Search advanced search
 
Books
Search:
x dismiss this message

Did you know you can edit this page?

Invisible Man
  • Rated 0 stars
Read Invisible Man

Invisible Man (1952) (edit title/settings)

by Ralph Ellison (Author) (edit contributors)

Share this book on:
see page history

Description edit see section history

Invisible Man is a milestone in American literature, a book that has continued to engage readers since its appearance in 1952. A first novel by an unknown writer, it remained on the bestseller list for sixteen weeks, won the National Book Award for fiction, and established Ralph Ellison as... read more

Summary edit see section history

The narrator begins telling his story with the claim that he is an “invisible man.” His invisibility, he says, is not a physical condition—he is not literally invisible—but is rather the result of the refusal of others to see him. He says that because of his invisibility, he has been hiding... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

The narrator begins telling his story with the claim that he is an “invisible man.” His invisibility, he says, is not a physical condition—he is not literally invisible—but is rather the result of the refusal of others to see him. He says that because of his invisibility, he has been hiding from the world, living underground and stealing electricity from the Monopolated Light & Power Company. He burns 1,369 light bulbs simultaneously and listens to Louis Armstrong’s “(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue” on a phonograph. He says that he has gone underground in order to write the story of his life and invisibility.

As a young man, in the late 1920s or early 1930s, the narrator lived in the South. Because he is a gifted public speaker, he is invited to give a speech to a group of important white men in his town. The men reward him with a briefcase containing a scholarship to a prestigious black college, but only after humiliating him by forcing him to fight in a “battle royal” in which he is pitted against other young black men, all blindfolded, in a boxing ring. After the battle royal, the white men force the youths to scramble over an electrified rug in order to snatch at fake gold coins. The narrator has a dream that night in which he imagines that his scholarship is actually a piece of paper reading “To Whom It May Concern . . . Keep This N*****-Boy Running.”

Three years later, the narrator is a student at the college. He is asked to drive a wealthy white trustee of the college, Mr. Norton, around the campus. Norton talks incessantly about his daughter, then shows an undue interest in the narrative of Jim Trueblood, a poor, uneducated black man who impregnated his own daughter. After hearing this story, Norton needs a drink, and the narrator takes him to the Golden Day, a saloon and brothel that normally serves black men. A fight breaks out among a group of mentally imbalanced black veterans at the bar, and Norton passes out during the chaos. He is tended by one of the veterans, who claims to be a doctor and who taunts both Norton and the narrator for their blindness regarding race relations.

Back at the college, the narrator listens to a long, impassioned sermon by the Reverend Homer A. Barbee on the subject of the college’s Founder, whom the blind Barbee glorifies with poetic language. After the sermon, the narrator is chastised by the college president, Dr. Bledsoe, who has learned of the narrator’s misadventures with Norton at the old slave quarters and the Golden Day. Bledsoe rebukes the narrator, saying that he should have shown the white man an idealized version of black life. He expels the narrator, giving him seven letters of recommendation addressed to the college’s white trustees in New York City, and sends him there in search of a job.

The narrator travels to the bright lights and bustle of 1930s Harlem, where he looks unsuccessfully for work. The letters of recommendation are of no help. At last, the narrator goes to the office of one of his letters’ addressees, a trustee named Mr. Emerson. There he meets Emerson’s son, who opens the letter and tells the narrator that he has been betrayed: the letters from Bledsoe actually portray the narrator as dishonorable and unreliable. The young Emerson helps the narrator to get a low-paying job at the Liberty Paints plant, whose trademark color is “Optic White.” The narrator briefly serves as an assistant to Lucius Brockway, the black man who makes this white paint, but Brockway suspects him of joining in union activities and turns on him. The two men fight, neglecting the paint-making; consequently, one of the unattended tanks explodes, and the narrator is knocked unconscious.

