Invisible Manby

Ralph Ellison

AP Literature and Composition

Bell Work

Choose three chapters from How to Read Literature Like a Professor and explain how they could aid in the understanding of the novel Invisible Man.

Author’s Biographical Information

• born in Oklahoma and trained as a musician at Tuskegee Institute from 1933 to 1936.

• a visit to New York and a meeting with Richard Wright led to his first attempts at fiction.

• Invisible Man won the National Book Award and the Russwurm Award.

•taught at many colleges including Bard College, the University of Chicago, and New York University where he was Albert Schweitzer Professor of Humanities from 1970 through 1980.

• died in 1994.

Historical Information

Complete novel published in 1952 Passage of “Jim Crow” laws by southern

states Great Migration Booker T. Washington (education=equality) W.E.B. Dubois (openly fight for rights/career) Marcus Garvey (“Back to Africa” movement) Existentialism (sought to define the meaning

of individual existence in a seemingly meaningless universe)

Characteristics of the Genre

Bildungsroman (individual’s growth and development within the context of a defined social order) Example: Great Expectations

Picaresque (satirical account of a rogue’s progress through society) Example: Huck Finn

Existentialist novel (philosophical system concerned with free will, choice, and personal responsibility) Example: Speak

African-American fiction

Social protest

Plot Summary

Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is a first-person novel containing an unnamed narrator who comes from a poor family from the South. The narrator is haunted by his grandfather's deathbed warning against conforming to the wishes of white people because the young man sees that as the way to be successful.

One bizarre night, he ends up with a scholarship to a black college, but his misadventures leave him penniless and alone in Harlem.

His college president, first employer, and leaders of a political movement all conspire to use and abuse him in ways that range from ridiculous to cruel. However, the narrator manages to emerge strengthened through the process and determined to fight for racial equality.

The Prologue: The End is the Beginning

“Light confirms my reality, gives birth to my form…. Without light I am not only invisible but formless as well; and to be unaware of one’s form is to live a death…. The truth is the light and light is the truth.” (pp. 6-7)

Chapter 1: The Smoker "(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue“ Lyrics by Andy RazafPerformed by Louis Armstrong   Cold empty bed...springs hurt my headFeels like ole Ned...wished I was deadWhat did I do...to be so black and blue

Even the mouse...ran from my houseThey laugh at you...and all that you doWhat did I do...to be so black and blue

I'm white...inside...but, that don't help my caseThat's life...can't hide...what is in my face

How would it end...ain't got a friendMy only sin...is in my skinWhat did I do...to be so black and blue

(instrumental break)

How would it end...I ain't got a friendMy only sin...is in my skinWhat did I do...to be so black and blue

Chapters 2-6: IM in College

Norton & Trueblood

The Golden Day

Barbee

Bledsoe

Lifting the Veil of Ignorance by Charles Keck

Booker T. Washington National Monument at Tuskegee University

Chapters 7-9: North for Dignity

Vet

Emerson

Chapters 10-11: The World of Work

Liberty Paint

Brockway

Hospital Resurrection

Chapters 12-15: Transitions

Mary Rambo

Oration

Brother Jack

Chapters 16-24: The Brotherhood

Tod Clifton Ras the Exhorter Tarp Wrestrum the "Woman Problem” Funeral Rinehart The Sybil

Chapter 25: The Riot

The Epilogue: The End is the Beginning

Author’s Style

Jazz-inspired writing, almost lyrical due to sound devices

“Open” style Narrator:

1. (p.9) “And beneath the swiftness of the hot tempo there was a slower tempo and a cave and I enteredit and looked around and heard an old woman singing a spiritual…”

Diction: conversational; moderate vocabularySyntax: Stream-of-consciousness (run-ons)

Author’s Style

Jim Trueblood:2. (p.52) “We ain’t doing so bad, suh. ’Fore they heard ’bout what happen to us out here I couldn’t git no help from nobody.”

Diction: dialect; illiterate Syntax: short and simple sentences

Narrator:3. (p. 111) “Here upon this stage the black rite of Horatio Alger was performed to God’s own acting script, with millionaires come down to portray themselves…”

Diction: formal; elevated vocabularySyntax: correct and elegant

Author’s Style

Surrealistic—tends to deal with the world of dreams and unconsciousness (Harlem riots)

Naturalistic—faithful to small details of outward reality or nature (College)

Significant Quotes "I am an invisible man." (p. 3)

"Live with your head in the lion's mouth. I want you to overcome 'em with yeses, undermine 'em with grins, agree 'em to death and destruction, let 'em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open." (p.16)

"You're hidden right out in the open - that is, you would be only if you realized it." (p. 154)

“Once I thought my grandfather incapable of thoughts about humanity, but I was wrong.” (p. 580)

Characters

Narrator- unnamed protagonist/Prizefighter/Hero Mr. Norton- The College Trustee /Benefactor Jim Trueblood-Incestuous Sharecropper/The True “Brother” Dr.Bledsoe- College President/The Sellout Rev. Homer Barbee-Speaker at the last chapel/Blind Orator Lucius Brockway-Supervisor at Liberty Paints/The Sellout Mary Rambo-takes the narrator into her home/The

“Mother” Brother Jack-recruits the narrator into the Brotherhood/The

White Liberal Brother Tarp-gives narrator the ankle chain/The true

“Brother” Ras the Exhorter-African Nationalist/Orator

Characters

Tod Clifton-Brotherhood member who was killed resisting arrest/The Prizefighter

Sybil-crazy woman who uses a rape fantasy to seduce the narrator/The Taboo White Woman

The Grandfather-The Ancestor (represents the past)

Rinehart-The Trickster (represents a new survival strategy for the future)

Setting and Significance

1930’s A Black college in the South New York City, especially Harlem

Literary Devices

Motifs: blindness, invisibility, dreams, violence, sex, oratory, music, power, family

Symbols: black Sambo doll, the coin bank, Liberty Paint, the Brotherhood, briefcase, the road to asylum

Similes (p.21): “like a baby or a drunken man,” “like drunken dancers,” “like blind, cautious crabs”

Literary Devices

Imagery :Chapter 1—the fight (“blind cautious crabs”) Chapter 2—description of the landscape and school campus

Hyperbole-Chapter 3— Scene at the Golden Day

Irony: “Keep America Pure with Liberty Paints”“If It’s Optic White, It’s the Right White”

Personification (p.536) “street’s signs were dead”

AllusionChapter 1-the Emancipation ProclamationChapter 7- story of Jonah from the Old

Testament (narrator ‘s arrival in Harlem)

Juxtaposition (Chapter 2)-conversation (Norton, Trueblood,IM)

Anaphora (Chapter 7): The vet’s advice to the narrator—”Play the game…”

Polysyndeton (Epilogue)--“take [himself] by the throat and choke [himself] until [his] eyesbulged and [his] tongue hung out and wagged…”

Possible Themes

Identity

Duplicity

Invisibility

Blindness

Racism

Power