Self-Identity in Invisible Man
In the novel, Invisible Man, the main character carries around a briefcase throughout the entire story. All of the possessions that he carries in that briefcase are mementos from learning experiences. Throughout the novel, the Invisible Man is searching for his identity and later discovers that his identity is in those items.
As the narrator is leaving Mary's house for the Brotherhood, he sees a Negro-doll bank in his room. He is angry that the doll is holding a sign that read, "Feed me."
"For a second I stopped, feeling hate charging up within me, then dashed over and grabbed it, suddenly as enraged by the tolerance of lack of discrimination, or whatever, that allowed Mary to keep such a self-mocking image around" (Ellison 319).
The shattering of the bank by the narrator symbolizes that he is rejecting the views of the "old Negro" and taking his own views on the subject. Part of his views is the conviction that colored people do not need to rely on whites for their survival. Often times one does not know his own viewpoint on a subject until he can reject one view. Another item that is stored in his briefcase is the broken chain link that Brother Tarp gave to him.
"I neither wanted it nor knew what to do with it; although there was no question of keeping it if no other reason than that I felt that Brother Tarp's gesture in offering it was of some deeply felt significance which I was compelled to respect" (Ellison 389).
Although the narrator does not want to keep the link, he feels compelled to do so because the chain gang is part of his heritage. One often feels that he can not ignore to his past, as does the Invisible Man. Even at the end of the novel when he is b...
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... part of his true identity.
Works Cited
Bone, Robert. "Ralph Ellison and the Uses of Imagination." Modern Black Novelists: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. M. G. Cooke.
Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1971. 45-63.
Brennan, Timothy. "Ellison and Ellison: The Solipsism of Invisible Man." CLA Journal XXV (Dec 1981): 162-81.
Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. New York: The Modern Library, 1994.
Holland, Laurence B. "Ellison in Black and White: Confession, Violence and
Klein, Marcus. "Ralph Ellison." After Alienation: American Novels in Mid-Century. Cleveland: World Pub., 1964. 71-146.
Langman, F.H. "Reconsidering Invisible Man." The Critical Review. 18 (1976) 114-27.
Lieber, Todd M. "Ralph Ellison and the Metaphor of Invisibility in Black Literary Tradition." American Quarterly. Mar. 1972: 86-100.
Upon opening Ralph Waldo Ellison’s book The “Invisible Man”, one will discover the shocking story of an unnamed African American and his lifelong struggle to find a place in the world. Recognizing the truth within this fiction leads one to a fork in its reality; One road stating the narrators isolation is a product of his own actions, the other naming the discriminatory views of the society as the perpetrating force infringing upon his freedom. Constantly revolving around his own self-destruction, the narrator often settles in various locations that are less than strategic for a man of African-American background. To further address the question of the narrator’s invisibility, it is important not only to analyze what he sees in himself, but more importantly if the reflection (or lack of reflection for that matter) that he sees is equal to that of which society sees. The reality that exists is that the narrator exhibits problematic levels of naivety and gullibility. These flaws of ignorance however stems from a chivalrous attempt to be a colorblind man in a world founded in inequality. Unfortunately, in spite of the black and white line of warnings drawn by his Grandfather, the narrator continues to operate on a lost cause, leaving him just as lost as the cause itself. With this grade of functioning, the narrator continually finds himself running back and forth between situations of instability, ultimately leading him to the self-discovery of failure, and with this self-discovery his reasoning to claim invisibility.
The narrator's life is filled with constant eruptions of mental traumas. The biggest psychological burden he has is his identity, or rather his misidentity. He feels "wearing on the nerves" (Ellison 3) for people to see him as what they like to believe he is and not see him as what he really is. Throughout his life, he takes on several different identities and none, he thinks, adequately represents his true self, until his final one, as an invisible man.
