Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

 

Invisible Man

by Ralph Ellison

Invisible Man follows an unnamed African American narrator from the southern United States after he is expelled from his college for following the orders of a white man as he is sent north to New York City with the promise of a job. The reality is that a job does not await him.

The novel opens with the young man about to give a speech to a bunch of influential white men, but before that happens he and a bunch of other black men are pitted against one another in a blind fight for the amusement of the white men. After the fight, they are used as entertainment further, when the white men urge them to dive for money on an electrified mat. It is all very disgusting. 

When the narrator gives his speech he is awarded with a scholarship to attend school, which leads to the problem above. He is chosen to escort and drive a white school founder around the campus, when the founder asks to be taken to see some slave cabins. An incident occurs which causes the founder to become ill and the narrator takes him to a bar in a nearby town where the founder is hurt. This leads to the narrator's expulsion.

In New York he learns he has no job waiting for him and that he will have to figure out what to do. He will not be going back to school. By a series of encounters he becomes part of a Brotherhood that is formed in Harlem for the betterment of the black community there and with the goal of uniting all the races in brotherhood. The narrator is chosen to be a speaker for this crusade, but he is expected to follow protocol and to do as he is told. As he becomes entrenched in this community he starts to take actions outside of the purview of the Brotherhood's "scientific" approach in an effort to actually effect change. They don't like this and he is reprimanded and effectually shunned by the community. A race riot ensues and the narrator ends up throwing his hands up over it all and decides to let the chaos be what it will be, since the white brothers were using him as a political pawn.

It took about 6 chapters for me to start to get into this novel. The beginning narration was overly philosophical and confusing for my tastes. But when the narrator has to face the head of his school and is sent to New York, the story picked up for me and I was engrossed for the remainder of the book. 

The narrator insists that he is invisible because people refuse to see him. I would argue that he is the one who hides himself and keeps to himself throughout the novel. In the south invisibility works to the narrator's advantage. It is openly racist and hostile for the black race and deference to the whites there was a life saving action. In the north, where racism was supposed to be less prominent, deference to the whites was also expected, though not overtly. 

The story is about being denied individuality, for being seen as who you are instead of someone's preconceived notions of who you should be. Both the black and the white characters in the novel have expectations of who the narrator is, what kind of person he is based on his color and where he came from. And so he retreats, hides away, hides himself.

It was an engaging story, immersive in its environments, with characters you can really get a sense of. They have a fullness and you feel like you know them. Though the narrator is frustrating at times when he refuses to say what he means at the most important times, the narrative is close and relatable. I give Invisible Man an 4 stars. The beginning held it back for me from giving it the highest rating.