Ralph Ellison is best remembered for his first novel “Invisible Man”, a sensational and emotional book that can shock or sicken the reader. What is undeniable is that Ellison’s “Invisible Man” will surely make an impact. Ralph Ellison was born in Oklahoma and educated at Tuskegee Institute (Prescott, 23) (Butler, 19). He had studied music and sculpture and delivered lectures on Negro culture and James Joyce. He was also a writer who had written several short stories and essays on literary criticism. Ellison worked on Invisible Man for five years and it was published in 1952 and won the National Book Award for fiction (Ellison and Gracer, 2).
Invisible Man revolves around the emotional and intellectual hazards faced by the educated Negro in America. The book works at two levels: level of story-telling and level of exaggeration, suggestion, and symbolism. The physical and emotional segregation of American society in early times is the main theme of Invisible man. The book touches upon the dynamics of personal identity and the ways and limits in which people can know each other. The main protagonist of Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man”, through a gradual transformation through various experiences along his journey of life and the sudden turn of events in the end realizes his true self-identity.
The narrative begins and ends in a small underground room, situated significantly in a “border area.” Between these two points, the main protagonist undergoes many experiences and each experience brings with it lessons for him, causing subtle changes in his beliefs and values. The main protagonist is unnamed because he is invisible in the social context. The book is written as a first-person narrative by the main protagonist, who announces he is an invisible man but also a man of substance “flesh and bone, fiber and liquids”. Once, when the narrator feels that he has been totally ignored by a man, he uses violence to force the man to admit his presence.
Still, he remains unseen, as the newspaper reports the incident as mugging, though he had never tried to rob the man. However, the invisible man also notes that there are some advantages in being ignored by white people as he is able to live in a room that is brightly lit with 1369 light bulbs and free electricity drained off from the Monopolated Light & Power Company.
The long journey that begins with the help of 1369 light bulbs takes place on many planes: geographical, social, historical, and philosophical. The story of Ellison’s protagonist may be described as a quest for an appropriate identity. The invisible man encounters several figures of authority such as Norton, Bledsoe, and the Brotherhood all of whom give him false names and identities that do not suit him. His experiences show that the act of naming is interlinked with issues of power and control. As long as he tries to live life by the dictates of others, he loses his autonomy and is repeatedly betrayed. He discovers the true meaning of his life only after he takes up responsibility for naming himself by telling his own story (Callahan, 191).
As a child, the “main protagonist” was victimized by white Southerners who made Negro youths fight and then, pick coins lying on an electrified rug. He knows that if he is careful he can dodge the electricity. But often, due to the taunts of the surrounding folk, he is struck heavily by the electricity and thrown on the rug, writhing with agony for some time, till he is able to roll free. This experience in fact symbolized the kind of treatment he was to face all through his later life.
Later in life, he undergoes electric shock “treatment” which is intended to have the effect of a prefrontal lobotomy without actually cutting into the brain. The procedure involves the application of pressure to the centers of nerve control, thereby altering the way a man perceives reality. Electricity, which is generally used to give warmth and light, is used here for manipulating the consciousness of the American hero.
The main protagonist learns that life is all about controlling or being controlled. When the invisible man finds himself at loggerheads with Dr. Bledsoe, who runs the State College for Negroes in the South he is told: “This is a power set-up son, and I’m at the controls.” The same message is rubbed into him at a later point in his life when he sees two pictures of bullfighting in a bar. One of them shows the matador controlling the bull and the other shows him tossed on the bull’s horns.
Power in fact seemed to be the major defining force in society. The experience of the invisible man is that power is normally used for cynical manipulation of individuals and it is important that he has to try and come out of the trap of power games. For this end, he needs to have some power of his own – to “illuminate the blackness of my invisibility” – to become aware of his own self.
The narrator is warned in his youth by his dying grandfather, a half-insane war veteran and college president that the world will deceive him if he does not learn to be deceptive. The grandfather advises: “I want you to overcome ’em with yeses, undermine ’em with grins, agree on ’em to death and destruction, let ’em swollen you till they vomit or bust wide open…..Learn it to the young guns” (Ellison, 16). Dr. Bledsoe likewise confesses that he succeeded because he was able to feign humility. He is surprised to see the narrator ignorant of “the difference between the way things are and the way they are supposed to be” (Ellison, 139).
