The two novels, The Grapes of Wrath and Invisible Man, are evidently, two classic masterpieces that marvelously portray the social, economic and political turmoil that prevailed in the mid-20th century in America. Despite the obvious differences, the protagonist’s lives in these two novels are similarly affected by external forces.
Perhaps, the foremost similarities between these two novels are the protagonists’ desperate struggle for survival and how their dreams and hopes are shattered once they reach their destination. In The Grapes of Wrath, the Joads hope for a positive amendment in their lives and reach California, where their dreams and hopes become shattered. Similarly, in Invisible Man, the unnamed narrator reaches Harlem, where his dreams and hope of going back to his university and getting a degree becomes shattered. In brief, their desperate attempts to become socially significant are shattered.
These two American literatures could be noted for speaking about and exposing the various controversial issues. Ellison and Steinbeck express the feeling of the American society, regarding the social problems that they face, intending to evoke intense feelings from the readers. Both create many emotions and convey the true reality of the American society. They make the readers perceive the negative reality of their society.
Negative aspects of the societies that these two authors speak encompass racism, poverty and discrimination. In Invisible Man, Ellison makes the readers witness the scurrilous and irascible behavior of the white people to the black Americans. The inhuman behavior of the whites, resulting in the maltreatment of blacks. And in the case of The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck makes the readers witness the disc...
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...ally. This hurdle in the journey is made by the upper class so that their desperate attempt to become socially and economically significant is shattered.
It is evident that from portraying the social, economic and political turmoil that the protagonists face, Ellison and Steinbeck are trying to make an affirmative statement through their novels. A statement that is not just concerned about these two protagonists or just the people of these two novels, but also the whole community.
Thus, Ellison and Steinbeck made the protagonists the representatives of their respective communities. Especially in Invisible Man, the protagonist is invisible. He doesn’t have either a name or an identity. By making them the representatives of their communities, these two authors conveys the readers to generalize the condition that prevailed in the America in the mid-20th century.
In Ralph Ellison’s novel, Invisible Man, the narrator who is the main character goes through many trials and tribulations.
Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath is a realistic novel that mimics life and offers social commentary too. It offers many windows on real life in midwest America in the 1930s. But it also offers a powerful social commentary, directly in the intercalary chapters and indirectly in the places and people it portrays. Typical of very many, the Joads are driven off the land by far away banks and set out on a journey to California to find a better life. However the journey breaks up the family, their dreams are not realized and their fortunes disappear. What promised to be the land of milk and honey turns to sour grapes. The hopes and dreams of a generation turned to wrath. Steinbeck opens up this catastrophe for public scrutiny.
The Grapes of Wrath displays one of America’s greatest stumbles during the establishment of our country. The story follows a family hit with the struggles of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Drought, economic hardship, agricultural changes, and bank foreclosures rip the Joads from the quaint town of Sallisaw, Oklahoma, forcing them to take the dreadful journey across the country. Nevertheless, the Joads drag their feet along the trodden path, dragged on by an unassured perseverance. The Joads were driven by a burning fire of desperation, grounded by the hope promised by orange handbills laden with the deceitful lies of the rapacious. For the hopeless seek hope, an elusive destiny sated by lying promises. Steinbeck’s unique style of writing inculcates an abortive hope in the minds of the readers, instilling a lust for the untouched and unloved land which in turn reveals the impossibility of the “American Dream”; through complex symbols and innovative themes, Steinbeck also educates the ignorant, blinded by the vague history books that blot out the full intensity of the calamities and suffering endured by hopeful Okies on their treacherous journey into the unknown.
Wyatt, David ed. New Essays on The Grapes of Wrath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Invisible Man is a book novel written by Ralph Ellison. The novel delves into various intellectual and social issues facing the African-Americans in the mid-twentieth century. Throughout the novel, the main character struggles a lot to find out who he is, and his place in the society. He undergoes various transformations, and notably is his transformation from blindness and lack of understanding in perceiving the society (Ellison 34).
John Steinbeck’s novel, The Grapes of Wrath is one of the most influential books in American History, and is considered to be his best work by many. It tells the story of one family’s hardship during the Depression and the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s. The Joads were a hard-working family with a strong sense of togetherness and morals; they farmed their land and went about their business without bothering anyone. When the big drought came it forced them to sell the land they had lived on since before anyone can remember. Their oldest son, Tom, has been in jail the past four years and returns to find his childhood home abandoned. He learns his family has moved in with his uncle John and decides to travel a short distance to see them. He arrives only to learn they are packing up their belongings and moving to California, someplace where there is a promise of work and food. This sets the Joad family off on a long and arduous journey with one goal: to survive.
Invisible Man is a novel by Ralph Ellison, addressing many social and moral issues regarding African-American identity, including the inside of the interaction between the white and the black. His novel was written in a time, that black people were treated like degraded livings by the white in the Southern America and his main character is chosen from that region. In this figurative novel he meets many people during his trip to the North, where the black is allowed more freedom. As a character, he is not complex, he is even naïve. Yet, Ellison’s narration is successful enough to show that he improves as he makes radical decisions about his life at the end of the book.
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.
The 1930’s were a decade of great change politically, economically, and socially. The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl wore raw the nerves of the people, and our true strength was shown. From it arose John Steinbeck, a storyteller of the Okies and their hardships. His books, especially The Grapes of Wrath, are reflections of what really went on in the 1930’s. John Steinbeck did not write about what he had previously read, he instead wrote what he experienced through his travels with the migrant workers. “His method was not to present himself notebook in hand and interview people. Instead he worked and traveled with the migrants as one of them, living as they did and arousing no suspicion from employers militantly alert against “agitators” of any kind.” (Lisca 14) John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath was derived from his personal experiences and his journeys with the migrant workers.
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 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, the unnamed narrator shows us through the use motifs and symbols how racism and sexism negatively affect the social class and individual identity of the oppressed people. Throughout the novel, the African American narrator tells us the story of his journey to find success in life which is sabotaged by the white-dominated society in which he lives in. Along his journey, we are also shown how the patriarchy oppresses all of the women in the novel through the narrator’s encounters with them.
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.
Although seemingly a very important aspect of Invisible Man, the problems of blacks are not the sole concern of the novel. Instead, these problems are used as a vehicle for beginning the novel a...
Shmoop Editorial Team. “Ralph Ellison: Writing Invisible Man.” Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 26 Jan 2014.
Holland, Laurence B. "Ellison in Black and White: Confession, Violence and Rhetoric in 'Invisible Man'." Black Fiction: New Studies in the Afro-American Novel since 1945.