“You’re nobody, son. You don’t exist–can’t you see that?”
Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man is an electrifying study of a young Black man and his different experiences as he journeys through a racist society. The narrator, who is never named, starts the book telling the reader he lives in the sealed off basement of a Harlem apartment, the dark and cold offset by over 1,300 electric lights. The very first line of the book is “I am an invisible man.”
In the beginning he recollects an experience when he was a teenager, where he shows up at a venue expecting to make a speech for a prize, and instead finds himself in the middle of a boxing match surrounded by a white crowd who is there to see young Black men fight each other. The scene is described in disturbing terms, where the event starts with an indifferent naked white woman gyrating on the stage while the surrounding men go wild in barely controlled violence. The narrator is forced to box with the other Black youth, but is eventually allowed to give his speech to the crowd, winning a briefcase he takes great pride in.
The narrator is from the South and remembers his dying grandfather, an ex-slave, advising him to “agree ‘em to death and destruction” when dealing with white people. He then is accepted at a college, where he is deferential to the white cofounders, particularly a Mr. Porter, who wants the narrator to take him for a drive. He condescends to the narrator throughout the ride, but the narrator treats him with respect and care. They eventually end up at a tavern called the Golden Day, populated by local Black vets from the insane asylum. A violent scene ensues and Mr. Porter falls ill. When the narrator returns him to campus, the enraged dean banishes him up north to make his way for a year before he is allowed to return. The dean, a Black man named Mr. Bledsoe furiously recounts his own appearance of deference, but asserts, “I’m still the king down here. I don’t care how much it appears otherwise.”
The narrator travels north in despair, leaving his beloved college to get work in New York City. He has naive hopes that he will be able to return to school in a year, but he later finds out the letters of introduction to various employers Mr. Bledsoe gave him actually tell them not to hire the narrator.
From here the narrator tries to find work, initially starting at a paint factory where is injured in an explosion and after receiving medical care in a surreal surrounding, is sent away. He is rescued from the street by a kind-hearted Black woman named Mary, who lets him live there even though he becomes greatly behind in rent. One afternoon, he comes across an old Black couple being evicted from their apartment by several white marshalls. A crowd has gathered. Moved to speak, the narrator energizes the crowd with a passionate speech, encouraging them to bring the couple’s furniture on the sidewalk back into their apartment. The police are eventually called but the narrator escapes.
A white man named Jack follows and eventually corners him. The narrator thinks he is a detective, but he’s actually the leader of a group called the Brotherhood, who using scientific thought and a passionate will to help the oppressed, are looking for a Black brother to move the crowds in Harlem. The narrator is given a new name and a salary to take to the streets and give impassioned speeches like the one he gave outside the apartment.
The narrator plays an increasingly important role in the Brotherhood, electrifying crowds and pleasing the mostly white Brotherhood membership. There are several other Black men who are part of the Brotherhood, particularly a dynamic young man named Clifton. The narrator is thrilled to be part of the organization, and still retains a sort of polite deference to the membership. He feels he is doing social good, talking to his people with passion and intelligence. However, he rises up so high that he is accused of being an individualist rather than considering himself a part of a “coordinated unit.” He is sent away from Harlem to speak downtown on “the woman question,” while the committee decides what to do with him.
Eventually the narrator has an epiphany about the primarily white Brotherhood, realizing they are just using him and his voice. Their indifference to the death of Clifton, who the narrator witnesses shot to death by a white cop, as well as their retreat from helping the people of Harlem, puts further space between them. He thinks:
But I would never be the same. Never. After tonight I wouldn’t ever look the same, or feel the same. Just what I’d be, I didn’t know; I couldn’t go back to what I was–which wasn’t much–but I’d lost too much to be what I was.”
Later, he muses:
I was and yet I was invisible, that was the fundamental contradiction. I was and yet I was unseen.”
A street speaker that has rebuked the narrator for his alignment with white people, known as Ras the Exhorter, preaches Black power and agency. After Clifton is killed, the people of Harlem begin to gather and organize. One night it turns into a riot, and the narrator is swept along. During the night, some men set their tenement ablaze in an act of defiance against their slumlord. The narrator says: “They’ve done it, I thought. They organized it and carried it through alone; the decision their own and their own action. Capable of their own action.” He exults as the Black community fights for themselves. He thinks, “My grandfather had been wrong about yessing them to death and destruction or else things had changed too much since his day.”
Ras the Exhorter, furiously against the white Brotherhood, sees the narrator as a betrayer and tries to attack him. During the scuffle, the narrator falls through a manhole into a dark space filled with coal dust. He is trapped down there, and decides to stay underground. He comes to more epiphanies as an “invisible man,” thinking, “Why, if they follow this conformity business they’ll end up by forcing me, an invisible man, to become white, which is not a color but the lack of one.” The book ends with these thoughts:
I have been hurt to the point of abysmal pain, hurt to the point of invisibility. And I defend because in spite of it all I find that I love. In order to get some of it down I have to love. I sell you no phony forgiveness, I’m a desperate man–but too much of your life will be lost, its meaning lost, unless you approach it as much through love as through hate. So I approach through division. So I denounce and defend and I hate and I love.”
There is so much I left out of this narrative. Invisible Man is a deep treatise on race and growth. The narrator experiences his own subjugation and witnesses his Black community’s defiance as well as internalized racism. Ellison is a master of imagery and violence; I realized that I had read a short story of his before, about a horrifying lynching. The voice was the same–electric, searing, able to convey great waves of movement through precise imagery. Ellison said he wanted Invisible Man to explore his themes through Black intellectualism and philosophy. The narrator reflects this desire as he journeys, watching those around him and his inner self, to come to a place where he is ready to live above ground.
