Cure for Blindness - Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man

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Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man was a crucial literary tool in raising awareness of and forwarding the equal rights movement for African Americans when it reached readers of all races in the 1950's. The Cultural Contexts for Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man claims that the novel envisions nothing less than undoing African Americans' cultural dispossession. Ellison's words are indeed an eloquent unraveling of social stereotypes and racisms. He employs allegorical conceptions of blindness and invisibility to dissect culturally ingrained prejudices and ignorance towards African Americans. Ellison also uses IM's settings and characters to reflect America and its stereotypes in order to achieve this goal. Throughout the novel there are several instances where characters, including the narrator, are physically blind or experience the loss of their sight. Such cases of physical blindness represent the unwillingness or incapability to see past the prejudices and falsities of an American society based on the superiority of Whites. An important example of this in the text is the boxing scene in which the narrator is fooled into fighting other fellow African Americans for the enjoyment of notable white folks in the community. The narrator is searching for truth behind the horror of this arranged fight, but his eyes are blindfolded by oppressive Caucasian hands: I wanted to see, to see more desperately than ever before. But the blindfold was tight as a thick skin-puckering scab and when I raised my gloved hands to push the layers of white aside a voice yelled, "Oh, no you don't, black bastard! Leave that alone!" (Ellison, pp. 22) The narrator is unable to witness the sadistic glee on the white men's faces as he is chaoticall... ... middle of paper ... ...r as the name implies, freedom, but this is simply a harsh superficiality. The plant is a microcosm of an industrial America. The African Americans tend to the manual, some-what slave labor of producing the paint, while the white executives reap all the substantial profits. Ellison's depictions of America and its stereotypes through setting and characters help define the dispossessions African Americans face. Identifying such problems through literary means is one step in reclaiming equality. IM's themes of blindness and invisibility further the process by laying a course of action for society to follow. Ellison stresses individuality as a means to unity. Members of American society must begin to see each other for who they are rather than just the color of their skin. This novel sets the groundwork for just such a miracle to occur for its readers.

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