Invisible Man

Rinehart is a mystery and a source of deep ambiguity in Invisible Man. He never appears in the novel, and the narrator only learns of his existence when other people mistake him for Rinehart while he is in disguise. Rinehart seems to be all things to all people—pimp, bookie, and preacher, among other things. Ultimately, Rinehart is an extremely surreal figure of Ellison’s creation, designed not to be realistic or believable but rather unsettling and confusing. Rinehart represents a protean conception of identity—the idea that a person’s identity can change completely depending on where one is and with whom one interacts, an extreme version of the narrator’s conundrum throughout the novel. At first, the narrator feels that Rinehart’s adaptability enables a kind of freedom, but he quickly realizes that Rinehart’s formlessness also represents a complete loss of individual selfhood. In the end, the liquidity of Rinehart’s identity is one of the forces that compel the narrator to discover his own more solid identity.

The two major betrayals in the novel are the narrator’s betrayals at the hands of the college (in the figure of Dr. Bledsoe) and the Brotherhood (in the figure of Brother Jack). Bledsoe poses as a figure representing the advancement of black Americans through education. In reality, however, he deliberately subordinates himself to whites and says that he would see every black man in America lynched before giving up his power. That he sends the narrator away with letters of supposed recommendation that, in reality, explicitly criticize the narrator demonstrates his objectionable desire to suppress black identity. The members of the Brotherhood betray the narrator in a number of insidious ways, ranging from curtailing his individuality to turning their backs on the plight of the poor blacks in Harlem. Jack, specifically, betrays the narrator by posing as a compassionate and helpful friend while secretly harboring racist prejudice against him and using him as a tool for the advancement of the Brotherhood’s ends.

This sort of treachery generally contributes to the novel’s creation of a bewildering, malevolent world in which an unexpected blow can come at any time, reinforcing the novel’s characterization of the social effects of racial prejudice. Treachery also reinforces the ideas of blindness and invisibility, because any betrayal is essentially a sign that the betrayer willfully refuses to see his victim. Additionally, the novel’s betrayals function through deceit and secrecy—for the most part, they are invisible, and the narrator is blind to them until it is too late.