The Importance Of Names In The Invisible Man

Many people wonder what it would be like if they were to be invisible; stealthily walking around, eavesdropping on conversations, and living as if nothing is of their concern. Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison, is centred on an unnamed fictional character who believes himself to be, indeed, invisible to the rest of the world. He is not invisible in the physical sense, but socially and intellectually. As the book develops, readers are able to experience an authentic recollection of what life is as a black man living in a white man’s world. This man wants to achieve so much, but is severely limited by the colour of his skin. This novel, which has become a classic, addresses the themes of blindness in fighting stereotypes and predestined

audience to tears and put the narrator it a state of emotional shock because of the wisdom

Right from the commencement of the Invisible Man it’s as if all the odds in the world are constantly being thrown at the story's unnamed narrator. The main obstacle being the narrator’s skin color- as he is a black man in racist, 1930’s era America. It is this “obstacle” that has caused the narrator to be swallowed up in this feeling of banishment and sense of exile- fueled by racial tensions-which in turn becomes a eminent theme of the story’s plot and the narrator’s own life. As the narrator believes that society doesn’t recognize the black people of America (sense of exile), and demonstrates this with a prelude history lesson on the past his own grandparents endured as former slaves and how they now live as supposedly “free people.” These flashbacks reinstate the hatred and feeling the narrator feels as a member of an excommunicated minority group, yet at the same time counteracts the elated emotions the narrator is also trying to use as a facade to fool and win himself over in proving that he isn’t really as invisible as he feels in the world.

Historical information: Invisible Man was published in 1952 by Ralph Ellison. Ellison laments the feeling of despondency and “invisibility” that many African Americans experience in the United States. Ellison uses W.E.B. Dubois, Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey as sources for the novel. W.E.B. Dubois wrote The Souls of Black Folk, where Dubois expresses his theory of the double-consciousness possessed by blacks. Booker T. Washington wrote Up from Slavery, which talks about his rise from slavery to freedom. This can be related to the novel in how the narrator rises from not knowing his identify to finding out who he genuinely is. He also directly relates to Washington’s 1895 Atlanta Compromise address in Chapter One, when the narrator writes of his grandparents "About eighty-five years ago they were told that they were free, united with others of our country in everything pertaining to the common good, and, in everything social, separate like the fingers of the hand". Lastly, Marcus Garvey inspires the role of Ras the Exhorter in the novel. Marcus was not as extreme as Ras, but he did believe that black people had to better their lives by banding together, as opposed to obtaining help from white America.

In the prologue of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, the unnamed narrator says that he is invisible, for he is not actually seen—or rather recognized—for his true self but through the imaginations of others’ minds. As surreal as his life under this “invisibility” and, literally, the ground is, the Invisible Man convinces with vivid details and emphatic diction. But the passage detailing his hallucination seems out of place, as it has far more ambiguous language and moral. However, his hallucination, the pilgrimage into the “underworld of sound”, shouldn’t be discredited as merely a drug-induced episode, but a reflection of himself, revealing of his hidden character, one that’s likewise ambivalent and confused (Ellison 8). The dichotomy

Throughout the story the protagonist is left nameless. This provides the reader with another question of identity. Without a name to attach to the character, we are left without an identity.

Before he was known as The Invisible Man his name was Griffin. He Once was a human but then he discovered a formula that makes him invisible. He is a mad-scientist that over the years has been doing a lot of experiments such as, travelling through time and converting animals into humans. He doesn’t belong with people in the community, he doesn’t have family or friends and he lives in a world where people do not care about him at all and all he does is keeps himself isolated. Now he has to see if being invisible makes him powerful or becomes his worst nightmare.

Equality between individuals is a primary step to prosperity under a democracy. However, does this moral continue to apply among differences and distinct characters of the total population? In the novel, Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison, the protagonists suffers from the lack of acknowledgement guaranteed to African Americans in both the North and South regions of North America during the early 1900s. The Narrator expresses the poignant problems that blacks face as he travels to the North. An anti-hero is created on his voyage of being expelled from college, earning a job at Liberty Paints, and joining the organization group called Brotherhood. The Narrator begins to follow the definition others characters give to him while fighting for the

Invisible Man is a story told through the perspective of the narrator, a Black man struggling in a White culture. The term “invisible man” truly idealizes not only the struggles of a black man but also the actual unknown identity of the narrator. The story starts during the narrator’s college days where he works hard and earns respect from the college administration. Dr. Bledsoe, a Black administrator of the school, becomes the narrator’s friend. Dr. Bledsoe has achieved success in the White culture which becomes the goal which the narrator seeks to achieve. The narrator's hard work culminates in him being given the opportunity to take Mr. Norton, a White benefactor to the school, on a car ride around the school area. Against his

The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells gives an account of a man’s descent into madness as the result of his scientific feat, invisibility. Griffin, the invisible man, first appears as a mysterious stranger, bandaged and seeking shelter and recluse but progressively transforms into a lawless individual with a proposition to initiate a reign of terror. The change in Griffin’s character occurs due to his invisibility and the power it provides because “there is no one, on this view, who is iron-willed enough to maintain his morality and find the strength of purpose to keep his hands off what does not belong to him, when he is able to take whatever he wants from the market-stalls without fear of being discovered, to enter houses and sleep with

The Invisible Man tries on several different identities throughout the novel, but never finds the one that suits him. He allows others to tell him who

The idea of double consciousness, termed by W.E.B. Du Bois, for African Americans deals with the notion that one’s self has duality in being black and American. It is the attempt to reconcile two cultures that make up the identity of black men and women. One can only see through the eyes of another. A veil exists in this idea, where one has limits in how he or she can see or be seen. This individual is invisible to the onlookers of the veil, and those onlookers may be invisible to the individual. This then alters how one can truly interpret their conscious. This concept is one that has been explored in various themes of literature,

  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:

    It is not necessary to be a racist to impose 'invisibility" upon another person. Ignoring someone or acting as if we had not seen him or her, because they make us feel uncomfortable, is the same as pretending that he or she does not exist. "Invisibility" is what the main character of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man called it when others would not recognize or acknowledge him as a person.

The theme I chose for this novel is about a man searching for his identity and not sure about where to turn to define himself.