Bledsoe believes that duplicity is necessary to achieve success in the world. The war veteran also tells the protagonist that he must learn to have a fake identity “Play the game, but don’t believe in it – that much you owe yourself…Learn how it operates and learn how you operate” (Ellison, 151). The Invisible man learns the same lesson the hard way as well. He initially thinks that he can play the game without believing in it. But in time, he becomes devoted to the Brotherhood and the myth of racial uplift. Only after the murder of Tod Clifton, he understands the Brotherhood’s role in the Harlem riot and “how false a face the world presents” (Callahan, 193).
The narrator goes to receive his scholarship at a white smoker Southern town. He considers the opportunity to address a white audience as unparalleled and “a triumph for the community”. He expects that he will be truly appreciated for his oratory skills by the audience who will “judge truly (his) ability” (Ellison, 25) and reward him. But, “the gathering turns out to be a bacchanalia” (Callahan, 194).
Together with several other Negroes he is rushed to the front of the ballroom, where a sumptuous blonde tantalizes and frightens them by dancing in the nude. Then, the Negro boys are forced to fight each other blindfolded for the amusement of the drunken whites around them. Finally, amidst humiliation and terror, the narrator had to present a speech of thanks to the white audience. But even then, the narrator is so convinced about the “rightness of things” (Ellison, 30) that he takes care not to offend his audience by spitting out his bloody saliva.
In fact, he felt that the briefcase and scholarship he receives for delivering his speech eclipse all the earlier unpleasant happenings. He begins to think that if he does what the world expects of him, he will be rewarded and accepted. At this point in life, he is confident that things are as they appear to be and that the good people are always rewarded.
While in college, he pursues his American dream and views the administrators and trustees in high esteem as people who have struggled to succeed and make it big in life: “Hereupon this stage the black rite of Horatia Alger was performed to God’s own acting script, with millionaires coming down to portray themselves; not merely acting out the myth of their goodness and wealth and success and power and benevolence and authority in cardboard masks but themselves, these virtues concretely!” (Ellison, 109).
When he enters college, the narrator views Dr. Bledsoe as the ultimate example of achieving the American dream and lists all that he considers as symbols of success: “[Bledsoe] was the example of everything I hoped to be: Influential with wealthy men all over the country; consulted in matters concerning the race; a leader of his people; the possessor of not one, but two Cadillacs, a good salary and a soft, good-looking and creamy-complexioned wife” (Ellison, 99). This showed his immaturity and inability to distinguish between the material award and moral virtue.
Later on, the narrator begins to understand that the outside image of Bledsoe is only a facade. Just before entering Norton’s room, the narrator catches him change his facial expression from rage to placidity and this makes him see Bledsoe as a manipulative and dishonest power monger. But at that point, the narrator is so innocent and naive that when Bledsoe questions him why he did not lie to Norton to avoid showing him Trueblood’s shack, he replies incredulously: “Lie, sir? Lie to him, lie to a trustee, Sir? Me?” (Ellison, 137).
But when the narrator realizes that Bledsoe intends to break his promise to Norton and punish him, he learns that contradictions and accidents can happen in life and it is not necessary that effects should always flow from causes. After being suspended, as he walks towards his dormitory, he finds that the world around him has gone out of focus and he can see properly only by covering one of his eyes. This symbolizes how his perception of the world has altered because of the events.
However, he is still positive and expects that future success will diminish the extent of his present suffering or at least justify it: “There was no other way, and no matter how much I suffered I would pay my debt as quickly as possible and return to building my career” (Ellison, 145). These words may also be interpreted as meaning “that the passage of time will convert his humiliation into a mere rite of passage” (Callahan, 197). Such an acceptance is in accordance with the concept of the American dream and the myth of racial uplift.
During his early days in New York City, the narrator fantasizes about the future but avoids thinking about the past. For example, in the Men’s House, he puts the Bible in a place where he cannot see it because it made him feel homesick” “This was New York. [He] had to get a job and earn money” (Ellison, 159). When he remembers a time when he was expelled, he “hastily” (Ellison, 160) blocks it out. He tries to overlook the past and look forward to a good future that will redeem all this suffering in the past.
This future takes the picture of being Bledsoe’s assistant: “In my mind’s eye…[Bledsoe] was joined by another figure; a younger figure, myself; become shrewd, suave and dressed not in somber garments but in a dapper suit of rich material, cut fashionably, like those of the men you saw in magazine ads, the junior executive types in Esquire” ( Ellison, 160-161).
