invisible man thesis statement

Period 2: Invisible Man Thesis

Please post your quote that will be the foundation of your argument AND your thesis. Be sure to include a theme!

150 responses to “ Period 2: Invisible Man Thesis ”

Identity can be defined as having visions. Not just a vision of the world around you, but a vision of yourself and who you wish to be. Identity is something that you find within yourself. The narrator had no vision about who he was throughout the novel. He struggled to find his true self while understanding why he was invisible to the world around him. Being a part of the Brotherhood allowed him to stop being naïve and start to learn about his true self. “Or again, you often doubt if you really exist. You wonder whether you aren’t simply a phantom in other people’s minds” (Ellison, Prologue). While it was up to the narrator to determine what his role in society was, a large part of his identity was shaped by other people’s perceptions of him.

Denied. Lacks a clear theme statement (and your quote is not embedded).

“’Our white, Optic White.’ ‘Why the white rather than the others?’ ‘’Cause we started stressing it from the first. We make the best white paint in the world, I don’t give a damn what nobody says. Our white is so white you can paint a chunka coal and you have to crack it open with a sledge hammer to prove it wasn’t white clear through’…’If It’s Optic White, It’s the Right White’” (Ellison 217).

In the novel, Invisible Man, the author, Ralph Ellison, portrays the narrator as a person who suffers from identifying his true self. After getting expelled from Tuskegee, Ellison describes many experiences as the narrator travels across the country looking for employment and finally accepting his first opportunity at Liberty Paints. While working, the narrator noticed that the workers put drops of “ten drops [of dope] into each bucket” (Ellison 205). The process of making “white” paint at Liberty Paints serves as a metaphor that the blacks are being oppressed by the whites and are manipulated to be segregated from the white society. This forces the black community to seek racial equality amongst the majority and the minority.

In the novel, Invisible Man, the author, Ralph Ellison, portrays the narrator as a person who suffers from identifying his true self through several instances in the novel, such as calling himself “invisible.” After getting expelled from Tuskegee, Ellison describes many experiences as the narrator travels across the country looking for employment and finally accepting his first opportunity at Liberty Paints. While working, the narrator noticed that the workers put drops of “ten drops [of dope] into each bucket” (Ellison 205). The process of making “white” paint at Liberty Paints serves as a metaphor that the blacks are being oppressed by the whites and are manipulated to be segregated from the white society. After being manipulated by the whites, the narrator realizes that he purely does not exist in the white man’s world: resulting in him realizing that he is “invisible.” This becomes a point in the narrator’s life where he begins to search for his true identity: discovering his visibility to society.

Denied-what’s the theme?

In the novel, Invisible Man, the author, Ralph Ellison, portrays the narrator as a person who suffers from identifying his true self through several instances in the novel, such as calling himself “invisible.” After getting expelled from Tuskegee, the University that the narrator received a scholarship for, Ellison describes many experiences as the narrator travels across the country looking for employment and finally accepting his first opportunity at Liberty Paints. While working, the narrator noticed that the workers put drops of “ten drops [of dope] into each bucket” (Ellison 205). The process of making “white” paint at Liberty Paints serves as a metaphor that the blacks are being oppressed by the whites and are manipulated to be segregated from the white society. Also, this shows that the White’s are still dominant over the Black’s in society and that leads the Blacks to reidentify themselves in order to live up to the expectations of the Whites: “If It’s Optic White, It’s the Right White’” (Ellison 217). After being manipulated by the whites, the narrator realizes that he purely does not exist in the white man’s world: resulting in him realizing that he is “invisible.” Ellison creates this illustration in the novel to show that society is blinded by a veil that prevents everyone from realizing other people’s existence and discovering one’s own identity.

(I’m having trouble with the theme.)

Denied. Great up until that last sentence, which lacks depth about the theme.

In the novel, Invisible Man, the author, Ralph Ellison, portrays the narrator as a person who suffers from identifying his true self. After getting expelled from Tuskegee, Ellison describes many experiences as the narrator travels across the country looking for employment and finally accepting his first opportunity at Liberty Paints. While working, the narrator noticed that the workers put drops of “ten drops [of dope] into each bucket” (Ellison 205). The process of making “white” paint at Liberty Paints serves as a metaphor that the blacks are being oppressed by the whites and are manipulated to be segregated from the white society. After being manipulated by the whites, the narrator realizes that he purely does not exist in the white man’s world: resulting in his “invisibility.”

Denied – still need a follow-up theme statement.

In the book, there have been many incidents of the people being mistreated due to their race. In one moment of the book, an elderly woman was evicted form her home. She exclaims how “it’s all the white folks, nor just one” that “are against [us]” (Ellison 270). The man in charged of her eviction could have cared less about her, but it was his job. This part just shows the insignificance of ordinary people to the important ones. As the two races have been able to live peacefully in Harlem, it is not the job for the whites to ruin the lives of the blacks. It can be said that the whites in the North do not care about the blacks, racially.

Denied. You need a general theme, rather than what seem to read like facts. (Also, check some grammatical errors.)

Without power, everybody is just a pawn on a chessboard, just waiting to move up to overthrow the king. It’s not until they reach the seventh square that the community begins to worry.In the book, there have been many incidents of the people being mistreated due to their race. In one moment of the book, an elderly woman was evicted from her home. She exclaims how “it’s all the white folks, not just one” that “are against [us]” (Ellison 270). The man in charge of her eviction could have cared less about her, but it was his job. This part just shows the insignificance of ordinary people to the important ones. As the two races have been able to live peacefully in Harlem, it is not the job for the whites to ruin the lives of the blacks. It can be said that the whites in the North do not care about the blacks, racially. Ellison uses this as a motif to explain the term of invisible people being overrun.

Denied – great up until the last part (“term of invisible people being overrun”). It’s too vague of a theme.

Without power, everybody is just a pawn on a chessboard, just waiting to move up to overthrow the king. It’s not until they reach the seventh square that the community begins to worry. In the book, there have been many incidents of the people being mistreated due to their race. In one moment of the book, an elderly woman was evicted from her home. She exclaims how “it’s all the white folks, not just one” that “are against [us]” (Ellison 270). The man in charge of her eviction could have cared less about her. This part just shows the insignificance of ordinary people to the important ones. As the two races have been able to live peacefully in Harlem, it is not the job for the whites to ruin the lives of the blacks. It can be said that the whites in the North do not care about the blacks, racially unless they are of value. Ellison uses this as a motif to portray self importance in the community that the narrator constantly seek.

Denied-add one piece: WHY does the narrator constantly seek self-importance? That will give you the theme.

Without power, everybody is just a pawn on a chessboard, just waiting to move up to overthrow the king. It’s not until they reach the seventh square that the community begins to worry. In the book, there have been many incidents of the people being mistreated due to their race. In one moment of the book, an elderly woman was evicted from her home. She exclaims how “it’s all the white folks, not just one” that “are against [us]” (Ellison 270). The man in charge of her eviction could have cared less about her. This part just shows the insignificance of ordinary people to the important ones. As the two races have been able to live peacefully in Harlem, it is not the job for the whites to ruin the lives of the blacks. It can be said that the whites in the North do not care about the blacks, racially unless they are of value. Ellison uses this as a motif to portray self importance in the community that the narrator constantly seek. The narrator wants to be important in order for other to notice him and his value in Harlem as part one of its people.

“‘You’ll never return. You can’t return no,’ he said. ‘Don’t you see? I’m terribly sorry and yet I’m glad that I gave in to the impulse to speak to you. Forget it; though that’s advice which I’ve been unable to accept myself, it’s still good advice. There is no point in blinding yourself to the truth. Don’t blind yourself….'” (Ellison 192).

In Ralph Ellison’s novel, The Invisible Man, he utilizes the characters he creates by displaying the influence they have on the narrator in finding his own identity. From men like Bledsoe to Brother Jack, Ellison depicts the importance of how certain things that people say can shape one person’s mind. Throughout the novel, the narrator meets a variety of people who has said certain statements that guides the narrator into becoming and realizing his invisibility. One of the most influential statements that another character has said to the narrator was from Emerson’s son, “There is no point in blinding yourself to the truth. Don’t blind yourself…” (Ellison 192). This quote displays the challenge and conflict the narrator faces within himself as to whether or not he should continue to be oblivious or “blind” from being controlled by others or continue to allow this to happen to him.

Denied – for a small reason. It seems your theme is “the importance of how certain things that people say can shape one person’s mind”. Change that to be more meaningful for this text (it’s vague and obvious right now).

In Ralph Ellison’s novel, The Invisible Man, he utilizes the characters he creates by displaying the influence they have on the narrator in finding his own identity. From men like Bledsoe to Brother Jack, Ellison depicts a larger issue of how a majority of people in society are blind just like the narrator; in some way, everyone is being “controlled” by what his or her parents, grandparents, and teachers are telling them without knowing it. Throughout the novel, the narrator meets a variety of people who has said certain statements that guides the narrator into becoming and realizing his invisibility. One of the most influential statements that another character has said to the narrator was from Emerson’s son, “There is no point in blinding yourself to the truth. Don’t blind yourself…” (Ellison 192). This quote displays the challenge and conflict the narrator faces within himself as to whether or not he should continue to be oblivious or “blind” from being controlled by others or continue to allow this to happen to him.

