FREE ESSAY ON INVISIBLE MAN, THEME

INVISIBLE MAN, THEME

The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison is a novel which embodies the universal theme of
self-discovery, of the search to figure out who one truly is in life which we all are
embarked upon. Throughout the text, the narrator is constantly wondering about who he
really is, and evaluating the different identities which he assumes for himself. He
progresses from being a hopeful student with a bright future to being just another poor
black laborer in New Your City to being a fairly well off spokesperson for a powerful
political group, and ultimately to being the invisible man which he eventually realizes
that he has always been. The deepest irony in this text is that for a significant portion
of the story, the narrator is unaware of his own invisibility, in believing that others
can see him, he is essentially invisible to himself. Only through a long and arduous
journey of self-discovery which is fraught with constant and unexpected tragedy and loss
does he realize the truth, that his perceptions of himself and of how others perceived
him had been backwards his entire life. 
The story opens with the narrator participating in a battle royal prior to delivering a
speech on humility, and on the progress of the Black people. These are the days during
which he is still a hopeful scholar, defining himself as a potential Booker T.
Washington. At this point he is living the life that others have told him that he should
live, and defines himself as he believes he is seen through their eyes, as an icon of
what a Black person can achieve when they put their minds to it, and as a role model for
his people. The abuse and degradation which he is put through in the battle royal give
him the first inklings that everything is not as it seems, but fail to do anything to
change the narrator's perceptions of himself. 
It is quite possible that if given the chance, the narrator may have gone on living the
life that society had preselected for him, and never realized his invisibility, but fate
had other plans for him. His entire life was thrown into disarray the day that he was
assigned around Mr. Norton, a powerful white man and founder of the school which he was
attending. The narrator made the mistake of taking Mr. Norton through the old slave
quarters, and at Norton's request, brought him down to converse with Jim Trueblood, a man
who, in the midst of a dream, had raped and impregnated his own daughter. The
conversation they had left Mr. Norton very shaken, and caused him to pass out. Afraid
that Norton would die and wanting to do anything that would save him, the narrator
brought him into a local brothel called the Golden Day to get him some whiskey. Mr.
Norton ended up recovering fully, but when news of what had happened reached Dr. Bledsoe,
the narrator was permanently expelled from under the pretext that he would be allowed to
return after one year had elapsed. 
Deeply shaken by this turn of events but far from broken, and taking hope in returning to
school after a year, the narrator heads to New York City armed with seven letters from
Dr. Bledsoe addressed to some prominent white people which he believes will help him in
attaining a job. This couldn't be further from the truth however, and upon delivering the
seventh letter, he is informed that the letters state that his expulsion has been
permanent, and that the men which he has been referred to will do nothing other than help
him continue in direction of the promise which...recedes ever brightly and distantly
beyond the hopeful traveler, in short, that all they will do is keep him chasing after a
false hope. It is here that the narrator sees that his dreams of being the next Booker T.
will go unrealized, and that he may never return to the life which he has abandoned. This
is also where he begins the journey to finding his true identity. Following a tip from
the son of the seventh addressee, the same person who revealed the true contents of the
letters, the narrator takes a job at a paint factory, but ends up caught in a furnace
explosion on his first day. At the factory hospital, he is subjected to shock therapy and
then released and given some compensation money from the company. While walking the
streets in a dazed and confused state, he runs into a lady named Mary who offers to let
him rent a room in her house, and he took up her offer after attacking a man whom he
mistook for Dr. Bledsoe in his previous place of residence. 
The rent at Mary's was paid for with the compensation money, and the narrator settled
into a routine of looking for, and failing to find, a job. This continues until one day
he passes an old couple who is being evicted from their homes. There is a crowd of people
spectating the event, and as the narrator watches, rage takes hold of him, and he
delivers a stunning speech which moves the crowd enough that they riot against the police
and the men who are carrying out the eviction. A member of the Brotherhood, a group which
works to end the social inequalities that exist between whites and blacks overhears his
speech, and he is invited to a Brotherhood party. 
