Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man tells the story of a young black man in a white-powered society. The boy begins at Tuskeegee College in a battle royal for the white towns men’s enjoyment. This invisible man is soon kicked out of school for taking Mr. Norton, one of the college’s trustees, to the gin-mill in hopes to help him. Dr. Beldsoe, who expels him, sends invisible man to New York, telling him to find work, however Dr. Beldsoe makes it impossible for him to find work by telling the employers not to hire invisible man, thus putting him in dangerous situations including working with Lucius Brockaway, the birthing scene, and the union, and eventually joining the Brotherhood. Throughout this entire story, Invisible man is just trying to discover his identity and the shift between identity and invisibility. In this story, the entire time is taken trying to figure out where the narrator really belongs in the world. He doesn’t feel like he has a place in this world yet, and desperately tries to help not only himself, but his people. This internal struggle the narrator has, carries the story as he tries to discover who he is and what he should do once he knows who he is. In finding himself, he also has many problems with facing alienation throughout the story; he faces both racial alienation and self-alienation. In facing these issues of identity and alienation, invisible man goes on an extreme journey to discover himself.

            The story begins with Invisible man, already living in his basement and telling of how he is invisible, “I am an invisible man,” he begins, “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard distorting glass.” (3). The narrator is prevalent in mentioning in the introduction, that he is only invisible because of society’s refusal to see him, not because he has chosen necessarily to be invisible. Ellison takes hold of the American theme according to William Barrett, “People in older civilizations – say, the Englishman or the Frenchman – have behind them centuries of a settled and defined culture, which serves as a mirror in which they can see their own futures and find their own identity,” contradictory to Americans, specifically African- Americans, “exists in a new, evolving and fluid society that does not offer him any external image of his own individual possibilities and meaning” (23), as African-Americans they are the most discriminated racial group, and because he is so alien from his ancestors, the narrator is in a divided state of being; one between the ancestral past he carries, and the American future he lives. This divide is the initial reason that invisible man feels invisible or alienated, because he does not know where he truly belongs, or if one is the way he should live. His grandfather also brings up this idea of being an alien in this America, “Son, after I’m gone I want you to keep up the good fight. I never told you, but our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy’s country ever since I give up my gun back in the Reconstruction.” assuming he is talking about the racial separation in America and fighting for their people, “Live with your head in the lion’s mouth. I want you to overcome ‘em with yeses, undermine ‘em with grins, agree ‘em to death and destruction, let ‘em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open” (16). These last words unnerve the protagonist and he decides to live them out in spite of himself, despite not really knowing what his grandfather was speaking about. This perspective of his grandfather’s can be seen as a historical view, coinciding with those ideas of the ancestors. Thus, putting invisible man in an even more uncomfortable position throughout his life, listen to his grandfather’s advice, as the historical ancestor’s side, or to live in the America that his grandfather warns him about, the one that will make him an alien forever.

            At the scene of the battle royal, the white men pent up the African-American boys against each other and have them fight, practically to some of their last breath’s. Invisible man only attends this battle because he was invited to give his graduation speech, but when finally given the chance to give the speech, the white leaders of the town essentially mock him, “There was still laughter as I faced them, my mouth dry, my eye throbbing” (29). The entire time the men question the validity of the speech coming from an African-American boy, “Much applause and laughter” (29). This speech at the battle royal is the first time we see the protagonist as an influential speaker, speaking with sincerity. Speaking for something that he wants to be understood in. In H. William Rice’s essay, “The Magic and Mysteries of Word,” he concludes that, “The narrator drops the automatic words for words supplied by the audience, and the narrator recognizes the audience as a group of people in need” (28). This is the first time in which invisible man starts to see the power in speech, in an identity. One could allude this directly to when Brother Jack later asks the protagonist, “How would you like to be the next Booker T. Washington?” (305), invisible man sees an identity in leading others, even if his speeches normally do not have a point. And later, is given that opportunity. Invisible man is also aware of the rejection that is casted by the men. Although they end up applauding his speech, he is invisible in the sense that he is aware of the world around him and how they really treat him, rejected by their white society. The white men at the royal eventually give him a scholarship to school and invisible man takes it.

