Key Facts
full title · Invisible Man
author · Ralph Ellison
type of work · Novel
genre · Bildungsroman (a German word meaning novel of personal “formation,”
or development), existentialist novel, African-American fiction,
novel of social protest
language · English
time and place written · Late 1940s–1952, New
York City
date of first publication · 1952, although the first chapter
was published in the English magazine Horizon five years earlier
publisher · Random House
narrator · The narrator is an unnamed black man who writes the
story as a memoir of his life.
point of view · The narrator writes in the first person, emphasizing
his individual experience and his feelings about the
events portrayed.
tone · Ellison often seems to join the narrator in his sentiments,
which range from bitterly cynical to willfully optimistic, from
anguish at his sufferings to respect for the lessons learned from
them. Ellison seems to write himself into the book through the narrator. However,
Ellison also frequently portrays the narrator as blind to the realities
of race relations. He points out this blindness through other, more
insightful characters (most notably the veteran) as well as through
symbolic details.
tense · Past, with present-tense sections in the Prologue and
Epilogue
settings (time) · The 1930s
settings (place) · A black college in the South; New York City, especially
Harlem
protagonist · The narrator
major conflict · The narrator seeks to act according to the values and expectations
of his immediate social group, but he finds himself continuously
unable to reconcile his socially imposed role as a black man with
his inner concept of identity, or even to understand his inner identity.
rising action · Dr. Bledsoe expels the narrator from college; the narrator
gets into a fight over union politics with his black supervisor
at the Liberty Paints plant and enters the plant hospital, where
he experiences a kind of rebirth; the narrator stays with Mary,
who fosters his sense of social responsibility; the narrator joins
the Brotherhood.
climax · The narrator witnesses Clifton's racially motivated
murder at the hands of white police officers; unable to get in touch
with the Brotherhood, he organizes Clifton's funeral on his own
initiative and rouses the black community's anger against the state
of race relations; the Brotherhood rebukes him for his act of independence.
falling action · Riots break out in Harlem, releasing the pent-up anger
that has gathered since Clifton's funeral; the narrator encounters
Ras, who calls for him to be lynched; running from Ras and the police, the
narrator falls into a manhole and remains underground in “hibernation.”
themes · Racism as an obstacle to individual identity; the limitations
of ideology; the danger of fighting stereotype with stereotype
motifs · Blindness; invisibility; jazz and blues music; masks
and subterfuge; puppets and marionettes
symbols · The black Sambo doll; the coin bank; the Liberty Paints
plant; the Brotherhood
foreshadowing · The narrator dreams that the scholarship given him
by white community members in fact reads “Keep This Nigger-Boy Running.”
This prefigures the damaging influence on the narrator of his future
college's lessons in ideology. When the narrator joins the Brotherhood,
Brother Jack's mistress doubts aloud that the narrator is “black
enough” to be the organization's black spokesperson. This hints
at a latent racism within the Brotherhood, which will eventually
end in the group's betrayal of the narrator.
