New Historicism Criticism Of Brave New World And Invisible Man

 In a 1965 interview, when asked his view on the role of the novelist, Ralph Ellison stated the following:

This paper will illustrate how the Harlem Renaissance assisted the African-American intellectual community to gain acceptance in mainstream America and prompted the writing of the book The Invisible Man, written by Ralph Ellison. Throughout this paper, I will examine the social context and climate of Ellison’s work. This paper will focus on the experience of a young African American man who claims to be invisible. However, the young man argues that his invisibility is not due to his wish but arises from society’s failure to notice him. This young man who is also educated captures his frustrations and struggles in order to survive in a predominantly racist society. Additionally, this paper will illustrate how the Harlem Renaissance afforded African-American artists like Ellison to provide an extraordinary opportunity for the African- American community to recall their experiences in a not so embracing America where deeply entrenched racism had been woven into the fabric of American society (Callahan, 2004).

The Invisible Man, by H.G. Wells, is composed of many small themes that combined to form two major themes in the novel. Some of the minor themes are acting before thinking and denial of unexplainable events. It is based on the two major themes of science experiments gone wrong and the ignorance of society.

	The narrator in Ellison's short story suffers much. He is considered to be one of the brighter youths in his black community. The young man is given the opportunity to give a speech to some of the more prestigious white individuals. The harsh treatment that he is dealt in order to perform his task is quite symbolic. It represents the many

Aldous Huxley was a British writer born in Surrey, England on July 26, 1894. He studied science at Eton, but a problem with his eyes left him partially blind and he had to leave after three years. When it eventually improved he attended Oxford, receiving a degree in English Literature. Over the course of his life he wrote many books of all which ranged from topics of drugs and sex to religion and politics. In 1945, Huxley began experimenting with drugs,

“I have freedom,” you say? Do you really? Perhaps, in some ways, you do. But in the end, you’re just another puppet being controlled by invisible strings whether you know it or not. “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains,” Jean-Jacques Rousseau once said. In society, man is “chained” and controlled by the government, by pressure of conforming to the social norms, by wealth and social class, and by one’s desires and emotions. Prior to birth, man is not restricted by such factors but that is merely a fleeting moment as he is slowly exposed to more and more of the world. I agree that “everywhere [man] is in chains,” but on the contrary, I believe man is already chained from the start—that man is never free. In the novel, Brave New

The author of the story Battle Royal, Ralph Ellison was born on March 1, 1914 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, studied music before moving to New York City and working as a writer. He published his bestselling, acclaimed first novel Invisible Man in 1952; it would be seen as a seminal work on marginalization from an African-American protagonist's perspective. Ellison's unfinished novel Juneteenth was published posthumously in 1999 (biography.com).

	The narrator in Ellison’s short story suffers much. He is considered to be one of the brighter youths in his black community. The young man is given the opportunity to give a speech to some of the more prestigious white individuals. The harsh treatment that he is dealt in order to perform his task is quite symbolic. It represents the many

Ralph Ellison was a writer of the late 1930s as a product of the Great Depression. He originally came to New York from Tuskegee Institute in search of a way to make money for his senior year of college, however, while in New York he decided not to return to Tuskegee due to his inability gather enough funds to return to school due to the Great Depression. While in New York, Ellison met Richard Wright who introduced Ellison to the New York Federal Writers Program; there, Ellison gathered stories of African Americans who were affected by the Great Depression and chose to migrate North. In Ralph Ellison’s bildungsroman, Invisible Man, Ellison explores what black identity is in a post-Civil War, post-Great Depression society. Similar to Ellison and his life, the protagonist, Invisible Man, finds himself in New York in search of a job and his purpose in society. Invisible Man’s confusion about his place in society is due to America’s want for a monolithic African American narrative.Liberty Paints exposes how white Americans are enabled to neglect their past with African Americans due to the deeply rooted value of self reliance in the United States furthering the oppression of black people in America.

any job they could get such as factory work. In the novel, Aldous Huxley describes a future

Imagine being the only person in the world to know an imperfect society. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and, Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy are two novels about a a corrupt government trying to create an ideal society. Both novels address the different social classes that exists in the new societies. Literary critic Elke Brown wrote an article about how Brave New World is in fact a new world. In these two novels the societies are broken up into different social classes and, how the government controls the citizens to make the world perfect.

Many people often thought that the Communist Party was a glorious solution to the crisis and various problems that existed in society. However, that eventually turned out to not be the case, and the complete opposite ended up happening instead. In fact, the Communist Party failed and was unsuccessful because of individual leaders wanting to emerge. African American Ralph Ellison was one of the very few African American people in support of the Communist Party in the beginning. He was even quietly involved with the communist publications, until he quickly understood that he too wouldn’t be able to further express his personal creativity. At first, he did not realize that the Communist Party did not care about him as an individual, and was totally blind to the fact that all the party wanted was political gains. Ellison’s own personal dilemma was very similar to the narrator’s in the novel. He rebelled from the restrictions of the Communist Party because they would not allow his individuality as a writer and as a person. I believe that this directly correlates and highly portrays the character of the narrator throughout the novel Invisible Man. Just like Ellison’s conflict, the narrator finds himself in the same pinch throughout many episodes in the text of the novel, and is also unable to create his own personal identity. Just like the Communist Party versus Ralph Ellison’s life, the Brotherhood in Invisible Man

     Both Ellison’s The Invisible Man and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World are political in nature, and at this level, seem completely dissimilar. The Invisible Man attempts to illuminate the social entrapment of Black Americans, while Brave New World cautions against an over-reliance on technology and the amorality it can potentially inspire. At a deeper level, however, both books are also about the status of the individual in society, and it is here that there is a remarkable similarity between the two novels.

  Is your life at risk and endangered if you are driving with your eyes off the road?  Is it safe to walk down a dark and dangerous alley where you cannot see what is in front of you?  Would it be a good idea to walk across the street without looking both ways first?  The answer to all these questions are no.  Why?  Because in all three situations, there is a lack of vision.  So, one can conclude that vision is of great importance to the visible world.  Nevertheless, vision is also equally important in the invisible world.  Because the most important things in our lives are invisible, vision into the invisible world is greatly needed to make life richer.  The essentials to life:

Ellison has written the text in the first person to gain greater sympathy towards the main character, the narrator. By doing this he is able to give people a different perspective on the issues that he is raising. It also allowed him to write at a more personal level, as he himself is an African American letting him write on his personal experience and extrinsic influences that were bestowed upon him by the racial discrimination of him time. Ellison was born in 1914 about the times that there was a large amount of racially provoked violence towards the African American population especially in the south were 53% of the African American