“You can’t touch music—it exists only at the moment it is being apprehended—and yet it can profoundly alter how we view the world and our place in it” (“Preface” 7).1 Music is a form of art enjoyed by millions of people each day. It is an art that has continued through decades and can be seen in many different ways. That is why Ellison chooses to illustrate his novel with jazz. Jazz music in Invisible Man gives feelings that Ellison could never explain in words. In Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, the narrator’s search for his identity can be compared to the structure of a jazz composition. In order to see the parallel between the novel and jazz, one must first see how Ellison incorporates jazz music in the prologue of the novel. He not only sets the scene with jazz music in the background but also gives the narrator a deep understanding of music. The music that the narrator listens to is Louis Armstrong’s “Black and Blue,” which is appropriate because Armstrong is a prominent African-American jazz musician who protests the treatment of African-Americans through his music. The narrator embraces every line of the song and gives an apt description of its message: The unheard sounds came through, and each melodic line existed of itself, stood out clearly from all the rest, said its piece, and waited patiently for the other voices to speak. That night I found myself hearing not only in time, but in space as well. I not only entered the music, but descended, like Dante, into its depths (Ellison 7).2 The allusion to Dante refers to the poem “Divine Comedy,” which tells a story of a man traveling through the depths of hell. The narrator takes a deep metaphorical journey through every line that makes up that song. He likes Armstrong becau... ... middle of paper ... ..., 2012. 11-13. Print. Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. New York: Random, 1952. Print. Margolies, Edward. “History as Blues: Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.” Native Sons: A Critical Study of Twentieth-Century Negro American Authors. J.B. Lippincott Company, 1968. 127-148. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Daniel G. Marowski and Roger Matuz. Vol. 54. Detroit: Gale, 1989. 115-119. Print. “Ralph Ellison.” Survey of American Literature. 1992. atu.edu. Arkansas Tech University, n.d. Web. 21 Jan. 2014. Shmoop Editorial Team. “Ralph Ellison: Writing Invisible Man.” Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 26 Jan 2014. SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Invisible Man.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC, 2002. Web. 21 Jan 2014. Sundquist, Eric J. “Ralph Ellison, Jazz, and Louis Armstrong.” Bloom’s Literature. Facts on File, Inc., 1995. Web. 9 Jan. 2014.
“His relaxed phrasing was a major change from the staccato style of the early 20’s and helped to set the stage for the Swing Era” (“Life & Legacy”). And as such a prominent artist, and in particular, jazz artist, Armstrong did not only change the perception of jazz and swing, but the views on African Americans and their culture. Armstrong and the Harlem Renaissance reflected black history and culture, and it became popular, even in white communities and clubs. Jazz as a whole genre helped further society’s views through the universal language of music, where any ethnicity could partake in it. And the revolution of jazz was lead by the stylings of Louis Armstrong. The duration of the jazz and swing era, lasting decades past the 1920s, symbolized the civil rights movement directly through the lyrics, sounds, and artists
Morel, Lucas E. Ralph Ellison and the Raft of Hope: A Political Companion to Invisible Man. Lexington: University of Kentucky, 2004. Print.
Invisible Man (1952) chronicles the journey of a young African-American man on a quest for self-discovery amongst racial, social and political tensions. This novel features a striking parallelism to Ellison’s own life. Born in Oklahoma in 1914, Ellison was heavily influenced by his namesake, transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ellison attended the Tuskegee Institute on a music scholarship before leaving to pursue his dreams in New York. Ellison’s life mirrors that of his protagonist as he drew heavily on his own experiences to write Invisible Man. Ellison uses the parallel structure between the narrator’s life and his own to illustrate the connection between sight and power, stemming from Ellison’s own experiences with the communist party.
Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man Chapter 1. The Norton Anthology of American Literature.By Nina Baym. 8th ed. Vol. 2. New York [u.a.: Norton, 2013. 1211-221. Print.
...y jazz music. He begins by playing the music while eating his favorite dessert of vanilla ice cream and sloe gin (7). The protagonist describes the scene as follows: “I pour the red liquid over the white mound, watching it glisten and the vapor rising as Louis bends the military instrument into a beam of lyrical sound” (7). The color imagery, of a white mound and a red liquid, works to depict the mass genocide of whites; the mound acts as a symbol of the decimated race of people and the red liquid acts as a symbol of their bloodshed. This scene satirizes Armstrong and the Africa-American general populace, who are brought simply enjoyment or are unified by jazz music. Dissimilarly, the protagonist thinks only of action when he hears Armstrong sing “Black and Blue.” He cements this point when he refers to Armstrong’s musical instrument as being of the “military” (7).
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.
The rapid development of jazz in both the United States and Europe generated a number of diverse musical expressions, including musics that most listeners today would not recognize as “jazz” music. In order to remedy this situation, jazz musicians and critics after 1930 began to codify what “real” jazz encompassed, and more importantly, what “real” jazz did not encompass. This construction of authenticity, often demarcated along racial lines, served to relegate several artists and styles (those outside a “mainstream” to the margins of historiography.
4. Lane, James. Underground to Manhood: Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Negroe American Literature Forum. Vol. 7, No. 2 (1973): JSTOR. Web. 10 April 2014
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.
Bellow, Saul. "Man Underground" Review of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. Commentary. June 1952. 1st December 2001
Ralph Ellison achieved international fame with his first novel, Invisible Man. Ellison's Invisible Man is a novel that deals with many different social and mental themes and uses many different symbols and metaphors. The narrator of the novel is not only a black man, but also a complex American searching for the reality of existence in a technological society that is characterized by swift change (Weinberg 1197). The story of Invisible Man is a series of experiences through which its naive hero learns, to his disillusion and horror, the ways of the world. The novel is one that captures the whole of the American experience. It incorporates the obvious themes of alienation and racism. However, it has deeper themes for the reader to explore, ranging from the roots of black culture to the need for strong Black leadership to self-discovery.
As it mentioned above, the title itself, draws attention to the world-renowned music created by African Americans in the 1920s’ as well as to the book’s jazz-like narrative structure and themes. Jazz is the best-known artistic creation of Harlem Renaissance. “Jazz is the only pure American creation, which shortly after its birth, became America’s most important cultural export”(Ostendorf, 165). It evolved from the blues
Lillard, Stewart. "Ellison's Ambitious Scope in "Invisible Man"." English Journal. 58.6 (1969): 883-839. Web. 2 Mar. 2015. .
The Langman, F. H. & Co., Inc. The "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.