            School is a short lived fantasy for invisible man, for he is expelled and exiled to New York by Dr. Bledsoe. Invisible man was trusted to chauffeur a college trustee, a white man, Mr. Norton, around town. They end up at the Golden Day, quite a traumatic experience for Mr. Norton, ends up in exile for invisible man. Dr. Blesdoe, furious with invisible man, “’Nigger, this isn’t the time to lie. I’m not white man. Tell me the truth!’ It was as though he’d struck me. I stared across the desk thinking, He called me that…” (139), creating “a prevalent and definite segregation between influential and wealthy whites and subjugated, pathetic and impoverished blacks” (Toker, 26). He is also creating a divide between those African-Americans in power and those who do not hold any power, going on saying, “I don’t care. I wouldn’t raise my finger to stop you. Because I don’t owe anyone a thing, son. Who, Negroes? Negroes don’t control this school or much of anything else – Haven’t you learned that?” He belittles invisible man and makes him feel the guilt of his actions, “This is a power set-up, son, and I’m at the controls. You think about that. When you buck against me, you’re bucking against power, rich white folk’s power, the nation’s power – which means government power!” (142). Invisible man comes face to face with the real issues of America; the prejudice of African-Americans, and the consequences received under white man’s word. Dr. Bledsoe then exiles the protagonist to New York telling him to finished the semester with a job up there. This exile can be seen as the first time invisible man is really aware of the circumstances of being a black man. Though the issues with Mr. Norton was not his fault, it is taken out on him because there has to be someone to blame, and it is not going to be the white man. The oppression of the protagonist in this scene is huge. College is everything for him, to be kicked out strips any identity he had built for himself. He comes to the realization, “Therefore, he gradually started to notice the existing defects within his education and how he was being educated by an establishment which advocated the ideologies of people who were nothing like himself” (Toker, 29). As well as his alienation of his birth place, he also feels alienated from the African-American community, “This narrator’s alienation from the black people and from his native place of birth constitutes a part of a third stage of alienation. In other words, he is self-alienated. He is a detached and segregated person and for him, the elements that make up the Self are incomplete” (Toker, 29). Invisible man feels like he has nothing without the community, and now being shipped to New York, and not having that community, he is without a sense of himself. And without himself, he is alienated.

            The narrator is thwarted by Dr. Bledsoe, and soon understands that Dr. Bledsoe never wanted him to succeed in New York, telling employers to give him a sense of false hope, but never a job. Invisible man eventually finds himself reporting for a job at Liberty Paints. The first thing he sees is a sign with the logo: “Keep America Pure with Liberty Paints” (196). This sign, “ironically blending the word liberty, which is revered in the American myth, with the horrible objective of the Ku Klux Klan to ‘purify’ America” (28). In this chapter there is the clear manifestation of invisible man’s alienation, not from the black community, but from the American community. There is clear allusions to keeping America white and if not, purifying it: “We entered one of the buildings now and started down a pure white hall” (197), the emphasis on pure white keeps this pressure going of alienation of invisible man. In Liberty Paints, invisible man’s first job is mixing black paint into white paint, “The idea is to open each bucket and put in ten drops of [black paint], then you stir it ‘til it disappears.” He checks with invisible man, “’You understand?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ But when I looked into the white graduate I hesitated; the liquid inside was dead black” (200). This idea of mixing the black paint into the white, creating a brighter white symbolizes just what the sign does. The purification of America. When the men go on to check the paint they describe it as, “White! It’s the purest white that can be found. Nobody makes a paint any whiter. This batch right here is heading for a national monument!” (202). One can assume that the ‘purest white’ going to a national monument, can only be a comparison to white individuals ending up in national office, having more power over African-Americans. If this did not make feel invisible man feel alienated enough, the obvious distaste for anything that is not white, he soon finds out about Lucius Brockaway, “It was a deep basement. Three levels underground I pushed upon a heavy metal door marked “danger” and descended into a noisy, dimly light room” (207). This separation of the African-American worker, Lucius, from the white workers exemplifies how African-Americans were to stay separate from the whites, detached from where production was actually happening. He is important to production but it is gone unnoticed. This is a physical form of the alienation of African-Americans from others that invisible man truly is in for the first time. He is sent down to work with Lucius, so he must be alienated with him. Now being discriminated twice, he is falsified of who he really is, his grandfather thought he knew the truth to the world, but now the protagonist begins to understand that the world is much more evil than his grandfather had ever thought. 