Taking a job as a brotherhood orator embodies yet another major and unexpected change in
lives for the narrator. He is ordered to leave Mary's domicile, and given a comfortable
salary for his work, but more importantly, the narrator believes that within the
Brotherhood he has found his true purpose in life. After receiving training in how to
speak from the mind instead of from emotion, he pursues his Brotherhood assignments with
aggression and enthusiasm. Under his administration, the Brotherhood movement in Harlem
establishes a firm foothold, and rapidly gains members and influence. By this point, the
narrator sees himself as being an emissary of the Brotherhood, a selfless and dedicated
member of the organization, and a political leader to the people of Harlem. But this is
yet another identity that others have merely supplied for him, and he is only seeing
himself as others see him, as he has his whole life. 
This continued until one day Brother Wrestrum, a member of his Brotherhood division in
Harlem accused the narrator of being a self-serving opportunist and a threat to the
Brotherhood. Though there was little concrete evidence outside of a magazine article that
was based on an interview of the narrator, he was nevertheless given the choice of either
becoming inactive in the Brotherhood entirely, or lecturing on the woman question in
another neighborhood until an investigation into his loyalty was conducted. The narrator
chose the latter of these two options, and as a result, he was eventually was rewarded
with an important insight into his character. Because of his talks about women and their
place in society, many women believe that they shared a kind of connection with him, and
that he would understand them and their needs. For the first time, the narrator is able
to realize that these girls are seeing him only as they want to see him instead of how he
really is, and that he is real to them only insofar as they believe he is real. 
Though this was an important realization for the narrator to make, the discovery of his
true self was still a way off. When he is allowed to return to his position in Harlem, he
finds that membership and support for the Brotherhood has all but disappeared, as has a
former friend, Tod Clifton. The narrator finds Clifton, selling paper Samba dolls a few
moments before Clifton is gunned down by a policeman for resisting arrest. Outraged by
Clifton's murder, and unable to reach any of his superiors in the Brotherhood, the
narrator decides to turn Clifton's death into a funeral march, and delivers a speech
which stirs the people of Harlem up quite a bit. This move angers the Brotherhood
council, who consider Clifton to be a traitor, but was crucial in terms of the narrator's
self realization. While being reprimanded for his actions, the narrator tries repeatedly
to make the council see how things have fallen apart in Harlem, and that his speech was
necessary and appropriate. His appeals were ignored however, and he later sees that he
was ignored because the Brotherhood council didn't care what he had to say, because to
them, he was merely a tool, a device to be used to further their own ends. They, again,
saw in him only what they wanted to see. 
His final revelation was to come as he was wandering the streets in a large hat and dark
glasses which he had purchased to avoid any run-ins with Ras's men. Several people
mistake the narrator for a man named Rinehart, who is a numbers dealer to some, a briber
to others, and a preacher to still others. Yet Rinehart's real identity eludes him, as
well as everyone else, and the narrator finally realizes that Rinehart's true identity is
invisible, and that it is his invisibility that lets him be so many things at once to so
many people and yet nothing at all at the same time. He is also able to see for the first
time the Brotherhood has been using him, and sacrificing him for their own ends, and that
to them, and everyone else, he was as invisible as Rinehart. 
After finally realizing that he is invisible, and that people see nothing in him other
than what they want to see, the narrator sets out to undermine the Brotherhood that has
used him for so long. His efforts, or lack thereof, coupled with Ras's constant agitation
of the people of Harlem result in a full-scale riot. Though this was his general intent
from the beginning, the narrator later realizes that it was also what Jack and the other
Brotherhood members wanted as well, and that in trying to undermine them, he has only
served them further. The story draws to a close with the narrator trapped in a sewer,
where he finally realized that his past, imagined life would have to be abandoned, and
that he would have to start anew as an invisible man. 
Throughout the story, the protagonist was constantly searching for his true identity, and
in the end he realizes that he has no true identity. He is invisible, or more
appropriately, he is a mirror which reflects only what other people want to see. The
story of how he comes to realize his invisibility deals with a theme of self-discovery,
of how other people cannot tell you who you really are, though they will try if given the
chance. The narrator's efforts to find out who he is represents the way in which we all
must strive to define ourselves. Defining oneself is one major theme (though not the only
one) that is present throughout the novel, as well as one that is constantly reinforced
by the events in the story. 
Bibliography
Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man.