It’s a new year, and one thing that means is a whole
new set of books to read for AP Lit, the first of which being Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. With this book, I feel it
necessary to make a blog similar to my first one on The Age Innocence, that is, one where I look at the prologue and
first chapter of the text and recite my initial thoughts and ideas on what some
of the major underlying themes could possibly be and examine how they could
work into the overall meaning of the book itself. Ralph Ellison, through his nameless
narrator, explores the culture of 1950s America, a culture that America would
like to forget that it was ever a part of, which is one of brutal racial
discrimination and bigotry. It was also one that would have a devastating
effect on those who were forced to suffer through the ceaseless physical and
verbal torture of living in a society that thought them to be not fully human. From
the first few lines in the prologue, the narrator decries in a lament how he is
“surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they
see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination…everything
and anything except me” (Ellison. 3). The ‘invisible man’ that the narrator
calls himself is one who is ignored by society and that constantly has the
views, opinions, and judgments of others pressed upon him. For that he remains
eternally marginalized by society, never to be fully accepted because he can
never be fully seen for how he really is as a person. From the start Ellison
already begins to emphasize the idea of sight and vision and how they both tie
into the question of reality. The narrator comments on this himself, saying he
must “walk softly so as not to awaken the sleeping ones. Sometimes it is best
not to… [For] there are few things in the world as dangerous” (Ellison 5). The
narrator remarks how everyone else around him is trapped inside the illusion of
their dreams, blind to truth of reality that awaits them if they were to open
their eyes and see the light of day for themselves. But instead, they choose to
stay locked away in their fantasy, where they believe to have a tight grip of
control over life, a falsehood that the narrator recognizes would be better
left undisturbed. This is also why the narrator is so physically attracted to
the light, because it “confirms my reality, gives birth to my form” (Ellison.
6). With every light that he surrounds himself with in the hotel basement, the
narrator can rest assured that it is he who remains surrounded by the truth and
enlightenment that comes with the light, much like the freed prisoner in Plato’s
“Allegory of the Cave” who reveled in the free air and sun burning bright in
the sky that helped him to identify it is as truth and all the past shadows in
the cave as mere illusions. To conclude, I want to step outside the Prologue
and delve into Chapter 1, where there were several key analytical points that
need to be discussed. In short, the chapter revolves around the narrator having
given a graduation speech and is called to give it at a ballroom with other
classmates, but turns into a battle royal in which the blacks are forced to
fight each other for entertainment. But before they are forced to fight, a
naked blonde struts across the ring and is eyed out by all the men and is
barely able to escape from the hands of the drunk men surrounding her. To the
woman the narrator thinks, “I wanted at the same time to run from the room…or
go to her and cover…to love her and murder her, to hide from her” (Ellison 19).
I feel like this moment is important because it shows both how the narrator
hates how he is falling to the same lustful desires as the vicious white men
who have propped him up in the ring, but that also he sees a bit of himself in
that woman. He sees a person who has been propped up solely for the
entertainment of others, and a person who will never be valued for whatever
they may have to offer on any moral or intellectual grounds, but instead will
be forced to adhere to strict physical appearance. And just like the woman, he
is ultimately doomed to fall to the hands of the cruel upper white men and
forced to do whatever they want, which for him meant being forced to fight
other blacks and forced to kneel onto an electrocuted rug in a vain attempt to
grab some money. The narrator knows after seeing the blonde woman, that they
are both doomed to suffer the same curse of invisibility.
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