            Soon after this, the protagonist rallies the community to fight for an elderly black couple that have been evicted. This speech, like the one at the battle royal, is a time when the protagonist begins to believe in the power of speech. And how speech can give one an identity, a cause, a purpose.  He is soon introduced to Brother Jack, and soon, the Brotherhood. Immediately given a new name, and thus a different identity, he becomes a political speaker for the Brotherhood. “Though he has been thrown into a leadership position in the novel, the narrator has actually not consciously sought to lead politically”, without even knowing it, this identity that the protagonist has been given is working against what he truly wants, “Most of his speaking in Harlem has been on behalf of the Brotherhood, an organization that hopes to use, even sacrifice, the black community to further its own revolutionary agenda” (8). The agenda used by the Brotherhood has sculpted everything about invisible man’s new identity, down to the walk he speaks, and the idea of American success pulls in the narrator to this life. “His commitment to the Brotherhood is motivated by ambition, even greed: ‘I saw no limits, it was the one organization in the whole country in which I could reach the very top and I meant to get there’ (380)”. He wants this American success, however, realizes that he had to be a different person in order to get this goal. This helps him come to the epiphany that it is not worth it, leading to his underground life without any sort of luxury. When understood by the audience when giving speeches, the protagonist’s approach is very different from that of greed or trying to benefit the Brotherhood, “To them he feels committed, not by money or ambition, but by the intrinsic demands of truth” (9). Truth is something that he has been seeking since his grandfather’s last words and in giving speeches, he understands that he must be true to himself and the audience in order to be his own person. In some sense, again, he has an identity. Although it is not his own, it is more than what he began with. Soon noticing, however, that an identity can get one in trouble or unwanted attention. For example, from Ras the Extorter, a rival speaker in Harlem, “accusing the narrator of faithlessness to the black man, seeking to align him with the ultimate father/mother symbol: Africa” (8). Invisible man falls under many leaders throughout his life, and Ras is the last of them, by trying to lead invisible man on another alternate path, thus altering his identity once again. Ras stands for more of the black allegiance whereas the invisible man has not been fight for any allegiance except the for the Brotherhood’s agenda.  When the book comes to it’s climax, the protagonist spearing Ras with a piece of his own outfit, he finally finds a path to the chaos. The protagonist finds his life in losing it. The narrator is changed after this, becoming his own father, “who has shaken off the restraints of a culture that cannot see him, a narrator who has achieved at least some measure of freedom (8).

            At the end of the book, invisible man chooses an identity for himself that would defend him against anyone who tried to make him any different, he would stay invisible forever. This choice to stay invisible by the protagonist is destructive because “it demands the very same space, the space of the disregarded and unseen, one that others had transferred him earlier in order to achieve their own profit” (32). He could see this lifestyle, however, as a redeeming force because his spiritual being and aspirations changed from being individually strong to understanding the absurdity of truth that he is exposed to while in his state of invisibility. “The unstable and wavering nature of identity is associated with the narrator’s self-realization in numerous parts of the novel” (32), he realizes that he was not a man to many of the men he has encountered but, “[He was simply a material, a natural resource to be used (508). Invisible man’s decision to become invisible comes from the alienation faces many, many time throughout his life. He has been separated and exiled from his own community, thrown into other people’s communities that do not have the same aspirations or even close to the same agenda. He is able to break out of this cycle of alienation by finding a path to the chaos. In finding a path, he is able to do what he wants on his own account. “The greatest advantage connected with the Invisible Man’s invisibility is the liberty he experiences from not taking part in the tyrannical hierarchal value systems established by financial status and skin color” (33). Hence, this invisibility chosen by the protagonist lets him live freely in society without the social constraints placed on him. Without these constraints, he is free to be who he wants or to do what he wants; he is no longer held to a specific agenda by any type of leader. At the same time, however, invisibility is still alienating. He is separated from the rest of the world, not necessarily based on skin color, but still separated. He is isolating himself from the entire world, no matter the good or the bad.

