“Invisible
Man is the black man’s search for identity in a society that mechanistically
denies it to him.” Analyse the statement./ Invisible Man is a story of the
anti-hero’s internal quest. Discuss.
Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man is
a study in the psychology of oppression. It is the story of an internal quest-a
journey of the soul. The migration is from innocence to experience, not just
from sunny south to ghetto and the underground. The protagonist’s progress is
finally a pilgrimage of the self.
The anti-hero of Invisible Man
remains nameless. He is no man and everyman on a modern epic quest. His primary
search is for a name or for the self it symbolizes. During his search he is
given another name by the Brotherhood, but it is no help. The nameless voyager
passes through a series of ordeals or trials to demonstrate his stature.
When he arrives at collage, he is
confronted by the deceit and duplicity of Negros who have capitulated to
a white world; he is broken by the powerful coalition of Bledsoe the Negro
president and Norton the white trustee. His second trial shows him that the
struggle is not a simple one of black against white that “they” are more
complex than his first experience showed. He finds that both black and white
can be turned against him.
The second phase of his career
commences in the trip to New York, an exile from “paradise”; in the city, he
finds Bledsoe’s seven magic passports to success in the white world, the letters
of recommendation, are actually betrayals, variations of the dream-letter: “Keep
this Nigger-Boy Running”. Thus, his primary illusions are shattered. Loss
of identity, sleeping and blindness are the figures that express the invisible
man’s confusion and despair as his world disintegrates.
