Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man: A Novel of Social Protest

Invisible Manby Ralph Ellison, a fecund 20th century American Negro author, underscores chiefly the agonies and humiliations of Blacks or inkinesss and through it exposes the false claim of civilisation. It gives look to the writer’s bitterness and outrage against this unfairness and subjugation bing in American society of his clip. However this research paper reveals howInvisible Mandespite depicting the injury of humanity, does non except wholly the hope for future – the hope for the universe as a better topographic point to populate in.

This societal protest is self explanatory inInvisible Manwhich is non merely a narrative of a negro thrown as a bird from one topographic point to another ‘but is an fable of the black battle in the American history’ . It shows that Blacks have ever been populating on the razor’s border of clip for holding been treated pitilessly by the Whites. It captures the inexorable worlds of racial favoritism and presents a blunt history of racial disaffection. The novel is, to utilize Alfred Kazin’s words, “… . , a presentation of the moonstruck hatred that America can offer, on every face of its society, to a Black Man”245. Through the overzealous behaviour of the white society, Ellison efficaciously reveals how a alleged civilised society is still characterized by the racial division between adult male and adult male. The fresh depicts how the coloring material of tegument overpowers man’s fellow- feeling and human compassion.

White persons, no uncertainty, claim to be the ‘cultured human beings’ and the ‘believers of equality’ but they are really non willing to give an equal position to Blacks. Their concerns for the public assistance of inkinesss are mere false visual aspects made merely to retain themselves in the dominant place. Whereas whites nourish this old racial hatred in their Black Marias, Blacks excessively are non much able to abandon their impression of lower status. They take their humiliation as a affair of their fate and as an result of the societal system. It is more than clear when Trueblood describes to Norton his dream about a white adult female pursing him. He explains:

I tries to speak to her, and I tries to git off.

But she’s holdin ‘ me and I’m scared to touch

her cause she’s white.56^.

It shows how much a Black is witting of his being black. In fact, the consciousness of both of the sides is still the same. This stereotype behaviour of both the races is rooted non merely in their witting but besides in their unconscious heads.

During the class of the novel, we find that the storyteller who is a representative of the Black cause, is denied the basic comfortss of life and even a human position. He is treated as a slave and more pitiably as a thing devoid of all human passions and emotions. The society is so disdainful about and apathetic towards him that he is non certain of even his presence in the universe and is compelled to believe:

I am unseeable adult male … merely because people

garbage to see me … they see merely my

milieus, themselves, or figments of their

imagination–indeed, everything and anything

except me.7

The supporter is unseeable merely because people see in him what they want to see, non what he really is. He is about a non-existent merely because he is ‘a cause’ , ‘an abomination’ , a black abstraction’ dehumanized by racialists or by reformers. There is no human individuality, no human acknowledgment, no individualism and even no name for him and, evidently, for all individuals like him. And this invisibleness makes the storyteller and all other Blacks like him experience a sense of disaffection in the selfish universe of Whites.

The political relations of ‘equal rights and freedom for all’ which whites pattern in the name of Blacks merely to keep their societal standing is once more socially and even morally indefensible offense against the basic humanity of adult male. It shows merely the corruptness of society and the debasement of human values. The establishment viz. Brotherhood though working for the cause of racial harmoniousness does non impute any rights or any individualism to its companions. It hires the storyteller merely like a slave bought and sold without any consideration of his ain human individuality. Without caring for the feelings and pick of the storyteller, he is asked to shack at a topographic point where the party’s policies can better be materialized. Furthermore, his name is changed and he is stripped off all his creativeness. Irritated by the rescue of a funeral oration by the storyteller which is a mark of his independent thought, Jack says, “You were non hired to think” 405. And once more, “You were hired to talk” 406.

In such a societal system, Blacks are considered by their socially higher-ups merely as a beginning of amusement and pleasance. The blind-folded Black boys presenting a Battle Royal in which they hit each-other to the drunken shouts of Whites and negro male childs picking coins off an electrified carpet are some cases given by the writer to show a horrid facet of the society. The black male childs are abused if they watch the bare blonde dance ( a sort of amusement called Smoker ) and abused if they do non look at it. In fact, the Smoker is nil but an unacceptable and hateful whirl of ‘negro panic and white barbarous vulgarity’ . GE Kent gives an appropriate commentary on all this expression:

In footings of inkiness, the rite is to stomp upon

them the symbolic emasculation they are supposed to

experience in the presence of a white adult female ….The

American flag tattooed upon the bare woman’s belly,

is a sarcasm upon American corruptness of sexuality.166

Again, for white adult females, Blacks are mere agencies of acquiring sexual satisfaction. Sybil is precisely this sort of adult female who is about obsessed to acquire sexual satisfaction from the storyteller –“come on, crush me, daddy–you-you large black bull. What’s taking you so long? … .. Hurry up, strike hard me down” 451-52. This morally corrupt component of the society besides reveals a societal world that the white work forces remain busy in their plants and in their ain fulfilments without trouble oneselfing much about the demands of their adult females. There is a acrid sarcasm on this societal formation in Sybil’s words when she says that George ( her hubby ) “talks a batch about women’s rights, but what does he cognize about what a adult female needs? ” 451. But here it is more than clear that Blacks are treated merely as a pleasure-giving object instead as an person by both – whether it is a whiteman or a whitewoman.

