86 pages • 2 hours read
Ralph EllisonInvisible Man
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1952A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
Race in 20th-Century America
Invisible Man is about race and how racial injustice hampers individual effort, no matter how diligent. There are a myriad of examples and overarching patterns that support the idea that the protagonist is held back by the racial stereotypes and oppression of 20th-century America. For example, White narratives about other races are shown to be well integrated into pop culture: At one point, the protagonist goes and sees a movie that perpetuates various stereotypes and myths about the American West, the “cowboys and Indians” (170) frontier movie. White people, even when relatively well-meaning, have preconceived ideas about what Black people “should” be. An example of this is when Brotherhood member Emma asks, “don’t you think he should be a little blacker?” (303), and a party guest demands that he sing just because he’s Black (312). (Stereotypically, Black people were seen as “natural” entertainers who existed for the enjoyment of White people rather than in their own right.)
Not only have White people internalized certain myths and stereotypes about Black people in Invisible Man, Black people are also shown to have internalized them as well, “self-correcting” away from appearances or behaviors that White people did not approve of. For example, the protagonist says that the Black teachers at the southern college he attends would pose as chauffeurs when they drove their own cars (211), not wanting to appear “too” successful by advertising that they could afford to buy their own automobiles. (Cars served as an economic status symbol because they were still relatively expensive.) It’s not clear if conflict would have come from other Black people or from White people if the teachers acknowledged that they owned their own cars, but the professors have internalized the idea that they shouldn’t appear to be wealthy or even economically comfortable, despite their career stability.
A more blatant internal rejection of Black identity comes in an advertisement the protagonist encounters in Harlem that claims to whiten black skin. It reads: “You too can be truly beautiful […] Win greater happiness with whiter complexion” (262). This harmful and prevalent message equates lighter skin with happiness, beauty, and accomplishment, suggesting that even the Black community believes the false racial message that being White is “better” than being Black. The widespread acceptance of these beliefs contributes to the challenges facing the protagonist as he tries to battle the forces that oppress the Black community.
Journey Toward Self-Understanding and Adult Identity
Ellison combines the particular social issue of racism in America with a common psychological process: the journey toward self-understanding and a sense of adult identity. The two themes often inform and intertwine with one another, but the self-understanding journey is nonetheless a central pillar of Ellison’s story. It helps give the protagonist a nearly universal experience that readers of all backgrounds can relate to, helping them empathize with him as well as giving his character complexity and nuance. The protagonist realizes that he must define who he is for himself rather than looking to another person or group of people for the answer to that question. The successive failures of the groups or ideas he has chosen to define himself around finally force him to determine, independently, who he is and how he wants to move through the world.
The protagonist’s journey toward understanding himself, however, is complicated by the racial dynamics of his time. The expectations and prejudices of others interfere with and influence his ability to understand himself and craft an identity. There is a motif, for example, of dehumanization of Black men that runs through Invisible Man, calling attention to how White people tried to define Black men as something other than human: During the blindfolded fight in Chapter 1 (already a humiliating experience), Black men “groped about like blind, cautious crabs crouching to protect their mid-sections,” “their fists testing the smoke-filled air like the knobbed feelers of hypersensitive snails” (23). The White men’s cruelty reduces the Black men to acting in ways reminiscent of animals. In addition, the Brotherhood attempts to erase the protagonist’s previous identity by “renaming” him (assigning him an alias):
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. Very soon you shall be known by it all over the country. You are to answer to no other, understand? (309).
The Brotherhood leaders discard the protagonist’s original identity, failing to understand or preserve it, an injustice that contributes to the protagonist’s understanding that he is relatively anonymous to them.
The protagonist’s main triumph, then, is rejecting the right of groups or other people to form his identity for him. His realization that he can and must decide for himself lends him a sense of control that he lacks in the external events of the book. Despite the negative outcome of these events, the protagonist can be understood as experiencing a “happy ending” because he still has some degree of empowerment and agency in his life.
Alienation From a Sense of Place Through Involuntary Resettlement
At the beginning of the book, the protagonist seeks only to become a successful professional in his hometown or at the Black college he attends as a student. He is not depicted as longing to experience the northern US. However, Dr. Bledsoe uproots the protagonist by sending him to New York, supposedly only for the summer but in actuality for the indefinite future. Some of the changes the protagonist experiences as a result of this experience lead to his growth, but he is forced to make them because of circumstances beyond his control. Like many Black people who were enslaved, oppressed, or discriminated against in America, the protagonist was denied the agency and autonomy enjoyed by White people merely because of his skin color. His displacement mirrors those of African people brought to the US to become slaves, weakening their sense of self by separating them from the place that they identified with culturally.
One way that this sense of displacement is expressed is through food, which is often a cornerstone of culture. When the protagonist walks through New York and buys a roasted yam from a street vendor in Chapter 13, he experiences complex emotions surrounding the typically Southern food; he both enjoys it because it makes him think of his childhood, his family, and his cultural upbringing and resents that it makes him look like a stereotypical “Southern” person, a status that he feels makes him look less educated and dignified than he wishes to be. The difference between the place he formed an identity around and the place he now finds himself becomes apparent and gives him conflicting feelings about this supposedly straightforward desire for a yam. However, he returns to the vendor and buys two more yams (266), deciding that he will uphold his sense of self—however hard Bledsoe has made it for him and despite being displaced physically from his place of origin, he retains the ability to express who he is.
Related Titles
By Ralph Ellison