The narrator wakes in the paint factory’s hospital, having temporarily lost his memory and ability to speak. The white doctors seize the arrival of their unidentified black patient as an opportunity to conduct electric shock experiments. After the narrator recovers his memory and leaves the hospital, he collapses on the street. Some black community members take him to the home of Mary, a kind woman who lets him live with her for free in Harlem and nurtures his sense of black heritage. One day, the narrator witnesses the eviction of an elderly black couple from their Harlem apartment. Standing before the crowd of people gathered before the apartment, he gives an impassioned speech against the eviction. Brother Jack overhears his speech and offers him a position as a spokesman for the Brotherhood, a political organization that allegedly works to help the socially oppressed. After initially rejecting the offer, the narrator takes the job in order to pay Mary back for her hospitality. But the Brotherhood demands that the narrator take a new name, break with his past, and move to a new apartment. The narrator is inducted into the Brotherhood at a party at the Chthonian Hotel and is placed in charge of advancing the group’s goals in Harlem.

After being trained in rhetoric by a white member of the group named Brother Hambro, the narrator goes to his assigned branch in Harlem, where he meets the handsome, intelligent black youth leader Tod Clifton. He also becomes familiar with the black nationalist leader Ras the Exhorter, who opposes the interracial Brotherhood and believes that black Americans should fight for their rights over and against all whites. The narrator delivers speeches and becomes a high-profile figure in the Brotherhood, and he enjoys his work. One day, however, he receives an anonymous note warning him to remember his place as a black man in the Brotherhood. Not long after, the black Brotherhood member Brother Wrestrum accuses the narrator of trying to use the Brotherhood to advance a selfish desire for personal distinction. While a committee of the Brotherhood investigates the charges, the organization moves the narrator to another post, as an advocate of women’s rights. After giving a speech one evening, he is seduced by one of the white women at the gathering, who attempts to use him to play out her sexual fantasies about black men.

After a short time, the Brotherhood sends the narrator back to Harlem, where he discovers that Clifton has disappeared. Many other black members have left the group, as much of the Harlem community feels that the Brotherhood has betrayed their interests. The narrator finds Clifton on the street selling dancing “Sambo” dolls—dolls that invoke the stereotype of the lazy and obsequious slave. Clifton apparently does not have a permit to sell his wares on the street. White policemen accost him and, after a scuffle, shoot him dead as the narrator and others look on. On his own initiative, the narrator holds a funeral for Clifton and gives a speech in which he portrays his dead friend as a hero, galvanizing public sentiment in Clifton’s favor. The Brotherhood is furious with him for staging the funeral without permission, and Jack harshly castigates him. As Jack rants about the Brotherhood’s ideological stance, a glass eye falls from one of his eye sockets. The Brotherhood sends the narrator back to Brother Hambro to learn about the organization’s new strategies in Harlem.

The narrator leaves feeling furious and anxious to gain revenge on Jack and the Brotherhood. He arrives in Harlem to find the neighborhood in ever-increased agitation over race relations. Ras confronts him, deploring the Brotherhood’s failure to draw on the momentum generated by Clifton’s funeral. Ras sends his men to beat up the narrator, and the narrator is forced to disguise himself in dark glasses and a hat. In his dark glasses, many people on the streets mistake him for someone named Rinehart, who seems to be a pimp, bookie, lover, and reverend all at once. At last, the narrator goes to Brother Hambro’s apartment, where Hambro tells him that the Brotherhood has chosen not to emphasize Harlem and the black movement. He cynically declares that people are merely tools and that the larger interests of the Brotherhood are more important than any individual. Recalling advice given to him by his grandfather, the narrator determines to undermine the Brotherhood by seeming to go along with them completely. He decides to flatter and seduce a woman close to one of the party leaders in order to obtain secret information about the group.

