The Role Of Racism In Invisible Man By Ralph Ellison

Ralph Ellison’s novel, Invisible Man, has many references to police brutality, discrimination, and white supremacy. The protagonist faces dilemmas that have him questioning his own identity, as well as the society he lives. This all begins after the death of his friend Tod Clifton; he watches the policeman pulls the trigger on his friend. Ellison makes sure that it is an important moment in the story to show that black people are continuously dehumanized, and the protagonist learns it the very hard way. He experiences it through oppression, growth, and loss.

Boo Radley’s low amount of authoritative power is due to society’s lack of empathy towards him. Tom Robinson’s limited amount of authoritative power is evident due to society’s lack of empathy towards his ethnicity. Mayella Ewell’s small amount of authoritative power is caused by society’s lack of empathy towards her societal status. As Obama had stated before, a lack of empathy can lead to wars. Obama’s message connects to Lee’s call of action: to empathize more with others instead of being prejudice against them.

In the novel Invisible Man, the writer Ralph Ellison uses metaphors, point of view, and symbolism to support his message of identity and culture. Throughout the story, the narrator’s identity is something that he struggles to find out for himself. Themes of blindness and metaphors for racism help convey the struggle this character faces, and how it can be reflected throughout the world. One theme illustrated in the novel is the metaphor for blindness. Ellison insinuates that both the white and black men are blind, because they do not truly know each other.

The prologue of Invisible Man portrays the origin of his existential ideas and pain through the motif of not being seen. The motif connects with other essential motifs in the novel such as race relations and invisibility. The first sentence introduces Ellison as an “invisible man.” He explains that his invisibility extends not from some “biochemical accident" but rather because of the unwillingness of other people to notice him because of his race. After all, he is a black man in a time where race overrules personality when judging others. This is related to the notion of being blind to the truth or forced ignorance which is common in human nature.

Symbolism was the number one literary element that expressed the issue of inequality. Throughout the story, each character had an emblem to represent who the character was or what were they like. The most important emblem was the emblem of the main character, the Invisible Man. The Invisible Man, or IM for short, was the narrator of the story. He was a black man just recently stepping into college education.

The novel Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison speaks of an unnamed narrator who is ‘invisible’ to the world around him because people fail to acknowledge his presence. The novel came out in the 1950’s and follows the long adventurous journey of a black man from the South to the North trying to impress many people to become a ‘visible’ man, to make an identity in the world but is thwarted down by his skin color. The constant let down because of the narrators different skin color lead the narrator to believe that in order to become known in the society, a man should become ‘invisible’. The novel addressed the social, the psychic, the metaphysical and the radical components of racism during the 1940s and the 1950s. This was the time period where African Americans were fighting for their rights and the novel conveys the

Different from other authors of the Harlem Renaissance, Hughes refused to make his writing overly complicated. Hughes used dialect of African Americans and themes that they related to. Many people at the time dislike Hughes writing style because he wrote about African Americans in an non-glamourous way. He wrote about their hardship and suffering as well as their successes. However, this embarrassed African Americans because they knew the possibility of white people reading it and they disliked the idea of white people knowing their weaknesses.

Poor stumblers, neither of you can see the other. To you he is a mark on the score-card of your achievement, a thing ad 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 force.” (p.94) Here, much like the BLM organization, the veterinarian is trying to get people to understand that the whites do not care to see the African Americans rise. They see them as an object, not a human being. He is trying to get everyone to understand that they just want to take advantage of them by getting in their head to make them think they're special, but in reality just use them for their convenience.

For example, if a person is isolated, they feel alone and like they have nobody to turn to. This will make them feel trapped, and less likely to contradict their controller or stand up for themselves. Take the rumours about Boo Radley for example. In Maycomb, a small town where everybody knows everybody, Boo Radley disappeared from the public eye and instantly became the subject of terrible rumours. If he ever needed help and tried to seek it from the people of Maycomb, it is very unlikely that anyone would help him due to how he was viewed: a troubled man who could be a potential threat to society.

More specifically, the workers resent Crooks because of his color, and as a result, he is segregated from the men and their activities. However, Crooks can not just quit his job or move from place to place, as he, similar to Candy, is not likely to get another job. An example in the novel reads, “‘Cause I’m black. They play cards in there, but I can’t play because I’m black.’” It can be argued that Crooks faces the most isolation out of all the characters in Of Mice and Men, as other people’s struggles do not compare to the issues he deals with everyday. While Candy has a hard time on the work front, he is welcomed wholeheartedly by the other men, and converses with and joins them as if he was still a young man.