Invisible Man

Summary

Invisible Man is narrated by a nameless Black American who addresses the reader from a hidden basement room in New York, lit by 1,369 light bulbs powered with electricity he takes without paying. He calls himself invisible not because of any physical condition but because the people he meets see only what they expect to see. The novel then follows his life in order. As a promising young graduate in the South he is made to fight blindfolded in a 'battle royal' for the amusement of the town's leading white men before delivering his speech and receiving a scholarship. At a Southern college for Black students he drives a white trustee, Mr. Norton, to the cabin of the sharecropper Jim Trueblood and to a roadhouse called the Golden Day, and is expelled by the college president, Dr. Bledsoe, who sends him north with sealed letters that turn out to be warnings against him. In New York he works at Liberty Paints, is injured in an explosion and subjected to experimental shock treatment, recovers in the boarding house of Mary Rambo, and gives an impromptu speech at an eviction that brings him into the Brotherhood, a political organisation led by Brother Jack. As a Harlem spokesman he clashes with the black nationalist Ras the Exhorter, loses his friend Tod Clifton, who is shot by a policeman, finds that the Brotherhood has used him for its own ends, and discovers in the elusive Rinehart how easily identity can be worn and changed. During a riot in Harlem he falls into an underground space and decides to remain there until he is ready to return. Ellison draws on folklore, the blues, jazz, sermon and political oratory, and on writers from Dostoevsky to Melville and Twain, to tell the story of a young man discovering that every group that claims him wants him to play a part. The novel won the National Book Award in 1953 and has long been taught as a central work of American fiction.

Plot or Argument

• Prologue: The hole

  The narrator, living secretly in a sealed-off basement on the edge of Harlem, explains his invisibility, his feud with Monopolated Light & Power, and his love of Louis Armstrong's music, and promises to tell how he came there.

• Chapters 1–6: The South and the college

  His grandfather's puzzling deathbed advice; the battle royal and the scholarship; the drive with Mr. Norton to Trueblood's cabin and the Golden Day; the chapel sermon of the Reverend Homer A. Barbee on the college's Founder; Dr. Bledsoe's expulsion of the narrator and the sealed letters.

• Chapters 7–12: New York

  Arrival in Harlem; fruitless visits to trustees; young Mr. Emerson reveals what the letters say; work at Liberty Paints under Lucius Brockway; the explosion and the factory hospital, where doctors test an electrical treatment on him; recovery at Mary Rambo's.

• Chapters 13–22: The Brotherhood

  The eviction of an elderly couple and the narrator's speech; recruitment by Brother Jack and a new name; success as a Harlem organiser; conflict with Ras the Exhorter; reassignment downtown; Tod Clifton's disappearance, his street-corner selling of paper dolls, his death at the hands of a policeman, and the narrator's funeral oration.

• Chapters 23–25 and Epilogue: Rinehart, the riot and the return

  Mistaken for the shape-shifting Rinehart, the narrator learns how many roles one man can play; the Brotherhood's change of policy; the Harlem riot, Ras as 'the Destroyer', and the narrator's fall into the underground; in the Epilogue he reflects on what he has learned and prepares to come back up.

Characters

• The narrator, protagonist

  Unnamed young Black man from the South who moves from eager striver to political organiser to self-aware observer, telling his story from underground.

• The grandfather, minor

  Former slave whose deathbed counsel to undermine the powerful by seeming to agree haunts the narrator throughout the book.

• Mr. Norton, supporting

  Wealthy white Northern trustee of the college who speaks of the students as his destiny and is shaken by what he sees on his drive.

• Jim Trueblood, supporting

  Sharecropper near the college whose account of a dream and of incest with his daughter fascinates Mr. Norton and embarrasses the college.

• Dr. A. Herbert Bledsoe, antagonist

  President of the college, outwardly humble before white patrons and ruthless in protecting his own power.

• Mary Rambo, supporting

  Harlem landlady who nurses the narrator back to health and hopes he will be a leader for his people.

• Brother Jack, antagonist

  White leader of the Brotherhood who recruits the narrator for his oratory and later subordinates him to the organisation's shifting line.

• Tod Clifton, supporting

  Charismatic young Brotherhood leader in Harlem who leaves the movement and is killed by a policeman.

• Ras the Exhorter, antagonist

  West Indian black nationalist street orator who opposes the Brotherhood and becomes 'Ras the Destroyer' during the riot.