But the woman he chooses, Sybil, knows nothing about the Brotherhood and attempts to use the narrator to fulfill her fantasy of being raped by a black man. While still with Sybil in his apartment, the narrator receives a call asking him to come to Harlem quickly. The narrator hears the sound of breaking glass, and the line goes dead. He arrives in Harlem to find the neighborhood in the midst of a full-fledged riot, which he learns was incited by Ras. The narrator becomes involved in setting fire to a tenement building. Running from the scene of the crime, he encounters Ras, dressed as an African chieftain. Ras calls for the narrator to be lynched. The narrator flees, only to encounter two policemen, who suspect that his briefcase contains loot from the riots. In his attempt to evade them, the narrator falls down a manhole. The police mock him and draw the cover over the manhole.

The narrator says that he has stayed underground ever since; the end of his story is also the beginning. He states that he finally has realized that he must honor his individual complexity and remain true to his own identity without sacrificing his responsibility to the community. He says that he finally feels ready to emerge from underground.

Characters/People edit see section history

  • Brother Jack: The white and blindly loyal leader of the Brotherhood, a political organization that professes to defend the rights of the socially oppressed. Although he initially seems compassionate, intelligent, and kind, and he claims to uphold the rights of the socially oppressed, Brother Jack actually possesses racist viewpoints and is unable to see people as anything other than tools. His glass eye and his red hair symbolize his blindness and his communism, respectively.
  • Mr. Norton: One of the wealthy white trustees at the narrator’s college. Mr. Norton is a narcissistic man who treats the narrator as a tally on his scorecard—that is, as proof that he is liberal-minded and philanthropic. Norton’s wistful remarks about his daughter add an eerie quality of longing to his fascination with the story of Jim Trueblood’s incest.
  • Dr. Bledsoe: The president at the narrator’s college. Dr. Bledsoe proves selfish, ambitious, and treacherous. He is a black man who puts on a mask of servility to the white community. Driven by his desire to maintain his status and power, he declares that he would see every black man in the country lynched before he would give up his position of authority.
  • Rinehart: A surreal figure who never appears in the book except by reputation. Rinehart possesses a seemingly infinite number of identities, among them pimp, bookie, and preacher who speaks on the subject of “invisibility.” When the narrator wears dark glasses in Harlem one day, many people mistake him for Rinehart. The narrator realizes that Rinehart’s shape-shifting capacity represents a life of extreme freedom, complexity, and possibility. He also recognizes that this capacity fosters a cynical and manipulative inauthenticity. Rinehart thus figures crucially in the book’s larger examination of the problem of identity and self-conception.
  • Mary: A serene and motherly black woman with whom the narrator stays after learning that the Men’s House has banned him. Mary treats him kindly and even lets him stay for free. She nurtures his black identity and urges him to become active in the fight for racial equality.
  • Brother Tod Clifton: Add a description of this character.
  • Jim Trueblood: An uneducated black man who impregnated his own daughter and who lives on the outskirts of the narrator’s college campus. The students and faculty of the college view Jim Trueblood as a disgrace to the black community. To Trueblood’s surprise, however, whites have shown an increased interest in him since the story of his incest spread.
  • Mr. Emerson: The son of one of the wealthy white trustees (whom the text also calls Emerson) of the narrator’s college. The younger Emerson reads the supposed recommendation from Dr. Bledsoe and reveals Bledsoe’s treachery to the narrator. He expresses sympathy for the narrator and helps him get a job, but he remains too preoccupied with his own problems to help the narrator in any meaningful way.
  • Sybil: A white woman whom the narrator attempts to use to find out information about the Brotherhood.
  • Lucius Brockway: The narrator's boss while he works at Liberty Paints.
  • Reverend Homer A. Barbee: A preacher from Chicago who visits the narrator’s college. Reverend Barbee’s fervent praise of the Founder’s “vision” strikes an inadvertently ironic note, because he himself is blind. With Barbee’s first name, Ellison makes reference to the Greek poet Homer, another blind orator who praised great heroes in his epic poems. Ellison uses Barbee to satirize the college’s desire to transform the Founder into a similarly mythic hero.
  • Mr. Crenshaw: Attendant of the veterans who replaces Supercargo.
Show all 12 characters
Popular Covers