Accepted. Much better!

In the “Invisible Man”, Ellison displays the importance of identifying one’s purpose for living through the protagonist’s experiences which lead him to his eventual self-realizations. In doing so, he came to the conclusion that he was invisible to his surroundings. His epiphany began to take shape when it became clear that he “was really playing a game with myself and they were taking part” (242). Hence, the protagonist displays how his vulnerability has driven him to his invisibility where he cannot control his life and therefore has no purpose for the protagonist.

Denied. Your last sentence is confusing-no purpose?

In the “Invisible Man”, Ellison displays the importance of identifying one’s purpose for living through the protagonist’s experiences which lead him to his eventual self-realizations. In doing so, he notices he is deprived from his identity. His epiphany began to mold together when it became clear to him that he “was really playing a game with myself (himself)” (242). Hence, the protagonist displays how his vulnerability has driven him to his invisibility where he cannot control his life as he is irrelevant to his surroundings.

Denied – is the “how” piece the epiphany? Also, when embedding your quote, leave out “myself” and put [himself].

The idea of social hierarchy has always been evident in not only the past but with the present as well. In the book “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison, the author enables the narrator to compare himself [narrator] to the repetitive actions of those in power “Dammit white folds are always giving orders, it’s a habit with them” (Ellison 139). In Ralph Ellison novel of The Invisible Man, the concept of social hierarchy is enhanced to a level of where not only the narrator, but others have turned a blind eye to. One example that would pertain to this would be when young Mr. Emerson reads the contents of the letter to the narrator. The narrator is dumbfounded as to why he was rejected but young Mr. Emerson [he] explains that “There is no point in blinding yourself to the truth. Don’t blind yourself…” (Ellison 192). This shows the power the whites have over people like the narrator because he is the one depending on the response from a white man.

Denied. Great idea, but “concept of social hierarchy enhanced to a level” is too vague for a theme.

In Ralph Ellison’s novel of The Invisible Man, the concept of social hierarchy intertwines with the narrator’s perception of what is visible in relation to the power that the whites have. An example that would pertain to this would be when young Mr. Emerson reads the contents of the letter to the narrator. The narrator is dumbfounded as to why he was rejected but young Mr. Emerson [he] explains that “There is no point in blinding yourself to the truth. Don’t blind yourself…” (Ellison 192). This shows the power the whites have over people like the narrator because he is the one depending on the response from a white man.

Denied – GREAT idea, but your statement is still vague. What do you mean by concept of social hierarchy?

In the novel Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, the author includes the idea of invisibility in relation to what others may choose to be blinded from by means of allusions and metaphors. He [the narrator] states that, “I am invisible, understand simply because people refuse to see me” (Ellison 3). This invisibility piece is what ultimately allows the narrator and ourselves to determine whether or not we want to be “invisible” or stay in existent to the everyday events in the world. In the start of the novel, Ralph Ellison speaks upon those that are around the narrator who do not see him as a “man.” He has just begun to identify himself as someone who is merely “figments of their imagination” (Ellison 3). By calling himself an imagination to other people’s views, the narrator is able convey the message that he does not have any significance to those around him.

Accepted. But bring in optimism in conclusion.

Accepted – but bring in in your conclusion that the narrator ends on an optimistic tone.

“And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone’s way but my own. I have also been called one thing and then another while no one really wished to hear what I called myself. So after years of trying to adopt the opinions of others I finally rebelled. I am an invisible man” (Ellison, Epilogue)

Through out the novel Ellison places the narrator under the influence of others to allow our invisible narrator to create an identity based on what the narrator faced. At the end of the novel the narrator allows himself to step out of “everyone’s way” (Ellison, Epilogue) and create an identity that allows him to become free from Bledsoe and the brotherhood. The narrator was always “called one thing and then another, while no one…wished to hear what I [he] called himself” (Ellison, Epilogue) and that caused him to rebel and accept that “I am [He is] an invisible man” (Ellison, Epilogue) and will create an identity to revel his true self.

Denied. Strong start, but no theme.

new quote- ” I walked along, munching the yam, just as suddenly overcome by an intense feeling of freedom- simply because i was eating while walking along the street. it was exhilarating. I no longer had to worry about who saw me or about what was proper” (Ellison 264)

Through out the novel the narrator hides his true identity by following the white society and allowing himself to be controlled. The narrator starts to feel a sense of freedom by “walking along the street” (Ellison 264). Ellison uses the yams in this scene to show a sense of pride in the narrators true race and to allow himself to accept that he is invisible and explains to us that we all can’t be controlled forever.

Denied – you rush too much at the end. Slow it down, and be more explicit about what you mean. Watch grammar errors, too.

Through out the novel the narrator hides his true identity by following the white society and allowing himself to be controlled by Bledsoe and the brotherhood. The narrator starts to feel a sense of freedom in New York by “walking along the street” (Ellison 264) and eating yams that reminded him of home. Ellison uses the yams in this scene to show a sense of pride in the narrator and allowing himself to accept his African American side because he does not have to reject the food that reminds him of home, the narrator is allowed to accept the food and his identity that comes along with being African American. We see that the narrator starts to leave his hole, which many of us should do because there is always something that can bring us out of our hole.

Denied – change last sentence.

Through out the novel the narrator hides his true identity by following the white society and allowing himself to be controlled by Bledsoe and the brotherhood. The narrator starts to feel a sense of freedom in New York by “walking along the street” (Ellison 264) and eating yams that reminded him of home. When the narrator was introduced to these yams he wanted to reject them, just as he rejects his African American side when he is in the South. Ellison uses the yams in this scene to show a sense of pride in the narrator and allowing himself to accept his African American side because he does not have to reject the food that reminds him of home, the narrator is allowed to accept the food and his identity that comes along with being African American. This scene allows us to see that everyone takes the culture around them and creates it into their own identity based on what they wish to be. The narrator is doing the same thing when he switches roles to fit a crowd.

Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” shows the narrator going through life with confusion on how to treat those above him. He seems to be rewarded when he tells lies for the purpose of satisfying others, however, as he finds later in the novel when he lied to do what the brotherhood asked, he found that he was still being used and pushed aside. With this knowledge he also discovers “I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I’ve tried to articulate exactly what I felt to be the truth. No one was satisfied.” (Ellison 577). The narrator is at lost as to what to do to get ahead in life because he is constantly surrounded by lies by those he are supposedly trying to “support” him. The narrator is used to show the lies and deceit humans use to push themselves up on the hierarchy.

Denied – for one small detail. Consider what is actually being “used” here (as your “how” in your thesis) versus the narrator being the literary technique. Otherwise, I love this idea.

“Across the aisle a young platinum blond nibbles at a red Delicious app as station lights rippled past behind her. The train plunged. I dropped through the roar, giddy and vacuum-minded, sucked under and out into late afternoon Harlem.” (Ellison, 250)

In Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, the narrator is constantly swaying back and forth between the two ideals presented to him in his life: the need to be relevant and the desire to be happy. At the end of chapter 11, our narrator had already experienced a lobotomy, a procedure that’s purpose is to remove the frontal lobe – or the entire identity – of the patient. The narrator has had his identity taken away, and the societal norms and fears he usually carries through his everyday life is evidently gone as demonstrated by his experience on the train, wherein he stared at “a young platinum blond” who was eating a “red Delicious apple.” (250). This seemingly obscure moment in the novel truly represents the narrators transition from an assumed state of identity into the unknown, and ignites the journey towards visibility.

Awesome – just make sure you write a “metaphorical lobotomy” because he didn’t have a true one.

The visibility of the narrator is paralleled with hell and heaven in many parts of the book and never more so than here, as the apple is representative of the apples in the garden of eden. The watching of the event on the train by the narrator is taboo, and the experiences that follow are due to the fearlessness of this.

Love this “how” piece.

This is accepted. That wasn’t clear.

The individuals who lift the veils of the people are in charge of committing the act of killing the people too. Therefore, these people are not seen and are often classified as the “minority”, for majority demands that they need a life involving a darkened society that does not wish to be enlightened. The minority are people who roam through life unseen but possess the power to obliterate normality, slaughter what the majority have known to love and accept, and generate that sense of humanity. In Ralph Ellison’s novel The Invisible Man, the characterization methods used amongst the “sleepwalkers” of the novel displays that there lies a deep-seated ignorance behind conformity. With ignorance comes confusion and the ones who are sleeping in life are left to either ignore or terminate the wakeful ones who try to disrupt their blissful state of ignorance: I remember that I am invisible and walk softly so as not to awaken the sleeping ones. Sometimes it is best not to awaken them; there are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers” (Ellison 5). However, the individuals deemed as invisible are trying to help and not hurt, but all fail to realize they are the blameless killers that walk together with society, for they are killing the sleepwalkers’ habits before the sleepwalkers bring an end to themselves.

Accepted. Love. LOVE.