Whenever a socially inferior race attempts to lift high, the superior one takes it as a menace to its domineering place and hence, attempts to repress that race by all possible agencies. Similar is the instance with Blacks whose advancement can ne’er be acceptable to Whites. It is apparent when the storyteller wants to do a address about the humiliation of Blacks during the Battle Royal, he is being interrupted, scolded and laughed at alongwith the warning, “We mean to make right by you, but you’ve got to cognize your topographic point at all times”33. In fact, Whites can non digest Blacks and ever seek to corrupt and put off them. When the unidentified supporter working for Brotherhood becomes popular in Harlem vicinity, he is envied by other members of the party and he receives an anon. warning missive:

Make non travel excessively fast… you are from the South and you know

that his is a whiteman’s world… They do non desire you to

travel excessively fast and will cut down if you do. Be smart 332.

Therefore, for Whites, Blacks should ever be relegated to their socially and economically inferior place with no position and prestigiousness. In such a blue scenario, it seems that the growing of Blacks can non at all depend upon their earnestness, virtuousness and difficult work but on the will and purpose of Whites.

In the novel, we confront with a society marked by the racial cynicism predominating between inkinesss and Whites. Here, it becomes necessary to cognize what blacks themselves think and how they react to this job. Their mental torment is well-reflected in the grandfather’s advice given to the protagonist’s male parent. He says that their life is a war and inkinesss should get the better of Whites through their very humbleness, sabotage them with smilings of joy and convey them to the decease and devastation through obeisance. They should do their place strong and go on their war but with a silence. However, the narrator-protagonist attempts to travel the other manner unit of ammunition but after his failure as a hard-worker and as a sincere adult male, he besides realizes his error. This points out the endurance schemes of Blacks in a society where adult male non merely overmaster their fellow-beings but besides snatch from them their really individuality as a human being.

Besides this, Ellison points out another manner of protest excessively represented by Ras the Exhorter who subsequently becomes Ras the Destroyer. Ras follows direct waies of force and racial public violences to show negroes’ choler and to destruct their enemies, that is, Whites. He besides condemns Blacks like the storyteller working for the Brotherhood merely as an instrument of Whites and non truly asseverating their racial demands. Here, it is non unfavourable to state that Ras acts as the existent scruples of the black race.He tries to do inkinesss cognizant of non holding sold themselves for white adult females and money or for a white cause. In fact, the gramps, the storyteller and Ras present different ways of thought and diverse agencies of protest but for the same cause, that is, negroes’ job of ‘invisibility’ in a white-dominated society.

In fact, the issue of racial favoritism presented by Ellison has wider societal deductions. Through the peculiar illustration of America, the novel reveals the cosmopolitan truth applicable to every civilization and civilisation practicing apartheid. The sarcasm of this job is that whites in get awaying inkiness are going blacker everyday and inkinesss in a nisus towards whiteness are going rather dull and Grey. Cipher knows who he is or where he is traveling. Therefore,Invisible Man, ‘a novel of societal protest’ , lays bare the scruples of the full black race through nisuss and agonies of an unseeable Black amidst the barbarous societal forces. In position of Alfred Kazin, “Invisible Manendures because it is representative, true, “real” … so much of the whole modern urban Black experience is included in the life-cycle of the hero”254. By foregrounding the negative impacts of the societal hate on the societal system and more peculiarly on the human self-respect, the author, in fact, warns humanity against such patterns and advocates the demand for harmoniousness and compassion – ‘brotherhood’ in the existent sense. However, the novel does non show a wholly despairing scenario as it tries to give the possible solution of this job and, that is, to fight continuously even in the face of certain lickings.

The novel is, no uncertainty, dejecting and saddening but animating and heartening besides. In fact, hope invariably renews itself in man’s bosom after his letdown and can ne’er be wholly extinguished. This feeling of hope ever blooms in the bosom of the storyteller besides from the really beginning of his journey of self find. The storyteller gifted with the quality of oratory experiences appears to be hopeful at every new measure undertaken by him. It includes his admittance in a Negro College, a clump of letters of recommendations by Dr. Bledsoe, his occupation at a mill called Liberty Paints, his connection of Brotherhood at Harlem and farther successes as an speechmaker etc. However his high outlooks are being diminished and shattered every clip which leaves him more dejected and more defeated than earlier. Here it seems that the storyteller remains laden and controlled by white work forces throughout his life due to his foggy vision. When, in the terminal, he realizes his invisibleness and resolutes to come out from it, he thinks to develop his ain individuality. It makes his vision clarified every bit good as establishes a sense of optimism in readers’ heads. He decides to prosecute the construct of his ain individuality that honors his complexness as an person without disregarding societal duties. Precisely, Ralph Ellison’sInvisible Manwith a broad societal concern suggests that the life can be lived in diverseness and the credence of this diverseness is necessary to avoid confrontations.

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Mentions

• Ellison, Ralph.Invisible Man. New York: Signet Book published by the New American Library, 1952. All textual mentions are from this edition.
• Kazin, Alfred.Bright Book of Life: American Novelists and Narrators from Hemingway to Mailer. Delhi: Allied Publishers Pvt. Ltd. , 1973.
• Kent, George E. “Ralph Ellison and African-american Folk and Cultural Tradition” .ACollection of Critical Essays on Ralph Ellison. erectile dysfunction. John Hersey. U.S.A. , 1974.

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