Loading covers…

Choose your book’s cover

Quotes edit see section history

  • “for all life seen from the hole of invisibility is absurd”
  • “the only way to please a white man is to tell him a lie”
  • “"What was i, a man or a natural resource?"”
  • “"All right, I'd yea, yea and oui, oui and si, si and see, see them too; and I'd walk around in their guts with hobnailed boots."”
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • Already he’s learned to repress not only his emotions but his humanity. He’s invisible, a walking personification of the Negative, the most perfect achievement of your dreams, sir! The mechanical man!”
    Highlighted by 231 Kindle customers
  • 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.”
    Highlighted by 208 Kindle customers
  • I am standing puzzled, unable to decide whether the veil is really being lifted, or lowered more firmly in place; whether I am witnessing a revelation or a more efficient blinding.
    Highlighted by 208 Kindle customers
  • I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer.
    Highlighted by 190 Kindle customers
  • Without light I am not only invisible, but formless as well; and to be unaware of one’s form is to live a death.
    Highlighted by 176 Kindle customers
  • neither of you can see the other. To you he is a mark on the score-card of your achievement, a thing and not a man; a child, or even less—a black amorphous thing. And you, for all your power, are not a man to him, but a God, a force—”
    Highlighted by 173 Kindle customers
  • “You’re nobody, son. You don’t exist—can’t you see that?
    Highlighted by 157 Kindle customers
  • Responsibility rests upon recognition, and recognition is a form of agreement.
    Highlighted by 145 Kindle customers
  • A matter of the construction of their inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality.
    Highlighted by 121 Kindle customers
  • I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
    Highlighted by 119 Kindle customers
Show all 14 quotes from this book

First Sentence edit see section history

It goes a long way back, some twenty years.

Series & Lists edit see section history

This is book 33 of 8 in Vrhunci stoletja. (publisher edition list)
This is book 9 of 37 in First Edition Library. (publisher edition list)
This is book 18 of 100 in 20th Century's Greatest Hits: 100 English-Language Books of Fiction. (authoritative list)
This book is in Penguin Modern Classics. (publisher edition list)
This is book 12 of 213 in Best English-Language Fiction of the 20th Century. (authoritative list)
This is book 520 of 1286 in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. (authoritative list)
This is book 25 of 91 in The Novel 100: A Ranking of the Greatest Novels of All Time, 2004. (authoritative list)
This book is in TIME Magazine Top 100 English-Language Novels. (community list)
This is book 24 of 113 in Book Smart Reading List. (community list)
This is book 69 of 98 in Modern Library's 100 Best Novels: Reader's List. (authoritative list)
This is book 6 of 93 in Newsweek's Top 100 Books: The Meta-List. (authoritative list)
This book is in Guardian 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read. (authoritative list)
This is book 19 of 93 in Modern Library's 100 Best Novels: The Board's List. (authoritative list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Ralph Ellison (Author)

Other Contributors:

  1. Branko Gradišnik (Translator)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Random House
Country: USA
Publication Date: 1952
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 429

Awards edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: PS3555.L625 I5 1952
  • Dewey: 813.54

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Reading Level: Adults

This book contains many foul words and scenes which can negatively influence young adults and model intolerable behavior. It has indeed won many awards, however this is mainly by adults, not the children who are forced to read the text as early as high school.

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

More Books Like This edit see section history

   
  • Black Boy

Books That Cite This Book edit see section history

   
  • Conducting the Reference Interview
  • Reciting America: Culture and Cliche in Contemporary U.S. Fiction
  • Reading Africa into American Literature: Epics, Fables, and Gothic Tales
  • The Twilight of the Middle Class: Post-World War II American Fiction and White-Collar Work
  • Reconstructing the Dreamland: The Tulsa Riot of 1921: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation

We’re hiding the errata, movie connections, books that influenced this book, books influenced by this book and books cited by this book sections. If you would like to add content to them, you must first make them visible.

© 2006-2013 Shelfari | Terms & Conditions | Privacy Policy | Copyright Policy

Close