• Rinehart, minor

  Never seen directly; a numbers runner, lover, hustler and preacher whose identities the narrator is mistaken for.

Lessons

• Being seen as a person

  The narrator is invisible because others look at him through their own purposes: patrons, college officials, employers and political allies each see a role rather than a man. The novel asks readers to notice how often people are known only by what they are expected to do.

  • Who in the novel actually sees the narrator, and how can you tell?
  • Is invisibility only a burden for the narrator, or does he also find a kind of freedom in it?
  • What does the narrator mean by deciding to come out of hiding at the end?

• Ideas and the individual

  The Brotherhood offers the narrator a scientific account of history and a public role, but asks him to set aside his own judgement and his neighbours' needs when the line changes. Ellison sets loyalty to a programme against loyalty to particular people.

  • What does the Brotherhood give the narrator that he wanted?
  • Why does Tod Clifton's death become the turning point in his relationship with the organisation?
  • How does Ras's movement compare with the Brotherhood in what it asks of its members?

• Speech and its uses

  The narrator is rewarded, used and endangered by his gift for speaking, from the graduation speech to the eviction and the funeral oration. The novel is full of sermons, speeches and folk tales, and invites readers to weigh how words move crowds.

  • Compare the graduation speech in Chapter 1 with the funeral oration for Tod Clifton.
  • What does Barbee's sermon about the Founder accomplish for the college?
  • Why does the narrator choose to write his story rather than speak it?

Context

The novel moves from the segregated South of the 1920s and 1930s to Harlem in the Depression and early war years, when the Communist Party and nationalist movements competed for Black support in New York. Its college recalls Tuskegee Institute, which Ellison attended, and its Founder has often been read as a figure like Booker T. Washington; its Brotherhood draws on Ellison's own experience of the American Communist movement in the 1930s and early 1940s. The Harlem riot recalls the riots of 1935 and 1943.

Composition

Ellison began the book in 1945 in Waitsfield, Vermont, after his service in the merchant marine, and worked on it for about seven years. The 'Battle Royal' episode appeared on its own in 1947, and a version of the Prologue was printed in Partisan Review early in 1952 before Random House published the novel that April.

Reception

The novel won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1953. Many critics praised its range and its blend of realism, satire and surreal episodes; some writers on the left criticised its portrait of the Brotherhood, and some Black writers of the 1960s found its stress on individual identity too distant from political struggle. It has remained widely taught in American high schools and universities, and it has also been challenged or removed in some school districts over its sexual content and language.

Comparisons

• the-invisible-man

  Title confusion only: H. G. Wells's 1897 science-fiction novel concerns a scientist who makes himself literally invisible. Ellison's narrator is invisible in the social sense, though Ellison's Prologue plays on the comparison.

• notes-from-underground

  Both narrators speak from a hidden underground room, address the reader directly and argue against systems that claim to explain human beings; Ellison acknowledged Dostoevsky's influence.

• up-from-slavery

  Washington's account of founding Tuskegee illuminates the college, its Founder and Dr. Bledsoe's strategy of accommodation, which Ellison treats satirically.

• the-souls-of-black-folk

  Du Bois's idea of 'double consciousness' is often used to read the narrator's struggle to see himself apart from how others see him.

• adventures-of-huckleberry-finn

  Ellison wrote admiringly of Twain's use of the vernacular and of Jim; both novels follow a young narrator through an America whose ideals and practices diverge.

• moby-dick

  Ellison's epigraph comes from Melville's Benito Cereno, and both writers mix sermon, comedy and symbolism in long first-person narratives about American identity.

• emerson-essays

  Ellison was named after Emerson; the novel's young Mr. Emerson and its theme of self-reliance engage the essayist's ideas with irony.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The Prologue and Epilogue frame: the whole story is told after the events, from underground. Notice how the older narrator's tone differs from the younger self he describes.
• The grandfather's advice in Chapter 1 and how its meaning keeps changing for the narrator.
• Papers the narrator carries in his briefcase (the scholarship, the letters, his Brotherhood name) and what happens to them at the end.
• Music: Louis Armstrong in the Prologue, spirituals and blues throughout. Ask what music lets the narrator say that speeches cannot.
• The full text is not included here because the novel is under copyright; read it in a library or purchased edition. Mature content: the battle royal and the riot contain violence, the Trueblood episode recounts incest, and period racial slurs appear in the text.

