Identity And Racism In Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man

The book Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison was published in 1952 and received two awards, one being the National Book Award of Fiction and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. The book is written in first person with the point of view of an unnamed black man and is only told through that point of view. The book occurs in the 1930’s and seems to have a reliable narrator and one you can empathize with due to the fact that throughout the whole story he showcases the troubles of identity and racism that occur. When getting to then end of the book it seems as though its a reflection upon the past that he has fits well with the way the story had been told. The ending speech of the character in the book is able to ring true back then when the story was first

The book then cuts to years later when he is in college and he meets an old white man who has a connection to the college he attends and drives him around the town. After the old white man has many bad experiences after going around and seeing racism the main character ends up getting expelled and is promised opportunities for places to work but none of them end up well and he starts to work at a factory in New York. The place he works at is then blown up and ends up seeing an eviction of an elderly couple and speaks on the behalf of both of them. A man listening in named Brother Jack begins speaking with the main character and states he’s from a organization that's called The Brotherhood, the main character then joins this organization and begins giving speeches. One day The Brotherhood makes him go downtown to help out with women’s issues and after a couple of weeks he returns back to Harlem to find out that a fellow black Brother named Tod has been missing for a while. Later he then sees his friend that he thought was missing on the street selling Sambo dolls and then sees him got shot by a police officer. The main character then organizes a public funeral service for him and The Brotherhood does not agree with this and reprimands him. Later on he learns that the Brotherhood may be

An example of his great imagery throughout the book is these passages, “Then somewhere in the procession an old, plaintive, masculine voice arose in a song, wavering, stumbling in the silence at first alone, until in the band a euphonium horn fumbled for the key and took up the air, one catching and rising above the other and the other pursuing, two black pigeons rising above a skull-white barn to tumble and rise through still, blue air,” and “ a dark mass in motion on a dark night, a black river ripping through a black land; and Ras or Tarp could move beside me and I wouldn't know. I was one with the mass, moving down the littered street over the puddles of oil and milk, my personality blasted,” that showcases his ability to put you in the moment of what’s occurring in the