“As brother jack had said, History makes harsh demands of us all. But they were demands that had to be met if men were to be the masters and not the victims of their times. Did I believe that? Perhaps I had already begun to pay” (Ellison 316). In the novel Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, the connection between the era in which this novel was written and our current era seems interdependent. In other words, this idea that dominance in society is often obtained by those who have the opportunities seems inevitable. At this point, the narrator is at a state of mind where he is starting to realize that history is getting the best of him. Ellison wants the readers to question whether or not making sacrifices to maintain a “Civil” society is worth the hassle. It shows the confidence in our society if we can question whether or not, “Harsh demands…had to be met” (316).

Accepted – check for grammar and consider a better word for “hassle”.

Moment to be examined: “Here I got ’bout a hundred pounds of blueprints and I couldn’t build nothing…I asked the man why they getting rid of all this stuff and he say they get in the way so every once in a while they have to throw ’em out to make place for the new plans” (Emerson, 175)

Thesis: Through the discussion of bluprints by a seemingly unintelligent and mentally unstable man, Emerson foreshadows the fate of the narrator: His concrete plans will eventually get in the way of his progress.

Denied – needs a theme.

Towards the end of “The Invisible Man”, the narrator is describing his life after he has come to the realization that he is invisible. One event that he describes that is very fascinating is his re-encounter with Mr. Norton. He explains that Mr. Norton did not know who the narrator was. The Narrator then makes a very interesting statement: “’Because, Mr. Norton, if you don’t know where you are, you probably don’t know who you are.’” (Ellison, 578).Throughout the novel the narrator is blind to many things (who he really is, and the influences he has had on him). However, now that he has realized his identity and finally acquired his sight back, he is able to see the blindness of other people such as Mr. Norton who was blind to whom the narrator was. This scene emphasizes the blindness in all of us and the need for us to identify ourselves so that we may find our own path and end our blindness.

Accepted – I’m not a huge fan of the last phrase “emphasizes the blindness in us”. Also, you need to be clear that he gets his “metaphorical sight” back.

(REVISED): Towards the end of “The Invisible Man”, the narrator is describing his life after he has come to the realization that he is invisible. One event that he describes that is very fascinating is his re-encounter with Mr. Norton. He explains that Mr. Norton did not know who the narrator was. The Narrator then makes a very interesting statement: “’Because, Mr. Norton, if you don’t know where you are, you probably don’t know who you are.’” (Ellison, 578).Throughout the novel, the narrator is blind (metaphorically) to many things (who he really is, and the influences he has had on him). However, now that he has realized his identity and finally re-acquired his metaphorical sight, he is able to see the blindness of other people such as Mr. Norton who was blind to whom the narrator was. This scene makes us question what we identify ourselves with and the need for us to identify ourselves so that we may find our own path and end our metaphorical blindness.

Good – take away the parentheses.

“I started with my high school diploma,applying one precious match with a feeling of remote irony…I realized that to light my way out I would have to burn every paper in the brief case.. the next to go was Clifton’s doll, but it burned so stubbornly that I reached inside the case for something else…It was the anonymous letter, which burned so quickly that I hurriedly unfolded another: It was the slip upon Jack had written my Brotherhood name.” (Ellison, 568) Ralph Ellison’s novel, Invisible Man, introduces the idea of where someone’s identity really comes from and what makes up one’s identity. Ellison uses imagery to convey how certain items can influence someone’s identity. This briefcase held everything that he had identified himself during certain points. The burning of his “identity” was both an escape and realization of who the narrator had become due to his experiences and his past.

Denied – imagery issue and then change the first sentence – what do you mean by “introduces the idea of where someone’s identity”…?

Ralph Ellison’s novel, Invisible Man,introduces the idea of identity and whether or not someone has a true idea. Throughout the novel the narrator builds his identity off of the experiences and the people that he has met. Ellison uses the motif of the briefcase, which carries symbols that at one time made up the narrator’s changing identity. The burning of his “identity” was both an escape and realization of who the narrator had become due to his experiences and his past.

Denied. Great changes, but the first part is still vague. What is the theme – the main takeaway – Ellison is exploring here?

Ralph Ellison’s novel, Invisible Man,introduces the idea of identity and whether or not someone has a true identity by using the motif of the briefcase, which carries symbols that at one time made up the narrator’s changing identity. Throughout the novel the narrator builds his identity off of the experiences and the people that he has met. The burning of his “identity” was both an escape and realization of who the narrator had become due to his experiences and his past. Even though people might burn certain items that make up his or her’s identity, it is something that is always going to be apart of that person- a person can never fully destroy what once represented them.

Accepted – fix first sentence.

“And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone’s way but my own. I have also been called one thing and then another while no one really wished to hear what I called myself.”

The point of life has always been to find who you truly are and then experience a lifestyle in equivalence to who you are. Why then can it be so difficult to find who one really is. Why is it that we “try and go in everyone’s way but our own”. Ralph Ellison creates a perfect depiction of the everyday human being in his novel “invisible man” he does this through use of motifs within visibility and through imagery in order to allow the reader to find themselves. in the book we see the strong connection of how the narrator goes from changing who he is multiple times in order to fit in with the people around him. he goes from trying to be white, to trying to hold back blacks with the brother hood. The urgency to find oneself appears more evident as the novel goes on, just as in life as we grow older our urgency to find ourselves we do the same.

Denied – need page numbers. It’s good, but you should check the grammar (don’t say “perfect” depiction; it’s an opinion), and also identify what it means to “find oneself”.

“we create the race by creating ourselves and then to our great astonishment we will have created a culture” (354).

The point of life has always been to find who you truly are and then experience a lifestyle in equivalence to who you are.Why is it that we “try and go in everyone’s way but our own”. if culture where simply about creating ourselves then why are we still invisble. Ralph Ellison creates a perfect depiction of the everyday human being in his novel “invisible man” he does this through use of motifs within visibility and through imagery in order to allow the reader to find themselves. in the book we see the strong connection of how the narrator goes from changing who he is multiple times in order to fit in with the people around him.The urgency to find oneself appears more evident as the novel goes on, just as in life as we grow older our urgency to find ourselves we do the same in order to create the perfect culture and visibility

“we create the race by creating ourselves and then to our great astonishment we will have created a culture” (354).

The point of life has always been to find who you truly are and then experience a lifestyle in equivalence to who you are.Why is it that we “try and go in everyone’s way but our own”. if culture where simply about creating ourselves then why are we still invisible? Ralph Ellison creates a perfect depiction of the everyday human being in his novel “invisible man” he does this through use of motifs within visibility and through imagery in order to allow the reader to find themselves. in the book we see the strong connection of how the narrator goes from changing who he is multiple times in order to fit in with the culture around him. how are we as a “culture” to talk about fixing problems and wars if we still haven’t discovered who we really are and found are true visibility?

Denied – good, but lots of grammatical errors, and also, you contradict yourself a bit – what does it mean for the reader to find themselves?

“We create the race by creating ourselves and then to our great astonishment we will have created a culture” (354).

The point of life has always been to find who you truly are and then experience a lifestyle in equivalence to who you are. Why is it that we “try and go in everyone’s way but our own”? If culture where simply about creating ourselves then why are members of our culture still invisible and struggling to create themselves? Ralph Ellison creates a perfect depiction of the everyday human being in his novel “invisible man” he does this through use of motifs within visibility and through imagery in order to allow the reader to understand the struggle of striving for a perfect culture through the means of finding one’s personal identity. In the book we see the strong connection of how the narrator goes from changing who he is multiple times in order to fit in with the culture around him. How are we as a “culture” to talk about fixing problems and wars if we still haven’t discovered who we really are and found are true visibility?

Accepted – still too vague at the beginning, though, and some grammar errors. Work on this!

Quote: “And that lie that success was rising upward. What crummy lie they kept us dominated by. Not only could you travel upward toward success, but you could travel downward as well; up and down.” (Ellison, pg 510)

From the beginning of the novel, the narrator had a preconceived idea that, like Bledsoe and Mr. Norton, up was the only way toward success. Each experience in the narrator’s life- Battle Royal, College, Paint Company, and the Brotherhood- seemed to be for the progression for the success of the narrator. Instead, as the narrator reflects on each stage in his life, he realizes that the road toward his success was never traveling upward, nor was it meant to be (based on Ralph Ellison’s description of the boomerang effect)- having the narrator “travel downward” toward his success:realizing that he is, indeed, invisible (Ellison, pg 510)

I do not know how to integrate my theme: There is no right way toward success. In fact, the only success one can truly have is realization

Great – add that revelation: “realization of invisibility”?

Denied – wonderful, but needs theme.

The undefined search of success is what leads to undefined people. In Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man, the narrator had a preconceived idea that the tactics of the successful individuals he encountered, Bledsoe and Mr. Norton, were the only right way to move toward his own success. The numerous experiences the narrator embarked on- Battle Royal, College, Paint Company, and the Brotherhood- within his life seemed to be for the progression of success for the narrator. When reflecting on each stage of his life, the narrator realized that the road toward his success was never traveling upward, nor was it meant to be (based on Ralph Ellison’s description of the boomerang effect)- having the narrator “travel downward” toward his success:realizing that he is, indeed, invisible (Ellison, pg 510).

Accepted – I like it, just take out the parentheses (work that phrase in through different syntax).