Key terms and names

Battle royal

A staged fight in which several young men fight at once, blindfolded, for an audience's entertainment; the narrator's ordeal in Chapter 1.

Frame narrative

A story told within an outer story; here the Prologue and Epilogue set the narrator's account in his underground hole.

The Brotherhood

The novel's fictional political organisation, with a scientific theory of history and a disciplined chain of command.

Optic White

The Liberty Paints product made by adding drops of black to make it whiter; a symbol critics often discuss.

Accommodationism

The strategy of seeking gradual progress by not openly challenging those in power, associated with Booker T. Washington and satirised in Dr. Bledsoe.

Vernacular

Everyday spoken language, folk tales and music, which Ellison weaves into the novel's style.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What reward does the narrator receive after the battle royal, and what does he dream about it?
2. Comprehension Why is the narrator expelled from the college, and what do Dr. Bledsoe's letters say?
3. Comprehension How does the narrator come to join the Brotherhood?
4. Interpretation What does Rinehart represent, and why does discovering him change the narrator?
5. Interpretation Why does Ellison never give the narrator a name?
6. Interpretation How do Mr. Norton, Dr. Bledsoe and Brother Jack resemble one another in how they treat the narrator?
7. Big Question Can a person belong to a movement or institution without losing his own judgement?
8. Big Question The narrator says he will come out of hiding. What, in the end, has he learned that makes him ready?

Faith Connections

• Mark 8:18 (Scripture)

  'Having eyes, see ye not?' Christ's question to his disciples bears on the novel's concern with people who look without seeing.

• Plato, Republic VII (the cave) (Great Conversation)

  A figure in a dark place who comes to see more truly and must decide whether to return to others.

• Emerson, 'Self-Reliance' (Great Conversation)

  Emerson's call to trust oneself against conformity echoes, often ironically, through the novel.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: If every institution that claims the narrator sees him only as a means to its own ends, then he can recover his identity only by first stepping outside their definitions, and must then decide how to return to public life.

Rhetorical device: irony. Dr. Bledsoe's letters, which the narrator believes are recommendations, are in fact instructions to keep him away; he carries his own rejection as if it were a passport.

Debate: Resolved: The narrator's retreat underground is a necessary step toward responsibility rather than an escape from it.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Trace one symbol (the briefcase, the paint, the light bulbs or the grandfather's advice) through the novel and argue what it shows about the narrator's development.

Comparison with Notes from Underground: Compare Ellison's narrator with Dostoevsky's Underground Man: why do both speak from underground, and how do their conclusions differ?

Medical Lens

Two episodes concern medicine directly. At the Golden Day, the narrator and Mr. Norton meet a group of Black veterans described as patients of a nearby institution, among them a former physician who speaks pointedly about Norton's view of the students. In the factory hospital after the paint-plant explosion, doctors test an electrical treatment on the unconscious narrator and discuss its effects as an alternative to surgery; he wakes unable at first to recall his name. Ellison presents both scenes through the narrator's confused perceptions and uses them to raise questions about consent and how patients are regarded; modern readings in medical ethics should treat the book as fiction rather than a record of actual practice.

• Chapter 3

  The Golden Day: veterans from a nearby institution, and the former doctor's conversation with Mr. Norton.

  Trauma Shell Shock Asylum Institution Physicians Doctors
• Chapter 11

  The factory hospital: the narrator, after an explosion, undergoes an experimental electrical treatment and struggles to recall his identity.

  Medical Ethics Dementia Memory Physicians Doctors
• Chapter 2

  Trueblood's narrated dream and its aftermath, which critics have read through psychoanalytic ideas.

  Dreams Nightmares Psychology Unconscious

Creative Prompts

• Essay

  Write about a time you felt others saw a role rather than you. Borrow the narrator's device of addressing the reader directly.

• Classroom

  Map the narrator's journey on a timeline: for each stage, note who claims him, what name or role they give him, and what he gives up.

• Dialogue

  Write a conversation between Ellison's narrator and Dostoevsky's Underground Man about whether withdrawal from society is a defeat or a preparation.

Further Reading

• Shadow and Act, Ralph Ellison

• Going to the Territory, Ralph Ellison

• Juneteenth, Ralph Ellison

• Ralph Ellison: A Biography, Arnold Rampersad