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.

Top 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.

• 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.

• 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.

Verified Quotes

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.

• Chapter 11

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

• Chapter 2

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