The narrator in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man

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The narrator in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man views himself as invisible because he believes the world is full of blind men who cannot see him for who is really is. In the beginning of the story, the narrator is treated by white men as the stereotypical black male - sex-hungry, poor and violent. These white men are completely blind to what black men really are. However, as the novel progresses, the narrator finds a way to remain invisible, yet take power from those who previously held it. Later on, we find that the invisible man eventually develops into a man capable of fighting stereotypes and racism in a very visible way. Through this progression, the narrator is able to beat away racist attitudes.

In chapter one, we are introduced to the narrator and quickly we see that he is being dominated by white confines of racism and stereotypes. The narrator starts by reminiscing about his class speech during his high school graduation. The speech stressed submission as the way for black Americans to advance in the social structure. The speech was so well received that the town arranged for him to give the speech in front of the town’s most influential white leaders. In the narrator’s eyes, the white men are rewarding his submissive nature. But the reader is presented with the truth of what is actually going on when he arrives to meet these men. First, the white men bring out a naked blond woman and force the black boys to look at the women. Some become sexually aroused – playing on the stereotype of blacks being hypersexual animals. After, the men force the black boys into a “battle royal,” where the narrator fights his other black classmates, blindfolded. It is rather appropriate that the boys are blindfolded, because it shows how the men view these boys. They don’t see these black men for who they are, rather as sub-humans, playthings of the white race. Therefore, the black boys’ true identities are “invisible” to the white men, which is where the title of the book is derived. The blindfolds also speak to how the black men cannot see the ulterior motive these men have. On the surface, the white men seem to be on a mission of goodwill, but the reader quickly sees that the boys are supposed to conform to another kind of characteristic associated with blacks – violence. The fight is an obvious allegory to why blacks are so unsuccessful in trying to gain power. Instead of banding together to fight for black rights, they are instead told by white men that the enemies are other blacks, so the blacks end up fighting themselves. The saying of “a divided house cannot stand” is particularly relevant in this case because the house (the black race) is unmistakably divided. The boys are finally rewarded for all of their hard work as coins and dollar bills are put on a rug. The blacks begin crawling to the money only to find that the rug is electrified. (The narrator will come back to electricity throughout his progression.) We see that at the very first stage of the narrator’s development, he is unable to see beyond the surface of things. The narrator is merely a plaything of the white race, willing to be blindly obedient. For his efforts in his speech on obedience, the narrator is given a calfskin briefcase. The whites tell him that down the road, the contents will help guide the fate of the black race. Inside the case is a scholarship to a state college for blacks. The black colleges during this time were vastly inferior to white schools, and were considered just another way of making blacks more obedient to whites. Obviously, blacks being blindly obedient to whites are not the way for blacks to rise above racism and gain power.

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The narrator in a figurative sense is reborn in chapter 11 after an accident that has robbed him of his memory, ability to speak and his identity. The machinery and music combine to make a noise that resembles a woman in labor. This birth, however, deals with the narrator beginning to recreate his own identity independent of what stereotypes trap him. Because he cannot remember anything, nor does he know much about who he is, the doctors speaking to him don’t get much information from him. As the doctors become more frustrated, they begin to fall back to racial stereotypes. ...

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