Stereotypes In Invisible Man

“I live rent-free in a building rented to whites, in a section of the basement that was shut off and forgotten during the nineteenth century. Invisible Man is a novel written by Ralph Ellison where the narrator is an African American man who is trying to discover his identity in a society that forces him into invisibility based on the color of his skin. Ellison sought to speak out on the broad issues of race in America and rejecting social protest. In this story we follow the narrator through racism and the oppression he encounters through college, moving to New York, and his fight to help his people reach social equality. Throughout Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison’s purpose is to convey that as a person of color in America, you are invisible

in a predominantly racist society, but that this isn’t the fault of just whites. Blacks are also responsible for their invisibility.
Throughout the book, we see multiple instances where whites refuse to see blacks as people but as something less, forcing on them racial stereotypes such as a mugger or a savage.

The narrator begins his story by recounting an incident he had with a man on the street who he gets into a fight with. “... when it occurred to me that the man had not seen me, actually.” The narrator, at first angered by the white man’s words and attitude towards him, realizes that the man hadn’t started a fight with him based on him, as a person, but for the color of his skin, another nameless, faceless black man. For this reason, the narrator describes whites as blind and the reason for his own invisibility.The narrator struggles between how he perceives himself and the perception forced on him by others.The man racially insulting the narrator dehumanizes him, and in his anger, the narrator attacks him, forcing him to see him for his individuality. When the incident is then made into a story in the newspaper, it’s labeled as a mugging, making the narrator invisible again as his intent to fight against racism instead further support racial stereotypes, defining the narrator again by racial prejudices. Later in the book, when the narrator is invited to a cocktail party for the Brotherhood by Brother Jack, he overhears Brother Jack’s mistress, Emma say “not quite softly enough, “But don’t you think he should be a little

blacker?””
Emma’s comment to Jack reveals that the Brotherhood sees the narrator not as an individual as representation of blacks. The “blindness” of others seems to come from their inability to not see the narrator without imposing identities on him to fit their prejudices. But while whites have imposed several stereotypes and prejudices on blacks, they are not the only ones to hold accountable for the invisibility that the narrator is has conflicted with.
Blacks are also responsible for their place in society and instead of everyone fighting for equal rights and pushing each other forwards towards bettering their lives, they push each other down. During the Battle Royal scene when the narrator is forced to fight his classmates, other black boys, for the entertainment of the town’s influential white men.”I wanted to deliver my speech and he came at me as though he meant to beat it out of me. I smashed him again and again, taking his blows as they came… “I’ll break your behind,” he whispered hoarsely. “For them?” “For me, son of a bitch!”” This is the first instance that we see black on black violence, beating each other down, literally and figuratively as they are forced in the the boxing ring to fight at the promise of money and threats from the white spectators. The use of the blindfolds to blind the boys fighting in the ring is used to signify not only the boy’s own metaphorical blindness to the white men’s thinly concealed racism but the men’s blindness as well. They see the boys as animals, forcing them to conform to their racist stereotype as violent and savage beasts and failing to recognize the boys as individuals. Later in the book while the narrator is attending the black college,the narrator is reprimanded by the college president, Dr. Bledsoe, after his misadventures with Mr. Norton at Trueblood’s house and the Golden Day. “You’re nobody son. You don’t exist -can’t you see that? The white folk tell everybody what to think- except men like me… But I’ve made my place in it and I’ll have every Negro in the country hanging on tree limbs by morning if it means staying where I am.” The narrator is shocked to learn that Bledsoe’s mask of humbleness and meekness under which Bledsoe is a manipulative and deceptive man who tries to gain as much power as possible from the while donors and use it to achieve his own goals. He uses the college claiming that he had “played the nigger” long enough to rise to higher positions of power rather than to help push African Americans forward to a better position in society.But blacks have more power than they realize with the invisibility that they’ve been forced to bear.
Ellison tries to convey that once you realize you are invisible and only defined by the titles people force upon you and accept this reality, you can use your invisibility for your own purposes.

While the narrator was attempting to hide from Ras’s followers, he tries to disguise himself with a hat and a pair of sunglasses. But he keeps being mistaken for a man named Rinehart who a woman thinks is her bookie, a prostitute thinks he is her pimp, and a group of people think he is their spiritual leader. “They see the hat, not me. There is a magic in it. It hides me right in front of their eyes…” Rinehart serves as a symbol for the narrator on how easily identity can change was the narrator struggles with his own identity. Rinehart is prevalent all of the lives of the people the narrator runs into who mistake him for Rinehart. This realization that Rinehart has multiple identities helps the narrator to realize his own invisibility and how he has always taken on whatever position in life others have forced upon him. Once realizing his own invisibility, he vows to use his invisibility to his advantage but remain visible to himself. Finally, when the narrator falls into the manhole after running away from the men posing as police officers, he decides to stay underground saying, “I am an invisible man and it placed me in a hole - or showed me the hole I was in, if you will - and I reluctantly accepted the fact.” The narrator has fully accepted his invisibility and has vowed to use

it fulfill his responsibility to society, but to continue to redefine and recognize his own individuality and identity and, in doing so, make the world a better place.
Invisible Man tackles several controversial topics, still reminding us over 60 years after it was written, that it still can hold it’s own, showing it’s more than just a story about a black man, it shows us how stereotypes based on race, gender, religion, and heritage can hold us back and how it can strip people of their identity and individuality. But that it is everyone’s responsibility to strive for social equality for all.