Ralph Ellison’s the Invisible Man

Professor O’Har

Lit Core

5 April 2018

To See or Not To Be Seen

        The inability to see and the inability to be seen are interconnected in Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man. What makes one an ailment and the other a superpower is dominance. From the beginning of the novel when the narrator is blindfolded during the battle royal to the end where Brother Jack's false eye pops out, images of sight and blindness shape the unnamed narrator’s perception of himself and the world around him. Throughout the novel, the characters’ inability to see outwardly directly parallels their inability to perceive inwardly. A person becomes invisible because another is blind. The narrator begins his journey blinded by a society that promises hope but oppresses him and all African Americans. Through his experiences, the narrator gains insight into the racist world around him and his own identity. By gaining sight he makes himself invisible. In the Prologue the narrator states, "I am invisible ... simply because people refuse to see me." By discovering his own identity, he no longer fits into the mold of the subservient black man. Thus, society rejects him as an individual and cannot see him.

        Ironically, though he dominates the novel, the narrator remains somewhat obscure to the reader; most notably, he never reveals his name. The names that he is given in the hospital and in the Brotherhood, the name of his college, even the state in which the college is located all go unidentified. The narrator remains a voice and never emerges as an external and quantifiable presence. This obscurity emphasizes his status as an “invisible man” as which he introduces himself in the Prologue of the novel. An example of this is when the narrator is accepted into the Brotherhood because of his speech abilities and is given a new name. It becomes a sense of being reborn as a new person and a given identity but at the same time it emphasis the racial archetypes embedded into the phrase. For instance Brother Jack says “That is your new name…Start thinking of yourself by that name from this moment. Get it down so that even if you are called in the middle of the night you will respond”(254). Though the narrator is given a new name, the reader is not aware of what it is and therefore it is asserted that the new name becomes his identity in the Brotherhood and among his society. Brother Jack’s statement seems to be reminiscent of the notion of slavery in which the newly brought slaves were given new names and identities upon arrival. After the narrator’s “procedure” at the hospital he fails to remember his own name. This shows he never had an identity because his view of himself was based solely on the college and the beliefs that had been forced upon him throughout his adolescence. He was a product of his surroundings. People like Dr. Bledsoe and Mr. Norton represent white power and controlled the narrator’s identity by molding him into the obedient, blind person that benefitted them. The hospital is characteristic of the futile attempt for advancement by African Americans as long as they accept their given positions as machines within society.

        Ellison introduces the idea of blindness at the battle royal. The white blindfolds that the contestants wear symbolize how the black society is blind to the way white society is still belittling them, despite the abolishment of slavery. When the black men put their blindfolds on to fight in this battle, they can't see the people they are fighting against, just as they can't see how the white men are exploiting them for their own pleasure. The blindfolds symbolize the inability of the boys to see how the white men are manipulating them and also the inability of Blacks to see their submissive positions in society. Instead of uniting to stand up to the white men, the boys in the ring fight against each other and do as they are told.

        At the narrator's college there is a statue of the Founder lifting a veil from a slave's eyes. However, as the narrator looks at the statue longer, he realizes the ambiguity of the motion the Founder is actually making. Is he removing the veil, or lowering it "more firmly into place" (36)? The narrators and other students at the college depend on the Founder to help the "poor, ignorant people out of the mire and darkness" (99). This is an impossible task for a man with "empty eyes" (36). Ellison uses the statue's empty eyes as a metaphor for the delusional ideals of the Founder and his stubborn neglect of racist reality. It is a symbol of the black society’s false freedom. He says that the veil is lowered more firmly into place to illustrate how American society is completely blinded from the fact that black men are not completely free. They are unable to have success like the white man, even though the college manipulates them into thinking they can. They are still controlled by white culture. The Founder is also a symbol of black identity within the white society. The founder was a successful black man who we never learn the name of. This is because his identity, along with the nameless narrator, doesn’t matter in the white dominated society. Although he founded the college to help black people find success just like he did, his actions were somehow lost within this bird-soiled statue.

        The Sambo dolls that Clifton sells serve as a symbol for Blacks, including the narrator, who allow themselves to be manipulated and controlled by Whites. The doll is an obedient slave that dances when the owner manipulates it, just as the narrator allows himself to be controlled by the Brotherhood. The narrator was subservient and eager to please Mr. Norton and the other white trustees of the college and accepts the Brotherhood’s abuse of him because he strives to please them. The narrator’s blindness to his use as a puppet by the Brotherhood is shown by his failure to see the strings that Clifton used to make the Sambo dolls move. The narrator says, “Clifton had been making it dance all the time and the black thread had been invisible” (446). Clifton mocks the narrator and others who blindly accept their slavery as part of a stereotyped group and are unaware of their individuality. Despite being killed after leaving the Brotherhood, Clifton is ironically more human while dead than the narrator is while living because he died with an individual identity that the narrator has yet to discover.