Causes and effects of invisibility and blindness in Ralph Ellison's 'Invisible Man'

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• Publisher: GRIN Verlag
• Year: 2004
• eBook ISBN: 9783638266048
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1 (A), Southern Connecticut State University (English Department), course: Wright, Ellison, and Baldwin, language: English, abstract: Ralph Ellison's novel Invisible Man is a bildungsroman, a type of novel thatchronicles a character's moral and psychological growth. The narrator not only tells the storyof Invisible Man, he is also its principal character. The narrative and thematic concerns of thestory revolve around the development of the narrator as an individual. Additionally, becausethe narrator relates the story in the first person, the text does not truly probe the consciousnessof any other figure in the story.Ironically, though he dominates the novel, the narrator remains somewhat obscure tothe reader; most notably, he never reveals his name. The names that he is given in the hospitaland in the Brotherhood, the name of his college, even the state in which the college is locatedall go unidentified. The narrator remains a voice and never emerges as an external andquantifiable presence. This obscurity emphasizes his status as an "invisible man" as which heintroduces himself in the Prologue of the novel. He explains that his invisibility owes not tosome biochemical accident or supernatural cause but rather to the unwillingness of otherpeople to notice him as he is black. It is as though other people are sleepwalkers movingthrough a dream in which he does not appear. The narrator says that his invisibility can serveboth as an advantage and as a constant aggravation. Being invisible sometimes makes himdoubt whether he really exists. He describes his anguished, aching need to make othersrecognize him, and says he has found that such attempts rarely succeed. Now, the narratorhibernates in his invisibility, preparing for his unnamed action. He states that the beginning ofhis story is really the end.The Prologue of Invisible Man introduces the major themes that define the rest of thenovel. The metaphors of invisibility and blindness allow for an examination of the effects ofracism on the victim and the perpetrator. Because the narrator is black, whites refuse to seehim as an actual, three-dimensional person; hence, he portrays himself as invisible anddescribes them as blind. [...]