How the narrator has progressed outside of the book in Invisible Man

In Invisible Man we see the narrator develop and progress as a person throughout the novel, and that is the main premise of the novel. The narrator goes through so much change, going from a young black man trying to please the white man at any chance he gets, to a civil rights activist advocating for equality for all, and everything in-between. These changes are quite obvious to the reader, yet I think we must consider the fact that the narrator is writing this story we've been following this whole time in his basement full of lights. This means that time has been passing why the narrator recollects his experiences in the past few years. In my opinion, throughout this time that the narrator was writing the novel he has progressed as a character as well.

At the beginning of the novel the narrator talks in sort of an individualistic tone, talking about how he is an invisible man, and sort of complaining to the reader about how he is invisible and how nobody can relate to him. He explains to the reader how he feels invisible and the benefits of it. It can be noticed that in the first few paragraphs he uses "I" a lot. In the first paragraph, the narrator writes, "I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids -- and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me."(Ellison, 3) Obviously in this text we can see his individualistic ideals about his "condition" of being invisible, yet we see in the epilogue the narrator's tone changes a bit.

In contrast to the beginning, the narrator takes a less individualistic tone in the epilogue, even referring to the reader a lot. The biggest example of the narrator's progression is the final sentence, where he writes "What else but try to tell you what was really happening when your eyes were looking through? And it is this which frightens me: Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?"(Ellison, 450). We see the last sentence in the novel end in the word "you" compared to the first word of the novel being "I". This is really interesting to me because it shows that the narrator no longer thinks of being invisible as something only relative to him. The narrator realizes while writing the story that other's had been invisible to him, like the Vet at the Golden Day. While writing the novel and reliving his experiences, the narrator begins to understand that he is not the only person who is invisible, and that everyone has some level of invisibility in the world. This leads him to asking the reader the question, are you invisible just like me, with the last sentence of the novel.

I think that it is really interesting how the whole novel is about the narrator progressing as a person and becoming more and more aware of how the world works, and his identity and his invisibility. Yet, the narrator even progresses outside of the main parts of the novel, as he finds new ideas as he's writing the novel. This idea is super clever from Ellison, and a fitting way to end the novel.

-Teo

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why did Tea Cake hurt so much more?

 In Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the main character, Janie, goes through 3 different marriages, Logan, Joe/Jody, and Tea Cake. None of these marriages sustain, as we see Janie's breakup with Logan and Jody, and Janie at the beginning of the novel returns with no husband, which implies things went awry with Tea Cake in the end. However, the marriage that seemed to have the most promise was with Tea Cake. From the beginning, Logan was portrayed in a negative light by the narrator, and that marriage ended rather quickly. However, the other two marriages were a bit different. Jody was originally portrayed as a "knight in shining armor" for Janie so she can run away from Logan, however we quickly learn he is not quite the man she wanted. Jody enforces gender roles very hard on Janie, and he also forces her to do all sorts of stuff against her will, like wearing a head rag. He also won't let Janie do anything she wants to do, like join the co
Read more

Sethe's Controversial Actions

 In Beloved we are told the heroic story of Sethe singlehandedly taking and freeing her children from the plantation Sweet Home. She completes the seemingly impossible and safely gets her and her children across the border and they go to Ohio. Her story is awe-inspiring and the shows just how strong of a woman she is. The reader could almost say she could never do any wrong, especially to her children after her amazing escape. However, the book takes a turn when we see the flashback to Sethe attempting to kill her children at the sight of School Teacher. This is an absolutely shocking scene and one that nobody would expect Sethe to do. It seems like nobody in the story could expect that either, and couldn't understand why Sethe would do that. She is exiled because of this and nobody talks to her other than Paul D. However when she tells Paul D the story, even he is dumbfounded and can't see where Sethe is coming from. Keep in mind he also had to endure the tortures of Sweet Hom
Read more

The Narrator's Lack of Development and Deja Vu in Invisible Man

 In Invisible Man  we see the narrator go through multiple changes throughout the book, most notably his huge turnaround from trying to please the white man at any chance he can get, to what we know him as at this point in the book, which is a speaker and protestor for African-American rights and equality. Yet, I think that the narrator hasn't learned nearly as much as he thinks, as his naivety is still prominent in his everyday actions. He still faces racism in his everyday life in the North, yet he does not recognize it past the more obvious types. He still holds on to some of his dark, racist past, but not in the same way that Brother Tarp does. Brother Tarp has a shackle from when he broke free of slavery, to serve as a reminder of what he's been through. He gives the narrator this shackle, offering him similar advice to the grandfather when he cautions the narrator to never become too complacent about his freedom. However, the narrator doesn't really think much of it,
Read more