Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
1. Briefly summarize the plot of the novel you read.2. Succinctly describe the theme of the novel. Avoid cliches.
3. Describe the author's tone. Include three excerpts that illustrate your point(s).
4. Describe five literary elements/techniques you observed that strengthened your understanding of the theme and/or your sense of the tone. Include three excerpts that will help your reader understand each one.
1) Invisible Man was written in 1952 in New York City in the form of a "bildungsroman" which means personal development or progress. The story begins when the narrator, an unknown African-American man, introduces himself to the reader as "invisible man". The narrator says that he has gone underground to write about his invisible life. Then the narrator flashes back to what events occurred up to the present moment. Since his birth, the narrator was a gifted public speaker and he was invited by the white men to give a speech in which he received a scholarship. When he is at college, he is assigned to drive Mr. Norton, the college's trustee, around the school campus and it's surroundings. After seeing and hearing some information about Jim Trueblood, Mr. Norton gets a drink from Golden Day and faints during the ruckus. When Dr. Bledsoe, the college president, hears about this, he expels the narrator from school and sends him to New York City in order for him to find a job. He meets Emerson's son, and he offers him a job where the narrator gets injured and loses consciousness. After the narrator recovers, Brother Jack hears his speech and asks him to join the Brotherhood. The narrator concurs and quickly trains for his new assignment. Later on in the book, the narrator tries to gain revenge on the Brotherhood. Towards the end of the book, the narrator tries to escape from a riot and falls into a manhole where he had stayed ever since he told the story.
2) The major theme in this novel has to be the racist barrier the whites placed on African-Americans. As the narrator tries to identify himself throughout the book, he realized that he is unable to fully express his true intentions and feelings to the society. Due to this, the narrator defines himself as invisible because others cannot see his real character. He concludes that he will force others to recognize the true nature of African- Americans despite the racial prejudice.
3) The author's tone was very frank, thoughtful and optimistic. The protagonist narrates the story how he perceives it. As a story relating to racism, Ellison could have easily written the book in an angry tone, but the use of a frank tone reflects the story more realistically. Towards the end of the book, the narrator concludes that he will come out of his "hibernation" and contribute to the racist society by showing his true self to the people.
- "The hibernation is over. I must shake off the old skin and come up for breath. There's a stench in the air, which, from this distance underground, might be the smell either of death or of spring- I hope of spring."
- "Thus, having tried to give pattern to the chaos which lives within the pattern of your certainties, I must come out, I must emerge. And there's still a conflict within me: With Louis Armstrong one half of me says, 'Open the window and let the foul air out,' while the other says, 'It was good green corn before the harvest.'"
- "And I love light. Perhaps you'll think it strange that an invisible man should need light, desire light, love light. But maybe it is exactly because I am invisible. Light confirms my reality, gives birth to my form."
1) Allusion: Helped me to make connections with the story for example The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
2) Metaphor: Liberty Paints Plant serves as a metaphor of how America is defined as a place of freedom and liberty, but incorporates racism in its deepest cores. Helped me to comprehend the theme of the story.
3) Symbolism: They allowed me to make connections to slavery and how it affected the narrator even after the Emancipation Proclamation.
4) Motifs: Individuality was repeated in the book and this quality reminds me of my own racial barrier people put on me due to my race.
5) Characterization: The description of the characters in the novel were very descriptive and helped me to imagine the character in the mind while I was reading.
- "Many of the men had been doctors, lawyers, teachers, Civil Service workers; there were several cooks, a preacher, a politician, and an artist. One very nutty one had been a psychiatrist. Whenever I saw them I felt uncomfortable. They were supposed to be members of the professions toward which at various times I vaguely aspired myself, and even though they never seemed to see me I could never believe that they were really patients"
- "Invisibility, let me explain, gives one a slightly different sense of time, you're never quite on the beat. Sometimes you're ahead and sometimes behind. Instead of the swift and imperceptible flowing of time, you are aware of its nodes, those points where time stands still or from which it leaps ahead. And you slip into the breaks and look around. That's what you hear vaguely in Louis' music."
- "Here within this quiet greenness I possessed the only identity I had ever known, and I was losing it. In this brief moment of passage I became aware of the connection between these lawns and buildings and my hopes and dreams. I wanted to stop the car and talk with Mr. Norton, to beg his pardon for what he had seen; to plead and show him tears, unashamed tears like those of a child before his parent; to denounce all we'd seen and heard; to assure him that far from being like any of the people we had seen, I hated them, that I believed in the principles of the Founder with all my heart and soul, and that I believed in his own goodness and kindness in extending the hand of his benevolence to helping us poor, ignorant people out of the mire and darkness…If only he were not angry with me! If only he would give me another chance!"
