Invisible Man

Invisibile Man: Universal Invisibiltiy

Invisible Man, the creative work of African-American fiction by Ralph Ellison addressed the many levels of racism that African-Americans encounter in society. However, what Ellison had created was far more than a critique on race. Ellison had attempted to unravel the contradiction that is America, a country founded on high ideals and, at the same time, deception. He did so by sending the unnamed protagonist falling through almost every level of this divided society. The narrator travels from a college in the Deep South to the streets of Harlem, all the while, coming into contact with people who seem to look right through him as a person, white or black, and simply see the stereotypical image. Ellison's tale, though it is focused on an African-American man's search for political and personal freedom, ultimately conjures themes of universal invisibility and alienation.

Because the novel has such universal appeal, it is necessarily one of considerable depth. Ellison himself said "the principal gauge of the intrinsic importance of a novel is 'the extent that it deals eloquently with its own material--that is, [it moves] from the specific to the universal.' He insists that there is no reason why a novel 'about a Negro background, about Negro characters, could not be effective as literature and in its effectiveness transcend its immediate background and speak eloquently for other people'" (McSweeney 11). Shouldn't a society or culture be judged by how it treats it's poor, sick, and disadvantaged? It is said that a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link. Therefore it seems that a society should only be judged by how it treats it's lowest members and/or minorities. Perhaps Ellison was pointing out that on some level we are all invisible and are only seen for what people think they know of us or our race, religion, gender, etc.

In order to create the depth that speaks for all of humanity, Ellison employs various tactics and techniques. He uses the complexity of the American language, including musical and religious elements from culture. With musical language, he writes in the Prologue of descending, like Dante, into the depths of music - "and beneath the swiftness of the hot tempo there was a slower tempo and a cave and I entered it and looked around and heard an old woman singing a spiritual as full of Weltschmerz as flamenco ... and below that I found a lower level and a more rapid tempo and I heard someone shout ..." (Ellison 8-9). Also, he shows the contrast between situations and the inevitable common themes inherent through each sketch and series of happenings. A vivid, and sometimes graphic, use of description brings to life the sounds, smells, and sights of the narrator's experience. This was common with many works of art and literature from the Realism, Naturalism, Modernism movement that Ellison was a part of. Readers are forced to use their imaginations and insight on society and human behavior with each new character that is revealed in the story. From the fearless Doctor Bledsoe to the mysterious Rinehart, each one is artfully revealed to the reader. The figures that appear demand use of the reader's imaginativeness and insight. Characters sometimes bare resemblance to historical figures of the time and again lend the way to the universality of the themes being dealt with by the narrator.

Of course, Invisible Man is an African-American novel. A white author could not successfully have written such a novel because it is filled with so many experiences and situations that are so unique to African-American. It depicts to the reader how detached even the best of the whites are from the black men that pass them on the streets. In one scene from the story, Ellison depicts a scene where the narrator gets into a physical fight with a white man who bumps into him on the street, as though he didn't even notice the narrator's existence. Invisible Man is first and foremost an African-American piece of literature and has been celebrated as such for over 50 years. However, this does not detract from its universality. In John Sanford's review of Ellison and Invisible Man, he points out that Ellison himself told the New York Times in 1982 that "Literature is colorblind, and it should be read and judged in a larger framework" (Sanford). Again, this leads those who read Ellison's work to look beyond the scope of one race and realize how that if one group faces an issue or challenge, than all members of that society face the same issue. As opposed to other writers,