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Invisible Man Reflection

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Ralph Ellison delineates many of the narrator 's experiences as educational development for the narrator of the novel, Invisible Man. One of the scenes with the utmost impact to the plot and to the evolution of the narrator 's thought process throughout the novel is in the beginning of the book, an encounter between the narrator, a crowd of drunk, powerful white men, and a stunningly attractive, naked, white female. The narrator is on stage with other young black men about to engage in a battle royal, but before this happens the white men introduce a naked woman as entertainment for themselves. Ralph Ellison illustrates the narrator’s incident with the naked white woman as a learning experience for the narrator as well as a very important …show more content…

The last element that is prominently seen in this short passage is point of view, the novel, written in first person, shows the narrator’s thoughts, making it very easy to deduce what he is thinking and taking away from a situation. The narrator is initially entranced with the woman’s attractive features but eventually decides to take a step back and take in the entirety of the scene. “I felt a wave of irrational guilt and fear. My teeth chattered, my skin turned to goose flesh, my knees knocked. Yet I was strongly attracted and looked in spite of myself. Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked. The hair was yellow like that of a circus kewpie doll, the face heavily powdered and rouged, as though to form an abstract mask, the eyes hollow and smeared a cool blue, the color of a baboon 's butt. I felt a desire to spit upon her as my eyes brushed slowly over her body. Her breasts were firm and round as the domes of East Indian temples, and I stood so close as to see the fine skin texture and beads of pearly perspiration glistening like dew around the pink and erected buds of her nipples. I wanted at one and the same time to run from the room, to sink through the floor, or go to her and cover her from my eyes and the eyes of the others with my body; to feel the soft thighs, to caress her and destroy her, to love her and murder her, to hide from her, and yet to stroke where below the small American flag tattooed upon her belly her thighs formed a capital V.”(Ellison 15). As the narrator is entranced with the white woman’s naturally attraction and beauty he blocks everything else out as did most boys, looking at her even if they did not necessarily want to. He begins to think of only her and becomes consumed in the attraction. When he overcomes this and starts to look at the surroundings he notices more things about the white men and begins to advance his characterization more. “I noticed a certain merchant who followed her hungrily, his lips

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