Invisibility Examined in Black and White

Nooooo, you didn’t think I was going to let February pass by without a Black History Month review did you? C’mon you know me better than that.

To be honest, I was so lost in other responsibilities that I hadn’t given the idea of writing this much thought until I received an email from cletta1201. Unfortunately since it was almost the third week of the shortest month of the year, the idea of successfully organizing and executing a write-off in the space of a few days seemed a little more than implausible.

But still, I definitely wanted to do something, so I decided to write up a review of one of my favorite books of all time, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison.

In the late 1940s, a popular form of social activism was to write protest literature that discussed the depressed and downtrodden standards of living that blacks underwent in the US. One of the chief proponents of this type of literature was Richard Wright, who’s popular novel Native Son received critical acclaim for its horrific depiction of black life in the Unites States. Like the vast majority of protest novels at this time, Wright’s Native Son characterized blacks as unsophisticated, volatile, and uneducated – simple products of the oppressive conditions of American society at the time.

Around this time period, Wright took an aspiring writer named Ralph Ellison under his wing, indoctrinating him into the world of black protest literature. Ellison, understanding that life as an African-American was much more complex than what was represented by the one-dimensional characters of Wright and the others, sought to take a different route in his own first novel. His goal was to create characters and experiences that were more reflective of his own personal experiences, while vividly describing the rich and full subculture that blacks had created in the periphery of American society. The result of this paradigm shift was 1952’s Invisible Man, a book that turned out to be much more than just protest writing. Quite simply, it is one of the most important American novels written thus far, a depiction of the struggle to gain one’s own definition in an extremely hostile and unforgiving world.

The Plot
At the beginning, Invisible Man appears to be just a story about a man trying to achieve his dreams. The nameless protagonist (I hesitate to call him a “hero” for a few reasons) starts off in the first chapter as a young high school graduate invited to give a speech in front of the prominent whites in his town. He is selected specifically because his words instruct blacks to embrace humility and to be satisfied with the status quo. Unfortunately for Ellison’s character there is a “Battle Royal” scheduled to occur before his speech, and he finds himself maneuvered into participating.

For the amusement of the town’s eminent white leaders, the hero is forced to box blindfolded against several other similarly handicapped young black men. Here the author introduces several of the themes that will be used repeatedly throughout the book, such as the relationships between whites, blacks, blindness, and brutality. After the fight is concluded, the main character is still required to give his speech perfectly through bruises, swollen lips, and a bloody mouth to a drunken and antagonistic audience. After his speech, the protagonist is awarded with a scholarship to the state college for Negroes, its campus centering around the statue of the undesignated black Founder of the school removing a blindfold from a kneeling slave. However, after much examination, the character is “unable to decide whether the veil is being lifted, or lowered more firmly in place.”

After being expelled from school, the protagonist finds himself trying to make his way in New York. After several strange and almost surreal experiences, he finds himself using his public speaking abilities to incite a mob to help an elderly couple being evicted. It is then that his abilities are discovered by the communist group the Brotherhood, and he is recruited as a speaker to further strengthen the organization’s ties to the black community.

To be honest, it has always confused me that Ellison and Wright had socialist/communist/whatever-ist leanings. This quandary stems from the fact that often in Black Literature (especially including Invisible Man and Native Son), trouble quickly ensues immediately after a black character enlists with these predominately white social/political activists. I think perhaps this has to do with the fact that these groups – in keeping with their ideologies – ally themselves with the working class, which in has been historically (and mostly still is) comprised of significant numbers of African-Americans.

The problems arise however, when the Communists fail to see that Blacks as more than just the proletariat. African-Americans have a distinct culture, a distinct identity, something that transcends their social standing. The very people they’re trying to collaborate with become invisible to this group, as they truly only see them as a tool for political upheaval. Ellison exceptionally uses this fact as a point of friction between the protagonist and the Brotherhood, as often the directives of the organization lead them one way, while the needs of the blacks they “support” take an immediate back seat.

A Few Things to Look For
Ellison has an affinity for writing large sections of the book in a stream-of-consciousness. Some readers may have trouble with the long sentences and abstract phrasing he uses in these sections, but there is a shortcut around the difficulty. Remember that before Ellison was a writer, he was a Jazz musician; try reading those passages aloud. Many of these passages have distinct musical patterns that are easy to overlook when read silently. Try it with this passage that Ellison writes when the protagonist remembers making speeches in the college auditorium:

“Ha! singing achievement, Ha! Booming success, intoning, Ha! acceptance, Ha! a river of word-sounds filled with drowning passions, floating, Ha! with wrecks of unachievable ambitions and stillborn revolts, sweeping their ears, Ha! ranged stiff before me, necks stretched forward with listening ears, Ha! a-spraying the ceiling and a-drumming the dark-stained after rafter, that seasoned crossarm of torturous timber mellowed in the kiln of a thousand voices…”

Throughout the novel, Ralph Ellison masterfully utilizes a wide variety of symbols, themes, and metaphors like sight vs. blindness, the colors black and white, invisibility, reality, and illusion. Each instance is subtly used and intricately layered, like when in the paint factory, the hero must add a few drops of black “dope” to the white paint in order to make it “the whitest white.” Through these elements the novelist makes statements about social conditions and race relations US, but not so overtly as to beat the reader over the head with the concepts.

Perhaps the most central theme in Invisible Man is the quest for discovering one’s true identity. Throughout the book, the hero continually allows others to define him, from the Southern whites, to the college president, to the Brotherhood. Each one recreated and molded him into the person they wanted him to be, never taking notice of the person he was. It is not until he is stripped of all outside influences that the character truly does some self-examination and discovers his invisibility as a result. In my opinion, this is also one of the reasons that the novel is so popular. Not everyone can relate to being black in the South in the 1950’s, but most people can remember struggling to find themselves at one time or another.

So for those looking get lost within a literary tour-de-force, consider picking up a terrific example of a true American novel, Invisible Man. With this work, Ralph Ellison proves that African-American culture is just as worthy of exploration as any topic covered by Melville or Twain, and does so in spectacular form. Who knows? Reading this you may discover that you are invisible as well.



Author’s Note
I am very disappointed in myself because I had originally planned to write this before the PBS American Masters show on Ellison had aired earlier this month so that anyone interested could tune in, but I became to tied up in other really irrelevant activities. However, if you are truly interested in finding out more about Ralph Ellison and his work, you can still go to their website for more information:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/ellison_r_homepage.html