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Illusions of The Invisible Man
This paper will deal with the illusions and the power struggles presented to and overcome by the main character of Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man. I’ll begin with the italicized section of The Invisible One’s marijuana-stimulated dream from pages 9 to 12. ... Invisible descends into the depths of the music he’s listening to, going lower and lower through each stage and sub tempo of the song. ... What she loved was freedom, and Invisible replies, “Maybe freedom lies in hating…What is this freedom you love so well? ... ” Invisible never gets a definite answer from the woman, and as her head begins to ache, he is confronted by one of her sons. Invisible struggles his way through the whole novel to find out what she meant by freedom, and I think he tries to discover his own freedom as well.
One scene that plagues Invisible time and time again is his grandfather on his deathbed on page 16. His grandfather speaks of how he himself was a traitor to his people, suggests that Invisible “overcome ‘em with yeses, undermine ‘em with grins, agree ‘em to death and destruction, let ‘em swoller you till they vomit or burst wide open.” This last excerpt proves very important to Invisible’s actions later in the novel, as does the scene on page 33 after the smoker fight of Invisible’s dream about his grandfather and the endless envelopes the grandfather tells are years. ...
So Invisible goes off to college, with illusions of becoming an educated black man leading his people in the white world, and he’s assigned to watch after Mr. ... On page 95 he and Invisible encounter one of the crazy vets. The vet is more sane than either of them, as he calls the façade in front of him as it is – Invisible the black college boy catering to Whitey; an amorphous automaton as a mark of achievement on Norton’s destiny; Norton as a god in Invisible’s eyes. Bledsoe expels Invisible and sends him on a wild goose chase in NYC, keeping that boy running until his prized letters’ content is revealed as more or less a death sentence in Invisible’s academic and professional career.
This is quite the iconoclasm to Invisible, for Bledsoe was the subservient role model, as on page 106 “bowing humbly and respectfully,” refusing to dine with the white guests, even his favorite hymn had been “Live-a-Humble.” This mask came off when Bledsoe pronounced his power to Invisible over the college and the trustees and how he had sold out his race to get into his position.
Approximate Word count = 2116
Approximate Pages = 8.5
(250 words per page double spaced)
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