The protagonist goes job hunting in New York following the regular protocol of being well-groomed, prompt, and articulate. He feels quite sure he will get a good job as a result of manipulating his appearance. But soon he finds himself cheated. The letters of reference he carried looked impressive from the outside but Emerson showed him the contents and he realized that the contents were radically different from what he had expected. Now he realizes that the education he had received was just a sham and he feels that the American dream will never happen for him. Disillusioned by everything he feels freer in mind. He observes: “I now felt contempt such as only a disillusioned dreamer feels for those still unaware that they dream” (Ellison, 250).
Symbolically indicating that his dreams have been turned upside down, he empties the spittoon over the head of the Baptist preacher he thinks is Bledsoe. The disillusionment also creates a space within him for examining his past instead of running away from it. He even sings a childhood song “O well they picked poor Robin clean” finding in it a lesson that is applicable to his present state of affairs.
This was quite unlike him in earlier times. Moreover, when he had an appointment with Emerson, the protagonist opts to avoid eating pork chops and grits for breakfast for fear he might be mistaken as having country tastes. However, after he read Bledsoe’s letter, he feels it doesn’t really matter what he eats. This is the beginning of self-acceptance in the narrator. He buys yams and eats them publicly, and remembers having eaten them during his childhood days: “Yes, and we’d loved them candied, or baked in a cobbler, deep-fat fried in a pocket of dough, or roasted with pork and glazed with the well-browed fat; had chewed them raw- yams and years ago” (Ellison, 256).
The narrator describes the period after his college days and before his Brotherhood days as a “period of quietness” (Ellison, 252). But during this period, he undergoes a great deal of emotional upheaval as a result of being disillusioned. This creates in him an intense level of self-awareness and vulnerability that makes him more susceptible to joining the Brotherhood. The main protagonist, the invisible man works for the Brotherhood with faith and commitment. However, he is once again betrayed. To adhere to the Brotherhood, he has to give up the sociology and economics he learned in college and all of the lessons he had learned so far. In fact, the Brotherhood does not suit him any more than the American dream but then his belief was so deep that he failed to see it.
The Brotherhood is an organization that placed the interests of the organization above the interests of the individual. Brother Jack tells the Invisible Man at their first meeting: “you mustn’t waste your emotions on individuals, they don’t count” (Ellison, 284). The protagonist stays in the organization mainly seeking material and intellectual comfort. He also wishes to find some meaning in life in a chaotic world and acquire a system of belief that makes individual and political action significant. “I was dominated by the all-embracing idea of Brotherhood. The organization had given the world a new shape, and me a vital role. We recognized no loose ends, everything could be controlled by our science” (Ellison, 373).
He refused to see the Brotherhood’s mistreatment of him. When he is accused by Brother Wrestrum, he explodes but he convinces himself that the reprimand and the assignment are signs of their faith in him.
On a particular occasion, the narrator sees Clifton sell Sambo dolls on the street corner and he automatically assumes that he must have been made to leave the Brotherhood for such a degrading and meaningless work: “Why should a man deliberately plunge out of history and peddle and obscenity?” (Ellison, 428) he asks himself. Later, when he sees that the Brotherhood is indifferent to Clifton’s death and funeral he realizes that he is as invisible within the organization as he was in his hometown and college. He has an identity only as long as he obeyed the party lines. He had felt he would get a meaning to his life through the Brotherhood’s ideology. Clifton’s death and the response of the Brotherhood to it clearly showed him that Brotherhood can give him an identity only if he does not create any meaning of life for himself.
He realizes that he has been betrayed by Brotherhood as much as he was betrayed by Norton and Bledsoe earlier. He reflects and understands: “Here I had thought [the Brotherhood] accepted me because they felt that color made no difference when in reality it made no difference because they didn’t see either color or men…” (Ellison, 497). He remembers his grandfather’s advice and decides to end the game even while he pretends to play it.
To escape Ras the Exhorter’s followers, the protagonist disguises himself with sunglasses and a hat, only to find that Harlem now saw him as Rinehart, the hustler. He now has a new identity by changing his appearance a bit. The identity of Rinehart seems to suit him because Rinehart is a manipulator who dons multiple roles: pimp, lover, and preacher, he is all things to all people. The narrator now has an identity to escape into and also the chance to change identities at will. Following his principle of duplicity, the protagonist feigns compliance for some time. However, at the Harlem riot, everything went wrong.
