Brenda Mendez
Professor Broadous
PAS114B
25 April 2012
Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is the story of a young black man whose name the reader never learns. He is a young man from the South who at his grandfather's deathbed was warned against performing to the wishes of white people because the young man thinks that is the way to be successful. The narrator's first real glimpse of manipulation of white people comes when he is invited to a local men's club to read the speech he prepared for his high school graduation. He gives the speech he is rewarded with a briefcase and a scholarship to a black college, but only after going through the humiliation of performing for the white men there. The narrator goes off to college and is determines to model himself after Dr. Bledsoe, the college's dean, unfortunately, the narrator makes a dreadful mistake when he is chauffeuring Mr. Norton, a wealthy white man who donates a great deal of money to the college. He allowed the man to stop and speak with Joe Trueblood, a poor, black man ostracized from the black community because he got his own daughter pregnant. Dr. Bledsoe is so furious with the narrator's indiscretion and stupidity that he expels him. He builds himself a room and hibernates there contemplating his relationship to reality and the invisibility he feels is caused by his race. He lives in that hole until he runs into Mr. Norton one day in the subway and realizes that he will no longer live up to white expectations of him. The narrator is very much innocent and inexperienced, not letting him see the truth, giving him blindness.
The narrator not only tells the story of Invisible Man, he is the main character. The story revolves around the development of the narrator as an individual. The narrator remains somewhat hidden to the reader. Though he reveals his name, at first his name is the one that he is given in the hospital, the name of his college, and the name given to him in the Brotherhood, all of them identifying him. He never emerges as a presence, remaining just a voice. Making his status as an “invisible man.” The narrator’s innocence prevents him from recognizing the truth behind others bad behavior and leads him to try to fulfill their misguided expectations. He remains extremely vulnerable to the identity that society thrusts upon him as an African American. He plays the role of the servile black man to the white men, he plays the uncomplaining disciple of Booker T. Washington during his college years, and he agrees to act as the Brotherhood’s black spokesperson, which allows the Brotherhood to use him.
Most of the story the narrator remains extremely innocent and inexperienced. He always thinks the best of people even when he has reason not to, and he remains consistently respectful of authority. The narrator’s innocence sometimes causes him to misunderstand events in the story. Ellison uses heavy irony to allow the reader to see things that the narrator misses. After the “battle royal” for instance, the narrator accepts his scholarship from the white men with gladness and gratitude, even though he passes no judgment on the white men’s behavior. “When I got there I discovered that it was on the occasion of a smoker, and I was told that since I was to be there anyway I might as well take part in the battle royal to be fought by some of my schoolmates as part of entertainment.” (Ellison 17) He engaged in battle royal before they handed him his scholarship along with the briefcase, of course humiliating him before awarding him. Showing his blindness towards the white men.
While he attended college he was a chauffeur to Mr. Norton, a wealthy white man contributed a lot of money to the college. While one day driving him around they drive to the nearest tavern, the Golden Day, which serves black people and also happens to be a brothel. As he approaches the Golden Day, the narrator encounters a group of mentally disturbed black war veterans who are being allowed an afternoon outside their home. When Mr. Norton passes out a particular veteran claims to be a doctor and a graduate of the college. After Norton wakes, the veteran mocks Norton’s interest in the narrator and the college. He says that Norton views the narrator as a mark of achievement rather than as a man and that the narrator thinks of Norton not as a man but as a god. He calls out the narrator telling him he is stricken with a blindness that makes him do Norton’s bidding and claims that this blindness is the narrator’s chief asset. “And the boy, this automanto, he was made of the very mud of the region and he sees far less than you. Poor stumblers, neither of you can see the other. To you he is a mark on the scorecard of you achievement, a thing and not a man; a child, or even less a black amorphous thing. And you, for all your power, are not a man to him, but a God, a force-.” (Ellison 95) But Mr. Norton, or the narrator take good having his figurative blindfold removed, the narrator wishes to continue under the illusion that the college offers him the freedom to determine his own fate and identity. Mr. Norton becomes angry and asked the narrator to drive him back to the college and on the ride back is was completely silent.
He later joins a brotherhood in Harlem as a spokesperson for them. They immediately implicate the narrator the brotherhoods ideology. At first everything goes great for the narrator, then the after an incident occurred he finally loses the illusion that he can remain a free individual within the Brotherhood. He learns that the condition for membership in the Brotherhood is blind obedience to its ideology. Just like his old college hired him to show Mr. Norton only what the college wanted Mr. Norton to see, the Brotherhood has hired him to say only what it wants people to hear. Again, someone using the narrator and blindfolding him more.
While the narrator hibernates he reviews his life lessons and tries to find meaning and his identity. At the end of the novel, the narrator decides to come out of his “cave” and find his own true identity.
