Book Review

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

    Most likely it is impossible for a white person to fully know what it feels like to be black. That does not mean that white people should make no effort to understand what it feels like to be black. As we move further into the future, it may even be necessary for that attempt to be made no matter how incomplete that knowledge may be in the end. For a good number of reasons, specifically pertaining to the experience of African-American people in the 20^th century, Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man could be one of the best places for white people to start such an undertaking.

     Ellison’s novel takes us through the life of a young black man from the South. The unnamed narrator tells his story in the first-person, going from hist brief stint at an unnamed all-black college, based on Tuskeegee University, to his young adult life in Harlem and membership in The Brotherhood, a representation of the Communist Party of America. The narrator goes through life carrying a briefcase into which he puts different items as he goes along; he collects papers from college, a grotesque and broken bank shaped like an African-American boy in the worst of Americana-type, depictions, documents and pamphlets from The Brotherhood, a paper doll of an African-American man that dances when its string is pulled, and other various things. Each item represents a major turning point in the narrator’s development as an individual. The broken bank is something he puts into the briefcase when he begins to be financially self-sufficient and the doll is emblematic of when he realizes he is being used like a puppet by The Brotherhood. As terrible as some of these symbolic items are, he carries them with him in the briefcase because they represent realizations that act as steps along the way to self-development. The briefcase gets carried all the way to the end of the novel. In this sense, Invisible Man is a bildungsroman, a novel about a young man in search of himself.

     This novel is also a picaresque story; the individual characters the narrator encounters provide clues as to what stage of growth he is at and where he is going. His encounter with the white trustee of the college, Mr. Norton, reveals to him a lot about relations between white and black people. The school director, Dr. Bledsoe, reveals how the university is being used to keep African-Americans in their place below the white people who run society. Jack, the leader of The Brotherhood, shows him how white activists use African-American people as tools in their own political machinations; not only does The Brotherhood use the Harlem community as a political tool but it is done in a way that damages that part of society as a whole. Ras the Exhorter, the violent and clownish black nationalist, reveals the potentially self-destructive dead end of racist politics in the Harlem community. There are so many others. Through his encounter with each character, we see how the narrator grows and changes and we also see a different facet of American society, some of which are not pleasant to look at even though they need to be seen. Like Stephen Daedalus in Joyce’s A Portrait Of the Artist As a Young Man, we see how each social institution the narrator encounters seems to be liberating at first but later turns out to be just another prison cell in an inescapable labyrinth of prison cells.

     By far, the strongest aspect of Invisible Man is the raw honesty of the narrator. As readers we get access to all his deepest thoughts, perceptions, and emotions. When a narrative is written so that a reader is allowed in to such private psychological spaces, it is hard not to feel close to the narrator. It is hard not to feel his hopes, his pain, his dreams, his frustrations, his optimism, and his disappointments. It is the possibility for such a deep level of intimacy between the reader and the narrator that makes this such a compelling novel for people of any race or ethnic background to see the situations and dilemmas the novel presents us with. The bare reality of the narrator’s thoughts are revealed so clearly that it is hard not to feel as if we have a lot in common with him despite any of our differences. Any person who has felt ignored, stereotyped, disillusioned, used, or treated unfairly can find some way to relate. These are universal characteristics of the human condition that are made imminent in the story of a young African-American man who wants to make the world better by making himself better.

     So the narrator’s big epiphany, that he is invisible, is stated at the beginning and the end. He is not physically invisible but rather his true nature as an individual human being is because people are incapable or unwilling to see who he really is. Again, he makes a statement about being African-American in American society but this feeling of not being seen for who you are is something that many people of any background can relate to. That is why Invisible Man is such an excellent starting point for anybody who wants to attempt to understand the African-American experience. The novel demands that you see who and what he is. It forces you to see him as a complex and worthwhile human being as long as you make the effort to read it.

     Ralph Ellison’s novel does not end on a happy note. The epiphany that results from the narrator’s search is an existential crisis, not a resolution; it is brought on by a long series of disappointments, each being worse than the previous one and climaxing in a riot. But it does not end on a bad note either. While the narrator loses faith in The Brotherhood, he does not lose faith in brotherhood itself. He does not take the path of Ras the Destroyer and instead believes that diversity and difference is beautiful and desirable despite all the painful trials he went through in his pursuit. The thread of hope is still there to be grasped. It is tiny and so small it may be difficult to comprehend but do not forget that it is there.

     Invisible Man is not without its flaws. The pacing is uneven and some passages are muddled and confusing. However, there are so many powerful passages throughout that those mistakes seem like minor problems that can easily be overlooked without significantly diminishing the novel’s impact. While this is a cornerstone in the canon of African-American literature, it is possible to consider that it even transcends that status and should be considered one of the greatest American novels of the modern era.

Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. Vintage Books, New York: 1972.