Invisible Man
0 Buy/Sell
From WikiCollectables, Buy • Sell • Collect • Wiki
View the top articles!
Invisible Man is a novel written by Ralph Ellison, developed from a short story that formed the novel's initial "Battle Royal" chapter. It was Ellison's only novel to be published during his lifetime, and it won him the National Book Award in 1953. The novel addresses many of the social and intellectual issues facing the post-civil-war American Black identity, including the relationship between this identity and Marxism, black nationalism, and the reformist racial policies of Booker T. Washington.
Contents |
[edit] Specifications
- Author = Ralph Ellison
- Cover illustrator =
- Series =
- Genre = Bildungsroman novel
- Publisher = Random House, Inc.
- Country = United States
- Publication Date = 1952
- Nature of Rarity =
- Number in Existence =
- Estimated Value =
[edit] Background
Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.[1]
According to a famous essay in the Modern Library's 30th Anniversary Edition of Invisible Man, Ellison says that he started writing Invisible Man in a barn in Waitsfield, Vermont in the Summer of 1945 where he was on sick leave from the Merchant Marines and that the novel continued to preoccupy him in many various parts of New York City. In an interview in the Paris Review in 1955, Ellison states that the book took five years to complete with one year out for what he termed as an "ill-conceived short novel." Invisible Man was published as a whole in 1952, however copyright dates show the initial publication date as 1947, 1948, indicating that Ellison had published a section of the book prior to full publication. That section turned out to be the famous "Battle Royal" scene, which had been shown to Cyril Connolly, the editor of Horizon magazine by Frank Taylor, one of Ellison's early supporters.
Ellison states in his National Book Award acceptance speech that he considered the novel's chief significance to be its experimental attitude. Rejecting the idea of social protest, as Ellison would later say, he did not want to write another protest novel, and also seeing the highly regarded styles of Naturalism and Realism as being too limited to speak to the broader issues of race and America, Ellison adopts a crazy style, based heavily on modern symbolism. One can indeed trace this style back to Ellison's encounter with The Waste Land, a poem by T. S. Eliot, which Ellison read as a freshman at Tuskegee Institute. Ellison saw in The Waste Land a way to merge his two greatest passions, that of music and literature, for it was in the The Waste Land that he first saw jazz set to words. As Ellison would later comment when asked about what he came away with after reading The Waste Land he said that he saw imagery and also improvisation, which was close to jazz. The Waste Land, Ellison saw, used a referential type style, just as any good jazz musician would pay respect to any number of auras or religious music.
[edit] Plot introduction
Invisible Man is narrated in the first person by the protagonist, an unnamed African American man who considers himself socially invisible. His character may have been inspired by Ellison's own life. The narrator may be conscious of his audience, writing as a way to make himself visible to mainstream culture; the book is structured as if it were the narrator's autobiography although it begins in the middle of his life.
In the Prologue, Ellison's narrator tells readers, “I live rent-free in a building rented strictly to whites, in a section of the basement that was shut off and forgotten during the nineteenth century.” In this secret place, the narrator creates surroundings that are symbolically illuminated with 1,369 lights. He says, “My hole is warm and full of light. Yes, full of light. I doubt if there is a brighter spot in all New York than this hole of mine, and I do not exclude Broadway." The protagonist explains that light is an intellectual necessity for him since "the truth is the light and light is the truth." From this underground perspective, the narrator attempts to make sense out of his life, experiences, and position in American society.
[edit] Major themes
Ellison uses numerous metaphors, images, and allusions to enhance the emotional and intellectual impact of his novel. For instance, Ellison invokes the colors of the American flag with red of sloe gin, the Optic White of Liberty Paints factory, and the blue of "What Did I Do to Be so Black and Blue?" by Louis Armstrong. Ellison also uses the language of music throughout the novel to characterize the deeper meaning of a scene. Armstrong's jazz, the street blues of Peter Wheatstraw (Peetie or Pete Wheatstraw was the stage name of blues singer William Bunch), and a heartfelt solo by a gospel singer all become central metaphors for interpreting the message behind Ellison's meandering and sometimes surreal plot.
Another allusion used by Ellison occurs after the main character discovers he has been deceived by the school master, which subsequently leads him to acquire an interim occupation at Liberty Paints. At his new job, the character is instructed to add ten drops of a black liquid to a can full of discolored paint. After the paint is shaken, the main character peers into the can and beholds a "pure white" paint. This allusion hints at the mindset of Americans at those times, an addition of ten drops of indoctrination to the African-American soul can instill in him the love of white America; or it could illustrate that what is considered "pure white" isn't exclusively white. This is also a vague reference to Jim Crow-era laws that were based on the percentage of "black blood" one had in order for such to apply.
Motifs of blindness and darkness also run through the novel, often alongside the metaphors of light and sight as truth and knowledge. For example, the Reverend Homer A. Barbee, a speaker who comes to the Narrator's school, and whose story glorifies Dr. Bledsoe and the purpose to the school (a purpose the Narrator finds to be false and subservient to the white benefactors), is blind. Perhaps his blindness can be seen as an indicator of the school's blindness, or even the blindness of the Narrator before he learned to despise the school. Later in the novel, the Narrator discovers that Brother Jack, whom he had revered and respected as a true visionary, is blind in one eye, thereby losing philosophical respect for the brother who, he comes to learn, used him as a poster-boy to earn the support of Harlem.
The fact that Brother Jack only has one eye can also be seen as a reference to the cyclops in Homer's Odyssey. In fact, Invisible Man contains numerous references to the Odyssey, both cyclopean, and other. For example, during the 'Battle Royal' scene, when the Narrator faces the dancing white woman, she is described as "a fair bird-girl girdled in veils calling to me from the angry surface of some gray and threatening sea." in other words, she is described as a Greek siren, beautiful women (usually portrayed with scaled feet or with a fish tail for their lower extremities) who sing from a rock at sea in order to lure sailors to their deaths.
Brother Tod Clifton's name may have German origins. In German, the word "Tod" means death. This could possibly be foreshadowing his death in the climactic point of the novel.
As the title suggests, the importance of invisibility is also a major theme in the text. While the narrator often bemoans his state of invisibility, there are a number of advantages to it as well that allow him to remain undetected and inconspicuous.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Teacher's Guide at Random House