The undefined search of success is what leads to undefined people. In Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man, the narrator had a preconceived idea that the tactics of the successful individuals he encountered, Bledsoe and Mr. Norton, were the only right way to move toward his own success. The numerous experiences the narrator embarked on- Battle Royal, College, Paint Company, and the Brotherhood- within his life seemed to be for the progression of success for the narrator. When reflecting on each stage of his life, the narrator realized that the road toward his success was never traveling upward, nor was it ever going to be- as Ralph Ellison explains through his boomerang model. This, ultimately, had the narrator “travel downward” toward his success:realizing that he is, indeed, invisible (Ellison, pg 510).

“I’ve illuminated the blackness of my invisibility and vice versa” pg. 13

“All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was” pg. 15

“I possessed the only identity I had ever known and I was losing it” pg. 99

Thesis: In the novel Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, the narrator experiences several moments throughout the novel that hold importance, however, those moments are not as greatly illuminated until the narrator’s final phase of going into the hole and claiming invisibility, which as a whole gives more meaning to the things he experienced prior to his invisible days leading those times to be more clarified and better depicted.

Denied – too vague to say “gives more meaning to the things he experienced”.

Denied – no theme.

In Invisible Man, the narrators “will is pulled in several directions at the same time” (Ellison, 573). This caused him throughout the novel to remain relatively neutral and ingenious in creating his own values and morals. He begins with a simple phrase in mind, which he remembers until the end: “Agree ‘em to death and destruction” (575). However, after experiencing the corruption and hypocrisy of the real world he was able to give his life direction. Emerson’s son gives a word of advice to the sill lost narrator at the time: “There is no point in blinding yourself to the truth. Don’t blind yourself… “ (Emerson, 192). Using these words as a foundation, he began to see the world through his own eyes instead of the custom tinted lenses of others. He realized that he is “an invisible man” and that “even an invisible man has a socially responsible role to play” (Ellison, 573, 581).

Denied – just write the follow-up sentence.

In his case, his role is to speak on the lower frequencies for those that are how he once was.

“He takes it in but he doesn’t digest it. Already he is- well, bless my soul! Behold! a walking zombie! Already he’s learned to repress not only his emotion, but his humanity. He’s invisible, a walking personification of the Negative, the most perfect achievement of your dreams, sir! The mechanical man!” (page 94)

In the novel, The Invisible Man, the author, Ralph Ellison, put the narrator through a string of experiences to show how he must come out of it stronger than he did coming in. Throughout the book, Ellison makes the narrator meet knew people, and with each person the narrator hears the truth; however, he does not “digest” it. This is due to depict a larger message of how most of society would rather keep a veil over their eyes than lift it to uncover the ugly truth.

In the novel, The Invisible Man, the author, Ralph Ellison, puts the narrator through a string of experiences to show how he must come out of it stronger than he did coming in. In the book, Ellison makes the narrator meet new people, and with each person the narrator hears the truth; however, he does not “digest” it. This is due to depict a larger message of how most of society would rather keep a veil over their eyes than lift it to uncover the ugly truth.

Denied – almost perfect, but it’s too cliche to say that “he must come out of it stronger than he did coming in” – what does that mean?

In the novel, The Invisible Man, the author, Ralph Ellison, makes the narrator meet knew people, and with each person the narrator hears the truth; however, he does not “digest” it. This is due to depict a larger message of how most of society would rather keep a veil over their eyes than lift it to uncover the ugly truth.

“History has been born in your brain.” (Ellision, 291)

In Ralph Ellison’s novel, “Invisible Man”, the narrator is introduced to a variety of people who greatly influence the narrator of finding his “identity”. Men such as Brockway and the Brotherhood, Ellison alludes to the idea of history repeating itself. A “boomerang” that come back, yet in different scenarios, different directions. These directions on how history repeats itself take a toll on how the narrator tries to configure and find his identity, yet also allowing to realize that he is “not seen” by people in his society. An admirer states “History” had been implemented in his “brain” since the beginning. (Ellison, 291) This history gives direction to the narrator on how he perceives and interacts with people. Then using their judgments, he acts on them, which make him even more “invisible” to others. However, he is not “blind” on what issues he is facing, as well as the people who are also “invisible”.

Denied – almost perfect, but “the idea of history repeating itself” is not a unique theme.

Accepted – it needs to be cut down to be more concise, though.

In Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, the narrator has several moments of denying his culture and race. One of the most moving moments in which the narrator begins to accept himself is when he is “munching the yam…while walking along the street”(Ellison 264). He claims that “ an intense feeling of freedom” overcame him because he no longer had to worry about who saw him and what society deemed to be proper. The narrator’s denying his southern roots and then accepting them shows acceptance of his identity- which was an important step towards realizing his invisibility in order for the narrator to progress and see the world for what it is, which ultimately lead to the narrator’s peace of mind in the epilogue. Ralph Ellison uses this moment in the novel to show that society should follow the narrator steps in realizing their invisibility, accepting themselves, and stop living under the veil of social standards and absurdities.

Accepted – just check for slight grammar errors.

The pursuit of identity begins and ends when Ellison guides his audience through the life’s journey of the protagonist throughout his novel Invisible Man. A naive black man who finding an identity of his own versus one that is handed down to him since -“Life is to be lived not controlled” (Ellison)-, but his pursuit harder since his adversaries do not realize they are controlling an invisible man. Through the various paradoxes within the novel Ellison displays that someone cannot define themselves by listening to the masses but only by listening to themselves since that is the only place true identity begins and never ends.

Denied – can you actually support the argument for your last sentence? I want you to prove you can.

Many of the men had been doctors, lawyers, teachers, Civil Service workers; there were several cooks, a preacher, a politician, and an artist. One very nutty one had been a psychiatrist. Whenever I saw them I felt uncomfortable. They were supposed to be members of the professions toward which at various times I vaguely aspired myself, and even though they never seemed to see me I could never believe that they were really patients. (Emerson,35)

Thesis: By placing a bunch of well educated, African American men in a second rate mental instituion, the narrator’s ambitions are shown to be hopeless as the black people who take up professions of cook, lawyer, doctor, teacher, and artist are nonetheless without influence, importance, or power in a society controlled by whites.

Denied – add one more sentence that makes a more explicit thesis.

A college education is really just another way for white men to control the narrator. It won’t really change his lot in life.

Accepted – as long as you can truly argue this.

“I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I’ve tried to articulate exactly what I felt to be the truth. No one was satisfied.” (Ellison 573).

Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” shows the narrator going through life with confusion on how to treat those above him. He seems to be rewarded when he tells lies for the purpose of satisfying others, however, as he finds later in the novel when he lied to do what the brotherhood asked, he found that he was still being used and given an identity different from who the narrator wanted to be as a person. This moment in the novel is an example of lying to satisfy others instead of being true to oneself because being independent does not satisfy the brotherhood as it does not satisfy social standards in society leaving “no one was satisfied” but rather “hated than when I tried to be honest” (Ellison 573). Ellison shows that regardless of not being accepted by a brotherhood or society, it is a key to accepting one’s identity as the narrator realized to not be shaped by society in order to show that the reader should stay true to oneself instead of falling under social control by their social standards of living.

Denied – good up until last sentence that is vague and confusing.

Throughout the novel, Ellison uses irony to highlight the lack of truth in the narrator’s life by portraying him as an individual who blindly advocates for the brotherhood without knowing that his ideas and actions are being manipulated. Serving as a motif, invisibility helps contradict what the narrator stands for as well as the idea that ” life is to be lived not controlled”.

Accepted – Is the last quote your quote? Need page numbers.

Thesis: “Step outside the narrow borders of what men call reality and you step into chaos– ask Rinehart, he’s a master of it–or imagination.That too I’ve learned in the cellar, and not by deadening my sense of perception; I’m invisible, not blind.” (Ellison 576)

the narrator was saying that he himself has been living his life through his imagination for so long that he has finally came to see the reality of the world he has been living in. the metaphorical veil has finally been lifted from over the narrator eyes because he has been running with his imagination for so long that he has came to the realization that he is actually invisible. he also explains that he has been in the cellar for so long that he knows of the invisibility because the fact that he is not blind. Ellison shows the invisibility and blindness throughout the novel because he gets the narrator to realize that he invisible to the dominant race because they are blind to the fact that he is actually there and a human being just as they are and should have the equal rights just as they have. a point in the novel that shows this is when the narrator is in an argument with Brother Jack and his false eye fell out. Brother Jack having the false eye symbolizes his blindness towards the narrator because to him the narrator is invisible and should only abide by his rules and does as he says. at that point the narrator came to the realization that he was invisible to Brother Jack from the moment he joined the brotherhood. at the end of chapter 25 the narrator started to burn the contents of his brief case that he thought made up his identity and made him visible the the dominating race, but as he began to burn them it finally shed the light that he is truly invisible and has to accept it as a fact.Ellison wraps up the novel with saying “Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?” (Ellison 581). This pertains to the theme of invisibility because he is asking if someone is invisible that he is speaking for them because they can’t speak for themselves because they are either blind to the fact that they are invisible that he wants to notice that they are and except the fact that they are invisible.

Denied – too many grammatical errors. Also, “invisibility” is not a theme; it is an idea. You need to concisely write this information (lots of great ideas here).

