ellison

Music and literature have been known to either have a connection or some type of influence on each other’s artist. Many musical artist have based songs or pieces off their own favorite or famous literary scenes and or entire books, and many writers use music for inspiration for their work or find ways to incorporate music into their pieces. This relationship between literature and music has probably gone on since the beginning of storytelling and the relationship is still present and somewhat more relevant in today’s society, with so many connectivity to different literature and music being more accessible. There have been instances of a writer turned musicians or musicians turned writers, which has resulted in very interesting art and work being created. An example of this, is Ralph Ellison’s jazz influenced novel, Invisible Man. While also showing that how jazz music influenced Ellison by that the rise of jazz and Ellison’s love and understanding of it could help a jazz band and Invisible Man, be seen as almost identical if side by side.

What exactly is jazz? For this essay I’m speaking strictly of the jazz music that surrounded Ellison as he lived and while he wrote Invisible Man and not the smooth jazz you might hear on a local radio station. There are many different ways of playing jazz during these periods and the influence of them not only affected Ellison and his love of music but also his writing style in Invisible Man. in the rest of this piece. Since there are different forms and ways of creating and playing jazz music, it would be hard to define it as one thing. However in David Messmer’s essay Trumpets, Horns, and Typewriters: A Call and Response between Ralph Ellison and Frederick Douglass he writes about how to def...

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...uations and people also swing back and forth throughout the novel. Often the characters he describes as not hostile or on his side he starts to describe more and more in a violent manner, almost matching his instance with man on the street in the prologue. This could be Ellison using the rhythm of swing music to convey the development or the stripping of the narrator’s mental and emotional state by the end of the novel

It could be said that while jazz is important to the novel, the most important thing to focus on is the ideas of race and racial structure that Ralph Ellison had. While race is an important factor and theme in the creation of the novel, I do not think it has to be, either or, in this context. I believe that because of the way Ellison thought of jazz music they are basically one in the same in the novel. Both share an importance to the structure of the