            Being able to see a path to the chaos can be attributed to invisible man’s writings and observations mentioned at the end of the book. This path to the chaos “causes him to state that he will surface and live on the ground again” (33), putting an end to his hibernation and his invisibility. Although he says this, he is divided once again between the decision to go above ground or to stay under. The protagonist does choose to stay outside of the limitations placed by society, and his liberty is based on society’s want to contribute to his invisibleness, “Thus identity is both a personal claim and a relational contract based on social assumptions” (33). The identity that he has been worried about the entire story is just made up based on what others think of the protagonist. No matter how he shapes his identity, it will always be shaped and judged by society. We can assume this is why invisible man never tells anyone his real name in the first place, because no matter what, his identity would just be shaped by the society around him and not for who he truly is. The protagonist’s naivety throughout the story alienates him as well. He follows leader after leader, with really no questions asked, hoping that they can lead him somewhere tangible, “His naivety is quite enough to label him as a dejected and desperate alien and include him in the Hall of Fame of the alienated figures in American literature” (34). His alienation also came from his emigration from the South the the North, leaving behind the only identity he has ever known. This is ironic though because the university student identity does not really belong to him nor has the college ever really been like home. “In this sense, a home is like having an identity: something a person makes rather than simply resides” (34). The move from south to north is one where identity is lost, but also where the protagonist understands freedom and how identities are ever changing, they don’t have to be stagnant. Once he understands his naivety throughout his life, he becomes ready for the self-knowledge which he has been search for, “a knowledge he can only find when he is completely isolated contemplating on his culture like a modern version of Henry David Thoreau (34). Ellison argues that the mask put on by many, including invisible man, will be no help to the African-Americans. This masking is seen as unreliable and a rejection of any identity. Ellison argues that “American identity is woven in the presence of blackness as something alien but otherwise invisible, and of the silence that surrounds whiteness. Both serve to make identity something riddled with amnesia and falseness a past yet to be faced” (35). American identity is such an identity that is played and fooled with; no identity as ever as it really seems. Identities are littered with lies and deception.

            Invisible man’s alienation is something he has to overcome throughout the whole novel. He identifies that the racial issues of the American society, and uses these issues in order to give a pattern to the chaos, or to “alter the image of America the founders had in their minds” (35). This novel reflects the identity crisis many African-Americans went through in the 50’s, and to solve this identity crisis, one like invisible man, must realize that understanding life is more important than trying to understand the subconscious of race. As soon as invisible man understands principle and accepts it, it is an epiphany that he can change what he wants to in the world; it doesn’t have to be chosen for him.

Works Cited

Barrett, William. “Black and Blue: A Negro Céline.” The Critical Response to Ralph Ellison.

Edited by Robert J. Butler. 2000.

Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. Random House, Inc. 1980.

Rice, H. William. “The Invisible Man in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.” Ralph Ellison and the

Politics of the Novel. Lexington Books. 2003.

Rice, H. William. “The Magic and the Mystery of Words.” Ralph Ellison and the Politics of the

Novel. Lexington Books. 2003.

Toker, Alpaslan. “The Invisible Man: An Alien in New York Searching for Identity.” Eskisehir

osmangazi Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi (2013) Vol. 14 Issue 2, p23-38.

Warren, Kenneth W. So Black and Blue. University of Chicago Press. 2003.