Free Essays on Invisible Man: Many Themes:
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The Many Themes of Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison achieved international fame with his first novel, Invisible Man. Ellison's Invisible Man is a novel that deals with many different social and mental themes and uses many different symbols and metaphors. The narrator of the novel is not only a black man, but also a complex American searching for the reality of existence in a technological society that is characterized by swift change (Weinberg 1197). The story of Invisible Man is a series of experiences through which its naive hero learns, to his disillusion and horror, the ways of the world. The novel is one that captures the whole of the American experience. It incorporates the obvious themes of alienation and racism. However, it has deeper themes for the reader to explore, ranging from the roots of black culture to the need for strong Black leadership to self-discovery.
Although seemingly a very important aspect of Invisible Man, the problems of blacks are not the sole concern of the novel. Instead, these problems are used as a vehicle for beginning the novel and as a vehicle to which many other ideas and investigations are later attached.
One of the major points in the novel is that the narrator has been searching for something for all of his life. The reader is aware of the search motif throughout the novel. This theme involves the journey of Invisible Man to find his own identity. The search motif is also accompanied by the element of surprise. With almost every action taken, there is some surprise on the part of the protagonist.
In the search that is conducted by the narrator, it is eventually seen that the only person who can answer his questions is himself. Therefore, the theme of self-realization by relying solely upon one's self is developed. The type of self-reliance that is eventually displayed by the narrator is the same type of self-reliance exhibited by such blacks as Booker T. Washington. This is something for the reader to keep in mind when exploring the episodes in which the narrator is at college (it has never been proven, but many critics think that the founder of the college was Booker T. Washington.). Although the founder of the college never appears in the novel, his success story offers many parallels to Washington's (Twayne's).
Many other motifs stem from the theme of searching. Invisible Man speaks of his naivete being the reason for his search and the cause of most of his mistakes.
Although the grandfather never appears in the novel, his deathbed advice to the narrator becomes one of the foremost themes of the novel (Parker). The instructions about how to live in a white man's world, given to him by his grandfather, become a puzzle which he attempts to solve for the rest of his existence. On one hand, he accepts his grandfather's soliloquy as insane. However, he is constantly troubled by its meaning.
A central metaphor of the novel is the blindness of Invisible Man to his many and varied experiences before he stumbles out of the darkness (Parker). The passage at the beginning of chapter 13 in which Invisible Man comes out of the subway and journeys through the streets of Harlem is a prime example of this metaphor. The fight in which all of the participants are blindfolded becomes a symbol of the entire novel and of all the struggles of the narrator. The struggle and search of the protagonist take the form of trying to remove the blindfold, therefore regaining his ability to "see". While the journey of the protagonist takes the form of getting rid of his own blindfold, he eventually realizes that everyone else is blindfolded. This not only points to one of the main reasons for his invisibility but also develops irony in the novel. The blindfold also symbolizes the bonds of slavery out of which blacks of the time were slowly emerging, therefore revealing the history and development of the black struggle up to and through the 1940's. The narrator is seen as an example of this struggle.
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