Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

First published: 1952

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Social realism

Time of plot: Late 1930s and early 1940s

Locale: American South and New York City

Principal Characters

• The Narrator, an innocent young black man
• Grandfather, whose deathbed instruction makes the narrator rethink his relationship with society
• Mr. Norton, a white northern philanthropist
• Dr. A. Herbert Bledsoe, the president of an all-black college
• Brother Jack, the head of the Brotherhood
• Tod Clifton, an idealist
• Rinehart, a person who has many identities
• Ras, the Destroyer, a radical

The Story

The narrator and protagonist in the novel is nameless. In the novel's prologue, the narrator explains that he lives illegally in a whites-only apartment building, hidden in a sealed-off section of the basement, which he has lit with thousands of stolen light bulbs and power diverted from the Monopolated Light & Power Company. The narrator explains he was born and raised in the South of the United States. He became used to the social patterns of the region. With maturity, the narrator gradually recognizes the chaotic understructure of his “orderly” society. At his grandfather's deathbed, he hears his grandfather’s instructions to his father. Although the old man, a former slave who was freed after the American Civil War, seemed to be “obedient” and “obsequious” all his life, he tells his son and grandchildren that he was “a traitor all his born days, a spy in the enemy’s country” and advises them to overcome whites “with yeses, undermine ’em with grins, agree ’em to death and destruction, let ’em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open.”

The narrator is troubled by his grandfather's bitter warning but nevertheless resumes his life without much thought. Later the narrator is invited to give a speech at a formal social function that will be attended by the leading white citizens of his town. The party degenerates into a nightmare of barbarity, vulgarity, and bestial desire. The narrator is told he must participate in a "battle royal," in which black students are forced to fight each other for the white men’s entertainment. The black students are forced to watch a naked white woman dance; they are also urged by the audience to pick up coins on electrified rugs (the coins later turn out to be worthless advertisement souvenirs). As a reward for his valedictory speech, in which he argued humility and submission are key to enhancing the lives of black Americans, the narrator receives a calfskin briefcase. That night, the narrator dreams of meeting his grandfather, who tells him to read a note in the briefcase. The note says: “To Whom It May Concern: Keep This Nigger-Boy Running.”

As part of the prize for his speech, the narrator also receives a scholarship to go to college. What he learns there, however, only further confuses him. The president of the college confesses that he used both black and white people to advance his own career. It is also from Dr. Bledsoe, the president of the all-black college, that the narrator hears for the first time in his life that he is a “nobody,” someone who, in a sense, does not exist at all. The narrator is finally expelled from the college for inadvertently showing Mr. Norton, a millionaire white trustee of the college, the “seamy” side of the campus.

Equipped with Dr. Bledsoe’s recommendation letter, which the narrator later learns is full of insulting remarks about him, he moves to the North. The road to the North, in a traditional sense, means freedom to African Americans. What the narrator finds there is alienation and disillusionment. While working in a paint factory, whose slogan is Keep America Pure with Liberty Paints, he is caught in the conflict between a skilled black worker and white unionists. After a boiler room accident, the narrator is sent to the factory hospital, where he receives electric shock treatment. After the doctors make sure he forgets his name and family background, the narrator is declared cured and released from the hospital.

Then one day, as he is helping people who are being evicted from an apartment building in New York City, the narrator’s oratorical talent is discovered by the Brotherhood, a group meant to represent the poor and downtrodden. Brother Jack, the leader of the Brotherhood, asks the narrator to join the group. Inside the Brotherhood, the narrator not only is confronted again with the paradox of organization and disorder but also completely loses his personal identity: He is given a new name and place to live, expected to become the next Booker T. Washington, and told he is “hired to talk” but not to think. The narrator’s association with the Brotherhood, nevertheless, introduces him to all kinds of people: the white men who, for their own political gains, unscrupulously use blacks; a young black idealist who is killed for his idealism; and Ras, the Destroyer, a black radical who lashes out indiscriminately and ends up in utter isolation.

The narrator finally realizes that the Brotherhood is just as chaotic, manipulative, and power-hungry as all the other groups of people he has met in both the South and the North. He leaves the Brotherhood feeling thoroughly disillusioned. Walking away from the Brotherhood, he chances upon a riot, where he is mistaken for another person. Suddenly the narrator sees the truth: When a person is associated with either an ethnic group or a social organization, he becomes a person with no identity and, therefore, invisible. He starts to understand the significance of his grandfather’s last words. At the end of the novel, the narrator creeps into a dark empty cellar to indulge in his reflections.

Bibliography

Bell, Bernard W. “Myth, Legend, and Ritual in the Novel of the Fifties.” The Afro-American Novel and Its Tradition. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1987. Print.

Byerman, Keith E. “History Against History: A Dialectical Pattern in Invisible Man.” Fingering the Jagged Grain: Tradition and Form in Recent Black Fiction. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1985. Print.

Callahan, John F. “The Historical Frequencies of Ralph Waldo Ellison.” Chant of Saints: A Gathering of Afro-American Literature, Art, and Scholarship. Ed. Michael S. Harper and Robert S. Stepto. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1979. Print.

Callahan, John F., ed. Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man: A Casebook. New York: Oxford UP, 2004. Print.

Gottesman, Ronald. The Merrill Studies in Invisible Man. Westerville: Merrill, 1971. Print.

Hersey, John, ed. Ralph Ellison: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1974. Print.

Hill, Lena M. "The Visual Art of Invisible Man: Ellison's Portrait of Blackness." American Literature 81.4 (2009): 775–803. Print.

Hill, Michael D., and Lena M. Hill, eds. Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man: A Reference Guide. Westport: Greenwood, 2008. Print.

Morel, Lucas E., ed. Ralph Ellison and the Raft of Hope: A Political Companion to Invisible Man. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 2004. Print.

O’Meally, Robert G. The Craft of Ralph Ellison. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1980. Print.

Ostendorf, Berndt. “Ralph Waldo Ellison: Anthropology, Modernism, and Jazz.” New Essays on Invisible Man. Ed. Robert O’Meally. New York: Cambridge UP, 1988. Print.

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Selisker, Scott. "'Simply by Reacting?': The Sociology of Race and Invisible Man's Automata." American Literature 93.3 (2011): 571–96. Print.