity. He's invisible, a walking personification of the Negative...He'll do your bidding and for that his blindness is his best asset." (95) the veterinarian, frightens the invisible man, because he is a black man speaking frankly to a white man, a white man who contributes to black education, none the less. The characterization is that the invisible man is fooled by believing that "white is right," (95) it is not clear if the invisible man is more concerned that the black man will be perceived as crazy, or that the white man will remove his support of the school or lastly if the white man will become aware of the falsehood of the relationship the two of them have. The invisible man is to the veterinarian a fool that will believe anything the white man says to reinforce his indoctrination as a "good" black man, doing as he is told with humor and humility, regardless of the level of humiliation he is exposed to. The invisible man encounters countless examples of racist treatment, some of it to the extreme, and yet the development of himself as a man is the process of shirking blindness and embracing invisibility to become as whole as he possibly can be in a broken world.

The narrator, goes away to school in the north and seems to be a fish out of water, he feels as if he is treated with respect, but only on the surface and he does not know how to comprehend the veiled subtlety of racism, that grounds the north. He spends countless hours seeking a job, by bringing letters to important men, who might be able to give him a job, once the scholarship, he received on the evening of the battle royal, is revoked after he has completed his third year of college. He describes the manner in which the integrated whites in the city respond to him and how confusing it is to him. There is a clear sense of him beginning to accept his role as invisible, as well as fighting the blindness of ignorance.

I was unsure of how I should act. For the first time, as I swung along the streets. I thought consciously of how I had conducted myself at home. I hadn't worried too much about whites as people. Some were friendly and some were not, and you tried not to offend either. But here they all seemed impersonal; and yet when most impersonal they startled me by being polite, by begging my pardon after brushing against me in a crowd. Still I felt that even when they were polite they hardly saw me, that they would have begged the pardon of Jack the Bear, never glancing his way if the bear happened to be walking along minding his business. (168)

The invisible man was invisible and afraid. The rules of the south, with its open and accepted segregation were clear, even though there were still ambiguous accusations waged against blacks, the ways were clear and one simply made all the effort they could to make sure they did not transgress the social norms. In the north by contrast, he was tolerated as if he did not exist, and the false niceties of the white people he encountered created a sense of confusion.

The first trustee that actually meets with him, hints to him of the extreme trap that abounds this subtle segregation. As the invisible man begins to calm, in the meeting the white man gives him every indication that he believes that his overt ambition, evidenced by his petitions for jobs in white firms were unwelcome. The important white man says, "You're very ambitious." I guess I am, sir. But I'm willing to work hard." "...The only trouble with ambition is that is sometimes blinds one to realities." (184) Sadly the man gave him the grave news that the letters of recommendation, given him by the professor at the college actually contained a clear message of expulsion, from the college, for the episode where he had attempted to help the white man, and instead invoked the anger of the black veterinarian. According to his benefactor his case, represents, my dear Mr. Emerson, one of the rare delicate instances in which one for whom we held great expectations has gone grievously astray, and who in his fall threatens to upset certain delicate relationships between certain interested individuals and the school. Thus, while the bearer is no longer a member of our scholastic family, it is highly important that his severance with the college be executed as painlessly as possible. I beg of you sir, to help him continue in the direction of that promise which, like the horizon, receded ever brightly and distantly beyond a hopeful traveler." (191)

As he was the inadvertent instigator of a white benefactor of his college being exposed to the ill temper of a black man who teaches there and is apparently capable of truth-telling, the invisible man is dismissed from his beloved school. The manner in which it is done, though it was meant to be kind, was really just a guised way of dismissing him, so he would simply have no recourse. If anyone in the "system" informed him of the situation, as the young Mr. Emerson does, then he must be sworn to secrecy, as it would unsettle the precarious balance between the black educators and their white benefactors, yet again.

The whole of the frame (or, if you will, the whole of the hole) proclaims that the narrative distinction to be drawn between tale and frame is a trope for other distinctions central to Invisible Man, including those between blindness and insight, sleepfulness and wakefulness, sickness and health, social structure and nonstructure, History and history, embodied voice and disembodied voice, and acts of speech and of writing.

Bloom 22)

The invisible man, made his way through the world, believing that he could only change the world if he worked within the white man's rules. "Yessuh, yessuh! Though invisible I would be their assuring voice of denial..." (Ellison 515) He made himself, invisible, but rejected blindness, as he attempted to elicit change. "Why should I worry over bureaucrats, blind men? I am invisible." (528) the invisible man's illicit white lover, having exposed him to one of the most extreme of all white-black stereotypes, that of the sexually ravenous black man and the seeking white woman, drunkenly states that she wishes life were different, "life could be so diff'rent-" and the narrator responds with learned wisdom, "But it never is." (227)