He was tangled in a conspiracy of which he knew nothing and was unwittingly used to destroy the black community: “It was not suicide, but murder. The committee had planned it. And I had helped, had been a tool. A tool just at the very moment I had thought myself free” (Ellison, 541). He realizes that he cannot have control over his own life if he tries to play the game without believing in it. It is now that the protagonist decides “to sever his connections to society, to all of the organizations on which he had relied for self-definition, and accepts responsibility for creating his own identity” (Callahan, 208).
After talking to Brother Hambro he understands that life acquires meaning through experience: “I was my experiences and my experiences were me, and no blind men, no matter how powerful they became, even if they conquered the world, could take that or change…it” ( Ellison, 496-97). Therefore, the narrator now retreats underground to write his own story, examine his experiences and give them meaning. Now he is has new mentors – Trueblood and Brother Tarp who guide him to develop a sense of identity independent of any organization or collective set of assumptions.
He finds that all his life he has been taught that it is never possible to be deceptive enough no matter how skilled he feels he is at deception. It is because of this failure to deceive that his efforts to create identities inside and outside an institution fails. When he writes his own story, he generates his own meaning. By giving his story a beginning and an end, he gives his life some structure. He also creates a persona for himself that is different from what others have always tried to impose on him.
He also now has inverse relations with the figures of authority who dominated him in real life. As author/narrator, he can control the identities of people such as Norton, Bledsoe, and Brother Jack. He avenges the humiliations he has undergone at their hands by projecting them in dark light. He finally finds a solution to the problems of identity and authority in the “double consciousness of reliving one’s story as both narrator and protagonist” (Callahan, 209).
Brother Tarp and Trueblood hold that identity is determined by the sum of the complex experiences each person has undergone and to deny one’s past is to deny oneself: ” It was as though I’d learned suddenly to look around corners; images of past humiliations flickered through my head and I saw that they were more than separate experiences. they were me; they defined me. I was my experiences and my experiences were me” (Ellison, 496-97).
As the narrator writes his experiences, he learns the value of increased self-reliance and develops from naiveté and powerlessness to wisdom and authority. He could now see things in a new light and realize how he had been susceptible to betrayal and how there had been some order in his humiliations that he was unable to see earlier. While writing the story he could play with the images of those who had cheated him by characterizing them as buffoons or villains. Bloom observes: “His story is an American form of the human drama. It is a modern rendering of the wound and ….of suffering as not only the experience of pain but also the source of greatness, the creative capacity to transcend suffering” (Bloom, 1999)
Writing his autobiography also helps him understand people for what they are truly worth. For example, it is only when he writes down the speech of Barbee that he could see that the values Barbee articulates are corrupt. Bloom notes: “At several points in the story, the narrator, looking back from the standpoint of his final identity—which he discovers after much painful searching as being totally bound with the experiences he has lived through —reminds us of his first identified as the grandson of a Southern ex-slave” (Bloom, 62).
The main protagonist, through his writing, reveals how he had developed from ignorance to knowledge, understood the meaning of identity and his relationship to the power elite. It would have been to his advantage to end the story at a point where he finds himself wiser than before. But the narrator chooses to give a cyclic ending to his narrative. Writing his life experiences has been another strategy he has experimented with, in order to find his way around figures of authority. But in this strategy, he had depended on himself for the construction of his identity and the story ends before he reenters society. The main protagonist now leaves the reader with the belief that the double consciousness of being both narrator of and participant in his own story empowers him in a way that his earlier duplicity did not.
Works Cited
Ellison, Ralph (1965). The Invisible Man. Penguin Books.
Butler, J. Robert (2000). The Critical Response to Ralph Ellison. Greenwood Press. Westport, CT.
Bloom, Harold (1999). Ralph Ellison. Chelsea House. New York.
Callahan, F. John (2004). Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man: A Casebook. Oxford University Press. New York.
Prescott, Orville (1952). A Review of Invisible Man. The New York Times.
Ellison, Waldo Ralph and Gracer, M. David (1996). Ralph Waldo Ellison’s Invisible Man. Research and Education Association.