Identity can be defined as having visions. Not just a vision of the world around you, but a vision of yourself. The narrator in Invisible Man had no vision of himself throughout the novel. He constantly struggled to find his true identity while understanding why he was invisible to the world around him. Being a part of the Brotherhood allowed him to overcome his naïveness and see the community for what it truly was: “Or again, you often doubt if you really exist. You wonder whether you aren’t simply a phantom in other people’s minds” (Ellison, 4). While it was up to the narrator to determine his own identity, the perceptions of others are what carried his sense of self. He relied too much on the Brotherhood and his physical surroundings to determine who he truly was. A lack of identity causes feelings of entrapment and lack of motivation for there is no real sense of purpose; one must find an identity within themselves.

Accepted – but you need to clarify, what does it mean to find an “identity within themselves”? Also, keep present tense.

“Identity! My God! Who has any identity anymore anyway? It isn’t so perfectly simple”(Ellison 187). In this moment in the novel Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, the narrator is told by young Mr. Emerson that no one has identity anymore. Ellison uses this conversation to show that humanity has fallen under standards that dictate the lives of all individuals leaving no one with their own personal identity. Ellison uses the conversation to let the reader question what identity they have in order for them to realize their invisibility in a similar way to how the narrator is being told that he is living his life under the same veil as everyone in society because “Who has any identity anymore anyway, right?” The question that is not perfectly simple asked or answered is left for the reader to wonder and question their own identity so they can take the first step to lifting their personal veil and then helping take social responsibility to lifting society’s veil that will release everyone from living under societal absurd standards.

Accepted – but you need to go back and check run-ons/grammatical errors.

Accepted – just see my email.

“I watched them, feeling very young and inexperienced and yet strangely old, with an oldness that watched and waited quietly within me” (Ellison 337). The narrator goes through several significant experiences and moments, which milestones in the narrator’s development in Invisible Man. The Invisible Man Ralph Ellison speaks of a man who is “invisible” to the world around him because people fail to acknowledge his presence. The author of the piece draws from his own experience as an ignored man and creates a character that depicts the extreme characteristics of a man whom few stop to acknowledge. The well development of the character lays out the foundation on the philosophy of finding and understanding himself. Throughout the novel, Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison uses characterization to reveal the narrator’s ignorance with his conformity to the ideology of others.

Accepted. Love.

“And it was as though I myself was being dispossessed of some painful yet precious thing which I could not bear to lose; something confounding, like a rotted tooth that one would rather suffer indefinitely than endure the short, violent eruption of paint that would mark its removal” (273)

At times it is easier to suppress pain than actually overcome it, especially when the pain inflicted is a result of something you have no control of. In Ralph Ellison’s novel, Invisible Man, the narrator experiences constant belittlement and suppresses the fact that he is invisible to society. It was not until his suppressed thoughts would reveal themselves as he was dispossessed “of some painful yet precious thing which [he] could not bear to lose] and lead to the “short, violent eruption of paint” that would mark the removal of his identity. Ellison uses recurring symbols to depict the transition in the character as the excess of unfortunate events and the knowledge that was accompanied by it.

im in need of assistance, deny me hard please

Denied – but I like it. I honestly would keep all the ideas, but the last phrase is a bit confusing and I think you could be more concise in some places.

At times it is easier to suppress pain than actually overcome it, especially when the pain inflicted is a result of something you have no control of. In Ralph Ellison’s novel, Invisible Man, the narrator experiences constant belittlement and suppresses the fact that he is invisible to society. His suppressed thoughts revealed themselves as he was dispossessed “of some painful yet precious thing which [he] could not bear to lose] and lead to the “short, violent eruption of paint” (273) that would mark the removal of his identity. The excess of unfortunate events that the narrator faces serve to juxtapose the narrator’s prior naive state of mind to the reality he has come to accept as his life.

Accepted – good. Bring in optimism later, though!

Music is usually heard and not seen making it invisible just like the narrator, but although music is not seen, it still has a great impact on the world not just one race.The narrator thinks himself to be invisible and he embraces it, “I’ve illuminated the blackness of my invisibility–and vice versa. And so I play the invisible music of my isolation” (Ellison 13). At this point in Invisible man, Ellison shows how although the narrator is invisible, there is still chances of great impact regardless of color. Because with invisibility, the narrator is simply a tune without assigned race or gender, just a sound with the power to make people listen.

Denied – I love all of this so much; you just need an explicit theme.

In the novel, Invisible Man, the author, Ralph Ellison, portrays the narrator as a person who suffers from identifying his true self through several instances in the novel, such as calling himself “invisible.” After getting expelled from Tuskegee, Ellison describes many experiences as the narrator travels across the country looking for employment and finally accepting his first opportunity at Liberty Paints. While working, the narrator noticed that the workers put drops of “ten drops [of dope] into each bucket” (Ellison 205). The process of making “white” paint at Liberty Paints serves as a metaphor that the blacks are being oppressed by the whites and are manipulated to be segregated from the white society. Also, this shows that the White’s are still dominant over the Black’s in society and that leads the Blacks to reidentify themselves in order to live up to the expectations of the Whites: “If It’s Optic White, It’s the Right White’” (Ellison 217). After being manipulated by the whites, the narrator realizes that he purely does not exist in the white man’s world: resulting in him realizing that he is “invisible.” Ellison creates this illustration in the novel to show that society is blinded by a veil that prevents everyone from realizing other people’s existence and discovering one’s own identity.

“I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself.” (Ellison )

Denied – change that last piece to be less cliche: what is “rock bottom’?

“And so I play the invisible music of my isolation…you hear this music simply because music is heard and seldom seen, except by musicians.” (Ellison 13)

In Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man the narrator arrives at the conclusion of people blindly following and accepting societal norms and roles they play. Throughout the book there is subtle references to music, and as the narrator continues to notice the appearances that music plays in his life. Ellison uses this metaphorical parallel of music to show how the “musicians”, those who create the rules of society, create gilded ideas that will lead society to a utopian society, and Ellison uses the narrator of the novel to represent the reality of change that society needs to take and metaphorically become their own “musicians”.

Accepted – LOVE.

Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” shows the narrator going through life with confusion on how to treat those above him. He seems to be rewarded when he tells lies for the purpose of satisfying others, however, as he finds later in the novel when he lied to do what the brotherhood asked, he found that he was still being used and given an identity different from who the narrator wanted to be as a person. This moment in the novel is an example of lying to satisfy others instead of being true to oneself because being independent does not satisfy the brotherhood as it does not satisfy social standards in society leaving “no one was satisfied” but rather “hated than when I tried to be honest” (Ellison 573). Ellison uses the narrator to show the lies and deceit society gives him to ascend themselves on the social hierarchy in order to show people should stay true to themself for their own happiness rather than society using them for its selfish reasons.

Accepted. Work on wordiness of last sentence.

Accepted the idea – the grammar/run-on is rough here.

In the novel Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, the narrator is in a state of mind where he expects others to find what his identity is. He is at the stage where he cannot tell what is right nor wrong. As he follows The Brotherhood’s beliefs, he soon realized that he was being controlled. Soon after the realization, he understands something about himself: he is not who he wants to be. The narrator’s conformity to the Brotherhood’s ideology influences how he views his own invisibility causing him to question who he is to himself.

Almost accepted – needs an explicit theme.

On my graduation day I delivered an oration in which I showed that humility was the secret, indeed, the very essence of progress. (Not that I believed this – how could I, remember my grandfather? – I only believed that it worked.) It was a great success…It was a triumph for our whole community. (1.3) Thesis: Early in the novel the narrator is willing to sacrifice truth for ambition. As the events that led to his descent underground unfold, we see that ambition is merely one more thing that the narrator is willing to give up his identity in the name of.

“All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself question which I, and only I, could answer…..But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man! ” (Ellison 15)

Through ignorance to develop a self identity, the narrator created a platform for people to create his identity for him. Ellison uses the characterization through contradictory influences with others, eye opening experiences, and curiosity within himself to demonstrate the narrator being naive at the beginning of the novel to him being able to acknowledge his identity to himself and to others. Ignorance to develop his own identity

In order to have the ability to “better” oneself, one must realize that he has been deceived. One has no true identity until he realizes that he is invisible due to the fallacious perception he has been living with. Young Mr. Emerson tells the narrator “Because to help you I must disillusion you…” (Page 187), and this shows one of the underlying messages Ellison is trying to make. The narrator is living in denial and is being deceived by other characters such as Bledsoe and Mr. Norton. Without Mr. Emerson’s help, the narrator would still be under the impression that the letters he was delivering were letters of recommendation. However, he is disillusioned and is lead to the path where he has the ability to find his true identity of invisibility.

“And I looked through a pain so intense now that the air seemed to roar with the clanging of metal, bearing, HOW DOES IT FEELS TO BE FREE OF ILLUSION…” (Ellison 569). “How does it feel to be free of illusion…”- such an illusion that prohibits one from seeing his or her true self. In the novel Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison explores multiple connotations- including surroundings and physical objects- to show how people are ignorant to the deeper meaning such things hold. People live their lives noticing things, but never stop to think about their significance and the impact it has on their lives. Holding true to the narrator, the invisible man had many opportunities to find who he truly was- something he spends the entire book searching for. But being trapped under the illusion that people have already formed his identity, the narrator remains aloof in his own life while, mistakenly, still trying to complete his goal: finding his identity.

