Book Summary: Invisible Man By Ralph Ellison

Dr. Brittany Hancock
History 1302
April 12, 2016
This essay will be addressing the book Invisible man written by Ralph Ellison. In Invisible Man the protagonist would describe how it is to feel invisible to the world just based on your skin color. This unnamed protagonist would describe his past on how once he was an excellent student to leaving in the basement of an apartment complex restricted to only whites. As the story progresses the protagonist explains many challenges he had to go through to end up living in a hole.
Ralph Waldo Ellison was born on March 1st 1914 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He was named after journalist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ellison’s father died in a work related accident when he was just three years old. His

mother was alone taking care of Ralph and his baby brother by working a variety of jobs. At the age of 8 he learned to play the cornet. He also played trumpet and attended Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, where he studied music with his eye on becoming a symphony composer. In 1936 he moved to New York with the intent of earning money for college but he had to relocate. He worked as a researcher for the New York Federal Writers Program. He also began to publish some of his essays and short stories, and also worked as managing editor for The Negro Quarterly. He enlisted as a cook during World War II, was married briefly but would be wed again in 1946 to Fanny McConnell who would be with him for the remainder of his life. In 1954 he published Invisible man, it would become an instant hit, and the book would remain as best seller for weeks. He would win the National Book Award in 1953 for Invisible Man. In 1845 He died on April 16th 1994 at the age of 80 due to pancreatic cancer.
Ralph Ellison’s book Invisible man took place between the 1920s and 1930s. It described how people would not acknowledge that blacks existed. It was a time the people who lived in that era who would pretend that black did not exist they would ignore them, making them feel invisible. “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me” (Ellison 3). Blacks felt invisible at this time because people didn’t acknowledge them as human beings, they were just ignored. People would say the Invisible Man could have not been written by a white person because they would not understand what blacks had to go through while that era.
Summary of Work
Invisible man was based
The author wrote Invisible Man to show how the blacks felt during this time period.

How they would be treated less than animals. They would be ignored when people saw them outside. Invisible Man showed that blacks were more than “invisible” people. The author explained the situation the unnamed protagonist had to go from being a black in that time period, Ellison would talk about the struggle of this protagonist such as him being an excellent student to having been made a fool out of getting kicked out of school and many other stuff. This book challenges the difference between races on how everyone was treated differently based on their race. Whites didn't care about the black, as a matter in fact they would use them as entertainment. “A hot, violent force tore through my body, shaking me like a wet rat. The rug was electrified. The hair bristled up on my head as I shook myself free. My muscles jumped, my nerves jangled, writhed. But I saw that this was not stopping the other boys. Laughing in fear and embarrassment, some were holding back and scooping up the coins knocked off by the painful contortions of the others. The men roared above us as we struggled” (Ellison 22). This was before he was finally able to say his speech after fighting and being

humiliated.
One of the topics in this book was the American Civil Rights movement that were thought in class recently. This was the beginning of the civil rights movement on how the blacks wanted equality and how they wanted to do everything to be able to gain that equality. The way blacks were treated in this story was similar to what was occurring in real life. Blacks were not treated as people, they were treated different from the whites. The protagonist experience many of this inequality such as being made fun off. Having to see how everything can change in such a short time.
This piece, Invisible Man written by Ralph Ellison, was an excellent book that I would have not even found out about if it wasn’t for Dr.

Hancock. As the reader, the understanding was clear. The protagonist was telling the story from point A to point B in a way that amuses the reader. It had a clear understanding of the difficulties the unnamed protagonist had to go through from being an excellent student to having many obstacles in life that in the end he ended up living in the basement of an all whites apartment complex feeling invisible, as described in the beginning of the story. This book is great because it is presented to any type of reader in the most understandable way. This book is a must read, even if you are not into the history, it’s an excellent story overall and would highly recommend it to

anyone.
My instructor, Dr. Hancock, most likely choose this piece because it talks about the hardship of what a black man had to go through only because of his race. It mentions many things that we have gone through in history but the main point is the way that blacks were treated during that time period that the story is taking place. Many of the points made in this piece were actual things that would happen to the blacks as they tried to live a normal life. The racist things that Dr. Hancock would talk about during our lecture where the same things happening in this story.
In Conclusion, this piece that was written by Ralph Elliot was an excellent piece. It was written and described in a way that any type of reader would be easily entertained with