INVISIBLE MAN

Invisible Man

Introduction of the book

The book “Invisible Man” is written by Ralph Ellison. It was published in 1952. Invisible man is a tale of man who lives in New York. This man after tasting cruel experiences of his life now live in an underground hole to hide himself because he perceives that he is invisible to the society, the society cannot recognize him and give a proper identity to him.

Invisible man is considered as a unique work of Ellison for various reasons. One of the reasons is that with the aid of this book Ellison took up the challenge to present an improvisational jazz style. Secondly, this book she lights on political forums for discussion on the sensitive issue of blacks in America. He won the National Book Award and the Russwurn Award for the “Invisible Man”

“Winner of the National Book Award for fiction. . . Acclaimed by a 1965 Book Week poll of 200 prominent authors, critics, and editors as "the most distinguished single work published in the last twenty years."

About the author

Ralph Ellison was born in Oklahoma. Initially he studied music. During the period of 1933 to 1936 he went to New York and there he met Richard Right. His meeting with Richard Right made him to attempt to write fiction for the first time. Since then he became a famous critic. Many of his articles, short stories and reviews published in different magazines and newspaper. He also taught in universities. “Ralph Ellison describes himself as an American author rather than Afrodiasporic one. His thoughts about history, identity and artistry were inspired from various scholarly and artistic works of Afro futurists” (Ellison, 54)

Invisible man in a precise form

“I am invisible; understand, simply because people refuse to see me” (Prologue. 1)

In the beginning of the story a narrator first introduces himself. The narrator tells that he is an invisible man. Further he proclaims that the reason behind his invisibility is neither any biochemical incident nor he became invisible because he got some supernatural phenomenon but the core reason behind his invisibility is that as he is black, so people are not willing to see or notice him as the way he is. The narrator says that his invisibility cultivates both advantages and hurdles and irritation as well. As he is an invisible man so many a times he suspects existence of his being. He expresses that he tries hard to make people believe that he exists and he urges people to recognize him but he barely succeed.

Afterwards, the narrator describes a moment in which one day he accidently hit a man in dark. That man was blond and tall. When he hit that blond and tall man then that tall man passed insulting remarks. The narrator could not bear that remarks. Eventually the narrator got aggressive and asked that blond man to apologize from him. When the blond man did not apologize narrator began to hit him. He was about to kill him but at the last moment he ...