The pursuit of identity begins and ends when Ellison guides his audience through the life’s journey of the protagonist throughout his novel Invisible Man. A naive black man who struggles between finding an identity of his own versus one that is handed down to him since -”Life is to be lived not controlled” (Ellison)- but his pursuit hardens since his adversaries do not realize they are controlling an invisible man. Through the various paradoxes within the novel Ellison displays that someone cannot function throughout the two parallels of being controlled and maintaining a sense of independent living. Mixed titles are brought upon him from birth to brotherhood to his revelation when he was within the hole, but all being similar in one way: they are temporary. He’s invisible since these names flow through him. Only once he begins to accept his momentary significance to those who are controlling him so that he will truly be able to uncover who he truly is.

” ‘Follow little Sambo around the corner, ladies and gentlemen,’ Clifton called. ‘There’s a great show coming up…’ “(Ellison 434).

Ralph Ellison exhibits Tod Clifton’s doll display to obfuscate racism’s reality through the narrator’s perspective as connotatively more than just betrayal and confusion. Already self-perceived as an invisible identity, the narrator struggles to understand not only the world surrounding him but his role’s impact. Nevertheless, his blind identity is durable enough to see that Clifton’s stereotypical display advocates his gradual awakening that the brotherhood’s objective is lacking a sense of direction. Longing to promote “affirmative” racial awareness, because Clifton’s zealously zany collapse is crafted as a disturbing one, Ellison insipidly paints the detrimental effects of racism-a psychological weapon- through the use of “the twentieth century miracle”: Sambo (433). Ultimately, in other terms, Ellison figuratively and literally evinces the fall of a social activist to symbolically manifest the deteriorating nature of racism’s effects endured by the colored as a subtle reminder that they are also “people” with humane qualities.

Wow – awesome.

Invisible Man

Ralph ellison.

Invisible Man is the story of a young man searching for his identity, unsure about where to turn to define himself. As the narrator states at the novel’s beginning, “All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned somebody tried to tell me what it was.” It is undoubtedly clear that the narrator’s blackness comprises a large part of his identity, although this isn’t something he has necessarily chosen. For others in the novel, it is simply convenient to define the narrator through his blackness.

Ellison’s narrator explains that the outcome of this is a phenomenon he calls “invisibility”—the idea that he is simply “not seen” by his oppressors. Ellison implies that if racists really saw their victims, they would not act the way they do. The narrator recognizes his invisibility slowly—in moments like the hospital machine, when he realizes he is being asked to respond to the question of who he is in terms of his blackness. Ultimately, the narrator is forced to retreat to his hole, siphoning off the light from the white-owned power company, itself a symbol of an underground resistance that may go unacknowledged for a long time.

However, invisibility doesn’t come from racism alone. Just as poisonous for the narrator are other generalized ways of thinking about identity—ideas that envision him as a cog in a machine instead of a unique individual. This is true for the narrator both at the unnamed black university and at Liberty Paints. However, it is the Brotherhood, a thinly veiled take on the Communist Party, that proves to be most disillusioning for the narrator. The Brotherhood provides a systematic way of thinking about the world that claims to be the solution to racism and inequality.

When the narrator first meets Brother Jack , Jack says, “You mustn’t waste your emotions on individuals, they don’t count.” At first, the narrator embraces this ideology of the Brotherhood and structures his identity around it. However, he comes to discover that the Brotherhood is perfectly willing to sacrifice him for its own potentially flawed ends. Thus the novel can be read not only as a story about a black man’s struggle against racism, but a black man’s struggle to grow up and learn to be himself, against the backdrop of intense social pressures, racism among others.

Identity and Invisibility ThemeTracker

Identity and Invisibility Quotes in Invisible Man

I am an invisible man…I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.

Without light I am not only invisible, but formless as well; and to be unaware of one’s form is to live a death. I myself, after existing some twenty years, did not become alive until I discovered my invisibility.

All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naïve. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which, and only I, could answer.

Already he’s learned to repress not only his emotions but his humanity. He’s invisible, a walking personification of the Negative, the most perfect achievement of your dreams, sir! The mechanical man!

A tremor shook me; it was as though he had suddenly given a name to, had organized the vagueness that drifted through my head, and I was overcome with swift shame. I realized that I no longer knew my own name. I shut my eyes and shook my head with sorrow.

One moment I believed, I was dedicated, willing to lie on the blazing coals, do anything to attain a position on the campus—then snap! It was done with, finished, through. Now there was only the problem of forgetting it.

This was a new phase, I realized, a new beginning, and I would have to take that part of myself that looked on with remote eyes and keep it always at the distance of the campus, the hospital machine, the battle royal—all now far behind. Perhaps the part of me that observed listlessly but saw all, missing nothing, was still…the dissenting voice, my grandfather part; the cynical disbelieving part—the traitor self that always threatened internal discord.

And it went so fast and smoothly that it seemed not to happen to me but to someone who actually bore my new name. I almost laughed into the phone when I heard the director of Men's House address me with profound respect. My new name was getting around. It's very strange, I thought, but things are so unreal for them normally that they believe that to call a thing by name is to make it so. And yet I am what they think I am.

Why did he choose to plunge into nothingness, into the void of faceless faces, of soundless voices, lying outside history?...But not quite, for actually it is only the known, the seen, the heard and only those events that the recorder regards as important that are put down, the lies his keepers keep their power by.

Men out of time, who would soon be gone and forgotten…who knew but that they were the saviors, the true leaders, the bearers of something precious? The stewards of something uncomfortable, burdensome, which they hated because, living outside the realm of history, there was no one to applaud their value and they themselves failed to understand it….What if history was a gambler, instead of a force in a laboratory experiment, and the boys his ace in the hole?

His world was possibility and he knew it. He was years ahead of me and I was a fool…The world in which we lived was without boundaries. A vast seething, hot world of fluidity, and Rine the rascal was at home. Perhaps only Rine the rascal was at home in it.

I began to accept my past and, as I accepted it, I felt memories welling up within me. 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 experience. They were me; they defined me.

I looked at Ras on his horse and at their handful of guns and recognized the absurdity of the whole night and of the simple yet confoundingly complex arrangement of hope and desire, fear and hate, that had brought me here still running, and knowing now who I was and where I was and knowing too that I had no longer to run for or from the Jacks and the Emersons and the Bledsoes and Nortons, but only from their confusion, impatience, and refusal to recognize the beautiful absurdity of their American identity and mine.

Let me be honest with you—a feat which…I find of the utmost difficulty. When one is invisible he finds such problems as good and evil, honesty and dishonesty, of such shifting shapes that he confuses one with the other…I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I’ve tried to articulate exactly what I felt to be the truth. No one was satisfied—not even I.

Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?

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Home › Literature › Analysis of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man

Analysis of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on June 1, 2018 • ( 2 )

A masterwork of American pluralism, Ellison’s (March 1, 1913 – April 16, 1994) Invisible Man insists on the integrity of individual vocabulary and racial heritage while encouraging a radically democratic acceptance of diverse experiences. Ellison asserts this vision through the voice of an unnamed first-person narrator who is at once heir to the rich African American oral culture and a self-conscious artist who, like T. S. Eliot and James Joyce , exploits the full potential of his written medium. Intimating the potential cooperation between folk and artistic consciousness, Ellison confronts the pressures that discourage both individual integrity and cultural pluralism.

Invisible Man The narrator of Invisible Man introduces Ellison’s central metaphor for the situation of the individual in Western culture in the first paragraph: “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.” As the novel develops, Ellison extends this metaphor: Just as people can be rendered invisible by the wilful failure of others to acknowledge their presence, so by taking refuge in the seductive but ultimately specious security of socially acceptable roles they can fail to see themselves , fail to define their own identities. Ellison envisions the escape from this dilemma as a multifaceted quest demanding heightened social, psychological, and cultural awareness.

The style of Invisible Man reflects both the complexity of the problem and Ellison’s pluralistic ideal. Drawing on sources such as the blindness motif from King Lear (1605), the underground man motif from Fyodor Dostoevski, and the complex stereotyping of Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940), Ellison carefully balances the realistic and the symbolic dimensions of Invisible Man . In many ways a classic Künstlerroman , the main body of the novel traces the protagonist from his childhood in the deep South through a brief stay at college and then to the North, where he confronts the American economic, political, and racial systems. This movement parallels what Robert B. Stepto in From Behind the Veil (1979) calls the “narrative of ascent,” a constituting pattern of African American culture.With roots in the fugitive slave narratives of the nineteenth century, the narrative of ascent follows its protagonist from physical or psychological bondage in the South through a sequence of symbolic confrontations with social structures to a limited freedom, usually in the North.

