Chapter Summary: Invisible Man By Ralph Ellison

Stuart MacIlwaine
General English 248
15 April 2015
Reading Response #3
In his novel, Invisible Man, author Ralph Ellison tells the story of an African American man who deals with the various hardships that come from being of color. Ellison implements the prologue in order to introduce various themes and ideas communicated through short stories told by the novel’s nameless narrator. Through the ideas of invisibility and vision, Ellison is successfully able to express racial themes in the prologue of his novel.
The most prominent metaphorical aspect presented in the prologue has to do with the idea invisibility. The prologue begins with the narrator emphasizing to the readers that he is invisible, but not in a literal sense. It is not that people cannot see his physical body, but that they cannot see him for who he truly is. At first, it is not necessarily clear what the narrator actually means when he says that he is invisible, but, as the prologue progresses, it is made evident that he is referring to the fact that he is an African American. “That invisibility to which I refer occurs

because of a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those whom I come in contact. A matter of the construction of the inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality.” (Ellison, 3). The narrator explains that his “invisibility” comes from a certain predisposition in other people’s minds that act as filter to negatively impact their perspectives of him.
Ellison further applies this theme of invisibility to the novel through the narrator’s story of the blond man on the street.

After recalling the circumstances involving the dispute, the narrator claims that he decided not to slit the blond man’s throat because he had not actually “seen” the narrator. To the man’s knowledge, the whole situation was a part of a “bad dream.” By this, the narrator implies that the blond man was blinded by the dark color of his skin, and for that, he made unfair assumptions. “Then I was amused: Something in this man’s thick head had sprung out and beaten him within an inch of his life.” (Ellison, 5). The blond man hosted several inaccurate depictions of the narrator inside of his head, just because the narrator was black. As a result of the insult, the narrator actually became the monster that the blond man had falsely and initially assumed him to

be.
Throughout the prologue, Ellison also develops his idea of vision. Like the idea of invisibility, Ellison presents this theme of vision in a non-literal sense. In the context of this portion of the novel, vision, in its metaphorical form, is what allows others to see the narrator, or any person of color for that matter, for who they are. “A junk man I know, a man of vision, has supplied me with wire and sockets.” (Ellison, 7). The junk man in the prologue is an example of somebody with vision. Despite the narrator an African American, he is able show generosity to him while looking past his black skin.
In the prologue, it is evident that the narrator is in search of vision. While he longs for society to gain vision, he also seeks it for himself. Other people’s negative views and perspectives of black people seem to damage his self-esteem to the point where he somewhat believes that the stereotypes regarding African Americans are accurate. It is because of this that he fascinated with having lights in his room to create a clearer vision for himself.
In the prologue of his novel, Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison sends a strong message of the sense of alienation felt by African Americans in the past. Through metaphorical interpretations of the ideas of invisibility and vision, Ellison is able to present the narrator in a sympathetic light while simultaneously emphasizing the struggles that most people of color faced in 1930s Harlem.