Invisible Man Quotes

Strategies/Imagery Guide- Invisible Man
Masks-
“It always helped at the college to be different, especially if you wished to play a leading role. IT made the folks talk about you, try to figure you out, I had to be careful though, not to speak too much like a northern Negro; they wouldn’t like that. The thing to do, I thought with a smile, was to give them hints that whatever you did or said was weighted with broad and mysterious meanings that lay just beneath the surface” ( Ellison 178).
In this quote, the “invisible man” is reflecting on what he will be like when he returns to the college after his summer working in New York. He believes that he needs a change in character to get to where he wants to be and is certain he will be a changed

It was a dream fall, my body languid and fastidious as to where to land, until the floor became impatient and smashed up to meet me. A moment later I came to. An hypnotic voice said FIVE emphatically. And I lay there, hazily watching a dark red spot of my own blood shaping itself into a butterfly, glistening and soaking into the soiled gray world of the canvas” (Ellison 25).
The color red is used as a flag for danger throughout the book. In this specific instance, the invisible man is being forced to fight a large man in the Battle Royal for money. Red although usually a symbol of love and passion, in this quote is signifying violence and risky behavior. The theme that this quote symbolizes is the chronicling of the African American experience in America. Battle Royal’s were not an exaggerated scene made up by Ellison, but in fact real life, gruesome, events that occurred in the time period. Whites found entertainment out of the blacks fighting because this was a way to weaken the race that was threatening their jobs after the civil war freed it. The use of the word red in this quote is significant because it is how the narrator himself sees the color. The color is his blood and the room after a being violently beat by Tatlock. Ellison uses the theme and the color together to emphasize the harsh treatment of African Americans due to the legality of