Early on in Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison's nameless narrator recalls a Sunday afternoon in his campus chapel. With aspirations not unlike those of Silas Snobden's office boy, he gazes up from his pew to further extol a platform lined with Horatio Alger proof-positives, millionaires who have realized the American Dream. For the narrator, it is a reality closer and kinder than prayer can provide: all he need do to achieve what they have is work hard enough. At this point, the narrator cannot be faulted for such delusions, he is not yet alive, he has not yet recognized his invisibility. This discovery takes twenty years to unfold. When it does, he is underground, immersed in a blackness that would seem to underscore the words he has heard on that very campus: he is nobody; he doesn't exist (143).
In this passage, Ellison reveals the identity crisis faced by not only the Invisible Man, but by the entire African American race as well. He builds on this theme as he follows the I.M. through his life experiences.... ... middle of paper ... ...by very carefully executing his point of view, thereby giving the modern day reader a clear concept of the problem.
In 1954, Ralph Ellison penned one of the most consequential novels on the experience of African Americans in the 20th century. Invisible Man chronicles the journey of an unnamed narrator from late youth until well into adulthood. As an African American attempting to thrive in a white-dominant culture, the narrator struggles to discover his true identity because situations are never how they truly appear to him. One of the ways Ellison portrays this complex issue is through the duality of visual pairs, such as gold and brass, black and white, and light and dark. These pairs serve to emphasize the gap between appearance and reality as the narrator struggles to develop his identity throughout the novel.
Throughout Ralph Ellison’s novel, Invisible Man, the main character dealt with collisions and contradictions, which at first glance presented as negative influences, but in retrospect, they positively influenced his life, ultimately resulting in the narrator developing a sense of independence. The narrator, invisible man, began the novel as gullible, dependent, and self-centered. During the course of the book, he developed into a self-determining and assured character. The characters and circumstances invisible man came across allowed for this growth.
Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man depicts a realistic society where white people act as if black people are less than human. Ellison uses papers and letters to show the narrator’s poor position in this society.
In Ralph Ellison’s novel, Invisible Man, the narrator who is the main character goes through many trials and tribulations.
Howe, Irving. "Review of: Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man" Pub. The Nation. 10 May 1952. 30 November 1999. <http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/howe-on-ellison.html.
Everyone knows what the word poverty means. It means poor, unable to buy the necessities to survive in today's world. We do not realize how easy it is for a person to fall into poverty: A lost job, a sudden illness, a death in the family or the endless cycle of being born into poverty and not knowing how to overcome it. There are so many children in poverty and a family's structure can effect the outcome. Most of the people who are at the poverty level need some type of help to overcome the obstacles. There are mane issues that deal with poverty and many things that can be done to stop it.
The narrator of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man is the victim of his own naiveté. Throughout the novel he trusts that various people and groups are helping him when in reality they are using him for their own benefit. They give him the illusion that he is useful and important, all the while running him in circles. Ellison uses much symbolism in his book, some blatant and some hard to perceive, but nothing embodies the oppression and deception of the white hierarchy surrounding him better than his treasured briefcase, one of the most important symbols in the book.
Lillard, Stewart. "Ellison's Ambitious Scope in "Invisible Man"." English Journal. 58.6 (1969): 883-839. Web. 2 Mar. 2015. .
“Ralph Ellison.” Survey of American Literature. 1992. atu.edu. Arkansas Tech University, n.d. Web. 21 Jan. 2014.
The narrator is constantly attempting to escape the racial profiling by everyone around him. The failure of this attempt is apparent by the inability to get rid of the broken pieces of the bank, which represents the inability to escape from the stereotypes he is affiliated with. The narrator repeatedly alludes to the fact that he is generalized because of his black heritage and therefore, invisible to society. This is especially clear when he finds the cast-iron bank. The bank is in the shape of a black slave with stereotyped features. The fact that it was a slave with a generous grin, eating coins, was demeaning. It frustrated the narrator that this was a comedic object, plainly made for the entertainment of white society at the expense of the black people. The fact that the bank is “a very black, red-lipped and wide mouthed negro” (Ralph Ellison, 319), ...
Klein, Marcus. "Ralph Ellison." After Alienation: American Novels in Mid-Century. Cleveland: World Pub., 1964. 71-146.