This freedom demands from the protagonist a “literacy” that enables him or her to create and understand both written and social experiences in the terms of the dominant Euro-American culture. Merging the narrative of ascent with the Künstlerroman , which also culminates with the hero’s mastery of literacy (seen in creative terms), Invisible Man focuses on writing as an act of both personal and cultural significance. Similarly, Ellison employs what Stepto calls the “narrative of immersion” to stress the realistic sources and implications of his hero’s imaginative development. The narrative of immersion returns the “literate” hero or heroine to an understanding of the culture he or she symbolically left behind during the ascent. Incorporating this pattern in Invisible Man , Ellison emphasizes the protagonist’s links with the African American community and the rich folk traditions that provide him with much of his sensibility and establish his potential as a conscious artist.

The overall structure of Invisible Man , however, involves cyclical as well as directional patterns. Framing the main body with a prologue and epilogue set in an underground burrow, Ellison emphasizes the novel’s symbolic dimension. Safely removed from direct participation in his social environment, the invisible man reassesses the literacy gained through his ascent, ponders his immersion in the cultural art forms of spirituals, blues, and jazz, and finally attempts to forge a pluralistic vision transforming these constitutive elements. The prologue and epilogue also evoke the heroic patterns and archetypal cycles described by Joseph Campbell in Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949). After undergoing tests of his spiritual and physical qualities, the hero of Campbell’s “monomyth”—usually a person of mysterious birth who receives aid from a cryptic helper—gains a reward, usually of a symbolic nature involving the union of opposites. Overcoming forces that would seize the reward, the hero returns to transform the life of the community through application of the knowledge connected with the symbolic reward. To some degree, the narratives of ascent and immersion recast this heroic cycle in specifically African American terms: The protagonist first leaves, then returns to his or her community bearing a knowledge of Euro-American society potentially capable of motivating a group ascent. Although it emphasizes the cyclic nature of the protagonist’s quest, the frame of Invisible Man simultaneously subverts the heroic pattern by removing him from his community. The protagonist promises a return, but the implications of the return for the life of the community remain ambiguous.

This ambiguity superficially connects Ellison’s novel with the classic American romance that Richard Chase characterizes in The American Novel and Its Tradition (1975) as incapable of reconciling symbolic perceptions with social realities. The connection, however, reflects Ellison’s awareness of the problem more than his acceptance of the irresolution. Although the invisible man’s underground burrow recalls the isolation of the heroes of the American romance, he promises a rebirth that is at once mythic, psychological, and social:

The hibernation is over. I must shake off my old skin and come up for breath. . . . And I suppose it’s damn well time. Even hibernations can be overdone, come to think of it. Perhaps that’smy greatest social crime, I’ve overstayed my hibernation, since there’s a possibility that even an invisible man has a socially responsible role to play.

Despite the qualifications typical of Ellison’s style, the invisible man clearly intends to return to the social world rather than light out for the territories of symbolic freedom.

The invisible man’s ultimate conception of the form of this return develops out of two interrelated progressions, one social and the other psychological. The social pattern, essentially that of the narrative of ascent, closely reflects the historical experience of the African American community as it shifts from rural southern to urban northern settings. Starting in the deep South, the invisible man first experiences invisibility as a result of casual but vicious racial oppression. His unwilling participation in the “battle royal” underscores the psychological and physical humiliation visited upon black southerners. Ostensibly present to deliver a speech to a white community group, the invisible man is instead forced to engage in a massive free-for-all with other African Americans, to scramble for money on an electrified rug, and to confront a naked white dancer who, like the boys, has been rendered invisible by the white men’s blindness. Escaping his hometown to attend a black college, the invisible man again experiences humiliation when he violates the unstated rules of the southern system—this time imposed by black people, rather than white people—by showing the college’s liberal northern benefactor, Mr. Norton, the poverty of the black community. As a result, the black college president, Dr. Bledsoe, expels the invisible man. Having experienced invisibility in relation to both black and white people and still essentially illiterate in social terms, the invisible man travels north, following the countless black southerners involved in the “Great Migration.”

Arriving in New York, the invisible man first feels a sense of exhilaration resulting from the absence of overt southern pressures. Ellison reveals the emptiness of this freedom, however, stressing the indirect and insidious nature of social power in the North. The invisible man’s experience at Liberty Paints, clearly intended as a parable of African American involvement in the American economic system, emphasizes the underlying similarity of northern and southern social structures. On arrival at Liberty Paints, the invisible man is assigned to mix a white paint used for government monuments. Labeled “optic white,” the grayish paint turns white only when the invisible man adds a drop of black liquid. The scene suggests the relationship between government and industry, which relies on black labor. More important, however, it points to the underlying source of racial blindness/invisibility: the white need for a black “other” to support a sense of identity. White becomes white only when compared to black.

The symbolic indirection of the scene encourages the reader, like the invisible man, to realize that social oppression in the North operates less directly than that in the South; government buildings replace rednecks at the battle royal. Unable to mix the paint properly, a desirable “failure” intimating his future as a subversive artist, the invisible man discovers that the underlying structure of the economic system differs little from that of slavery. The invisible man’s second job at Liberty Paints is to assist Lucius Brockway, an old man who supervises the operations of the basement machinery on which the factory depends. Essentially a slave to the modern owner/ master Mr. Sparland, Brockway, like the good “darkies” of the Plantation Tradition, takes pride in his master and will fight to maintain his own servitude. Brockway’s hatred of the invisible man, whom he perceives as a threat to his position, leads to a physical struggle culminating in an explosion caused by neglect of the machinery. Ellison’s multifaceted allegory suggests a vicious circle in which black people uphold an economic system that supports the political system that keeps black people fighting to protect their neoslavery. The forms alter but the battle royal continues. The image of the final explosion from the basement warns against passive acceptance of the social structure that sows the seeds of its own destruction.

Although the implications of this allegory in some ways parallel the Marxist analysis of capitalist culture, Ellison creates a much more complex political vision when the invisible man moves to Harlem following his release from the hospital after the explosion. The political alternatives available in Harlem range from the Marxism of the “Brotherhood” (loosely based on the American Communist Party of the late 1930’s) to the black nationalism of Ras the Exhorter (loosely based on Marcus Garvey’s pan-Africanist movement of the 1920’s). The Brotherhood promises complete equality for black people and at first encourages the invisible man to develop the oratorical talent ridiculed at the battle royal. As his effectiveness increases, however, the invisible man finds the Brotherhood demanding that his speeches conformto its “scientific analysis” of the black community’s needs. When he fails to fall in line, the leadership of the Brotherhood orders the invisible man to leave Harlem and turn his attention to the “woman question.” Without the invisible man’s ability to place radical politics in the emotional context of African American culture, the Brotherhood’s Harlem branch flounders. Recalled to Harlem, the invisible man witnesses the death of Tod Clifton, a talented coworker driven to despair by his perception that the Brotherhood amounts to little more than a new version of the power structure underlying both Liberty Paints and the battle royal. Clearly a double for the invisible man, Clifton leaves the organization and dies in a suicidal confrontation with a white policeman. Just before Clifton’s death, the invisible man sees him selling Sambo dolls, a symbolic comment on the fact that black people involved in leftist politics in some sense remain stereotyped slaves dancing at the demand of unseen masters.

Separating himself from the Brotherhood after delivering an extremely unscientific funeral sermon, the invisible man finds few political options. Ras’s black nationalism exploits the emotions the Brotherhood denies. Ultimately, however, Ras demands that his followers submit to an analogous oversimplification of their human reality. Where the Brotherhood elevates the scientific and rational, Ras focuses entirely on the emotional commitment to blackness. Neither alternative recognizes the complexity of either the political situation or the individual psyche; both reinforce the invisible man’s feelings of invisibility by refusing to see basic aspects of his character. As he did in the Liberty Paints scene, Ellison emphasizes the destructive, perhaps apocalyptic, potential of this encompassing blindness. A riot breaks out in Harlem, and the invisible man watches as DuPree, an apolitical Harlem resident recalling a number of African American folk heroes, determines to burn down his own tenement, preferring to start again from scratch rather than even attempt to work for social change within the existing framework. Unable to accept the realistic implications of such an action apart from its symbolic justification, the invisible man, pursued by Ras, who seems intent on destroying the very blackness he praises, tumbles into the underground burrow. Separated from the social structures, which have changed their facade but not their nature, the invisible man begins the arduous process of reconstructing his vision of America while symbolically subverting the social system by stealing electricity to light the 1,369 light bulbs on the walls of the burrow and to power the record players blasting out the pluralistic jazz of Louis Armstrong.

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As his frequent allusions to Armstrong indicate, Ellison by no means excludes the positive aspects from his portrayal of the African American social experience. The invisible man reacts strongly to the spirituals he hears at college, the blues story of Trueblood, the singing of Mary Rambro after she takes him in off the streets of Harlem. Similarly, he recognizes the strength wrested from resistance and suffering, a strength asserted by the broken link of chain saved by Brother Tarp.

These figures, however, have relatively little power to alter the encompassing social system. They assume their full significance in relation to the second major progression in Invisible Man , that focusing on the narrator’s psychological development. As he gradually gains an understanding of the social forces that oppress him, the invisible man simultaneously discovers the complexity of his own personality. Throughout the central narrative, he accepts various definitions of himself, mostly from external sources. Ultimately, however, all definitions that demand he repress or deny aspects of himself simply reinforce his sense of invisibility. Only by abandoning limiting definitions altogether, Ellison implies, can the invisible man attain the psychological integrity necessary for any effective social action.

