Invisible Man

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Ellison's book, Invisible Man was written in the 1930s. It deals with the identity of a black man in white America. The narrator writes in first person, emphasizing his individual experience and events portrayed; though the narrator and the main character remain anonymous throughout the book, they go by the name Invisible Man. The character decides that the world is full of blind people and sleep walkers who cannot see him for who he really is, thus he calls himself the Invisible Man, though he is not truly invisible, it is just a refusal for others to see him. Through a long and frustrating search, the Invisible Man hopes to answer questions that may be unanswerable. The search begins with his desire to attend college. Education represented on opportunity to escape ignorance and poverty. The ability to attend the Negro college comes to him through hard work. As valedictorian of his high school class he receives a scholarship. Invisibility, in the story, is looked upon as a bad thing. While the Invisible Man thinks optimistically and uses his invisibility as a way to undermine people, or society. Though invisibility can not allow you to be powerful or have power of your own, it can bring you freedom, to allow you to go and do whatever it is that you may chose. One person becomes invisible because someone is blind. He should have thought of that at the beginning of his search so that he might have known that no one is ever truly visible to everyone. Ellison uses every aspect of his novel to emphasize his intentions. The novel takes place in early 20th century in a racist-filled Eastern United States. The racism is evident throughout the novel, in the south where the narrator enrolls to college. White men and women influence th... ... middle of paper ... ...e with a document inside of it. The document was a scholarship to the State College for Negroes. The narrator was ecstatic. He then had a dream that night. He dreamed about what his grandfather had said earlier. He awoke with laughing in his ear. He had no idea what it meant at that time. This incident with the beating made him realize that he can stand up for himself and other people in turn making him a better person for society. He felt some better because he proved them wrong. Black men in that time period can make a difference and the narrator was out to prove it. In his society the black people are chained down in a reality in which the white dominating society imposes certain morals or principles by which the black community needs to act. However unlike the people around him, he is able to break the chains that imprison his mind and see how things really work.

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