Ellison emphasizes the insufficiency of limiting definitions in the prologue when the invisible man has a dream-vision while listening to an Armstrong record. After descending through four symbolically rich levels of the dream, the invisible man hears a sermon on the “Blackness of Blackness,” which recasts the “Whiteness of the Whale” chapter from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1851). The sermon begins with a cascade of apparent contradictions, forcing the invisible man to question his comfortable assumptions concerning the nature of freedom, hatred, and love. No simple resolution emerges from the sermon, other than an insistence on the essentially ambiguous nature of experience. The dream-vision culminates in the protagonist’s confrontation with the mulatto sons of an old black woman torn between love and hatred for their father. Although their own heritage merges the “opposites” of white and black, the sons act in accord with social definitions and repudiate their white father, an act that unconsciously but unavoidably repudiates a large part of themselves. The hostile sons, the confused old woman, and the preacher who delivers the sermon embody aspects of the narrator’s own complexity. When one of the sons tells the invisible man to stop asking his mother disturbing questions, his words sound a leitmotif for the novel: “Next time you got questions like that ask yourself.”

Before he can ask, or even locate, himself, however, the invisible man must directly experience the problems generated by a fragmented sense of self and a reliance on others. Frequently, he accepts external definitions, internalizing the fragmentation dominating his social context. For example, he accepts a letter of introduction from Bledsoe on the assumption that it testifies to his ability. Instead, it creates an image of him as a slightly dangerous rebel. By delivering the letter to potential employers, the invisible man participates directly in his own oppression. Similarly, he accepts a new name from the Brotherhood, again revealing his willingness to simplify himself in an attempt to gain social acceptance from the educational, economic, and political systems. As long as he accepts external definitions, the invisible man lacks the essential element of literacy: an understanding of the relationship between context and self.

Ellison’s reluctance to reject the external definitions and attain literacy reflects both a tendency to see social experience as more “real” than psychological experience and a fear that the abandonment of definitions will lead to total chaos. The invisible man’s meeting with Trueblood, a sharecropper and blues singer who has fathered a child by his own daughter, highlights this fear. Watching Mr. Norton’s fascination with Trueblood, the invisible man perceives that even the dominant members of the Euro-American society feel stifled by the restrictions of “respectability.” Ellison refuses to abandon all social codes, portraying Trueblood in part as a hustler whose behavior reinforces white stereotypes concerning black immorality. If Trueblood’s acceptance of his situation (and of his human complexity) seems in part heroic, it is a heroism grounded in victimization. Nevertheless, the invisible man eventually experiments with repudiation of all strict definitions when, after his disillusionment with the Brotherhood, he adopts the identity of Rinehart, a protean street figure who combines the roles of pimp and preacher, shifting identities with context. After a brief period of exhilaration, the invisible man discovers that “Rinehart’s” very fluidity guarantees that he will remain locked within social definitions. Far from increasing his freedom at any moment, his multiplicity forces him to act in whatever role his “audience” casts him. Ellison stresses the serious consequences of this lack of center when the invisible man nearly becomes involved in a knife fight with Brother Maceo, a friend who sees only the Rinehartian exterior. The persona of “Rinehart,” then, helps increase the invisible man’s sense of possibility, but lacks the internal coherence necessary for psychological, and perhaps even physical, survival.

Ellison rejects both acceptance of external definitions and abandonment of all definitions as workable means of attaining literacy. Ultimately, he endorses the full recognition and measured acceptance of the experience, historical and personal, that shapes the individual. In addition, he recommends the careful use of masks as a survival strategy in the social world. The crucial problem with this approach, derived in large part from African American folk culture, involves the difficulty of maintaining the distinction between external mask and internal identity. As Bledsoe demonstrates, a protective mask threatens to implicate the wearer in the very system he or she attempts to manipulate.

Before confronting these intricacies, however, the invisible man must accept his African American heritage, the primary imperative of the narrative of immersion. Initially, he attempts to repudiate or to distance himself from the aspects of the heritage associated with stereotyped roles. He shatters and attempts to throw away the “darky bank” he finds in his room at Mary Rambro’s. His failure to lose the pieces of the bank reflects Ellison’s conviction that the stereotypes, major aspects of the African American social experience, cannot simply be ignored or forgotten. As an element shaping individual consciousness, they must be incorporated into, without being allowed to dominate, the integrated individual identity. Symbolically, in a scene in which the invisible man meets a yam vendor shortly after his arrival in Harlem, Ellison warns that one’s racial heritage alone cannot provide a full sense of identity. After first recoiling from yams as a stereotypic southern food, the invisible man eats one, sparking a momentary epiphany of racial pride. When he indulges the feelings and buys another yam, however, he finds it frost-bitten at the center.

The invisible man’s heritage, placed in proper perspective, provides the crucial hints concerning social literacy and psychological identity that allow him to come provisionally to terms with his environment. Speaking on his deathbed, the invisible man’s grandfather offers cryptic advice that lies near the essence of Ellison’s overall vision: “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.” Similarly, an ostensibly insane veteran echoes the grandfather’s advice, adding an explicit endorsement of the Machiavellian potential of masking:

Play the game, but don’t believe in it—that much you owe yourself. Even if it lands you in a strait jacket or a padded cell. Play the game, but play it your own way—part of the time at least. Play the game, but raise the ante, my boy. Learn how it operates, learn how you operate. . . . that game has been analyzed, put down in books. But down here they’ve forgotten to take care of the books and that’s your opportunity. You’re hidden right out in the open—that is, you would be if you only realized it. They wouldn’t see you because they don’t expect you to know anything.

The vet understands the “game” of Euro-American culture, while the grandfather directly expresses the internally focused wisdom of the African American community.

The invisible man’s quest leads him to a synthesis of these forms of literacy in his ultimate pluralistic vision. Although he at first fails to comprehend the subversive potential of his position, the invisible man gradually learns the rules of the game and accepts the necessity of the indirect action recommended by his grandfather. Following his escape into the underground burrow, he contemplates his grandfather’s advice from a position of increased experience and self-knowledge. Contemplating his own individual situation in relation to the surrounding society, he concludes that his grandfather “ must have meant the principle, that we were to affirm the principle on which the country was built but not the men.” Extending this affirmation to the psychological level, the invisible man embraces the internal complexity he has previously repressed or denied: “So it is that now I denounce and defend, or feel prepared to defend. I condemn and affirm, say no and say yes, say yes and say no. I denounce because though implicated and partially responsible, I have been hurt to the point of abysmal pain, hurt to the point of invisibility. And I defend because in spite of all I find that I love. In order to get some of it down I have to love.”

“Getting some of it down,” then, emerges as the crucial link between Ellison’s social and psychological visions. In order to play a socially responsible role—and to transformthe words “social responsibility” from the segregationist catch phrase used by the man at the battle royal into a term responding to Louis Armstrong’s artistic call for change—the invisible man forges from his complex experience a pluralistic art that subverts the social lion by taking its principles seriously. The artist becomes a revolutionary wearing a mask. Ellison’s revolution seeks to realize a pluralist ideal, a true democracy recognizing the complex experience and human potential of every individual. Far from presenting his protagonist as a member of an intrinsically superior cultural elite, Ellison underscores his shared humanity in the concluding line: “Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?” Manipulating the aesthetic and social rules of the Euro-American “game,” Ellison sticks his head in the lion’s mouth, asserting a blackness of blackness fully as ambiguous, as individual, and as rich as the whiteness of Herman Melville’s whale.

Juneteenth Forty-seven years after the release of Invisible Man , Ellison’s second novel was published. Ellison began working on Juneteenth in 1954, but his constant revisions delayed its publication. Although it was unfinished at the time of his death, only minor edits and revisions were necessary to publish the book.

Juneteenth is about a black minister, Hickman, who takes in and raises a little boy as black, even though the child looks white. The boy soon runs away to New England and later becomes a race-baiting senator. After he is shot on the Senate floor, he sends for Hickman. Their past is revealed through their ensuing conversation.

The title of the novel, appropriately, refers to a day of liberation for African Americans. Juneteenth historically represents June 19, 1865, the day Union forces announced emancipation of slaves in Texas; that state considers Juneteenth an official holiday. The title applies to the novel’s themes of evasion and discovery of identity, which Ellison explored so masterfully in Invisible Man .

Major Works Long fiction : Invisible Man , 1952; Juneteenth , 1999 (John F. Callahan, editor). Short fiction : Flying Home, and Other Stories , 1996. Nonfiction : Shadow and Act , 1964; The Writer’s Experience , 1964 (with Karl Shapiro); Going to the Territory , 1986; Conversations with Ralph Ellison , 1995 (Maryemma Graham and Amritjit Singh, editors); The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison , 1995 (John F. Callahan, editor); Trading Twelves: The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray , 2000; Living with Music: Ralph Ellison’s Jazz Writings , 2001 (Robert O’Meally, editor).

Source: Notable American Novelists Revised Edition Volume 1 James Agee — Ernest J. Gaines Edited by Carl Rollyson Salem Press, Inc 2008.