BOOK REVIEW

ON
THE INVISIBLE MAN- RALPH ELLISON

One of the most important American novels of the twentieth

century'
Ralph Ellison's blistering and impassioned first novel tells the
extraordinary story of a man invisible. Published in 1952 when
American society was in the cusp of immense change, the powerfully
depicted adventures of Ellison's invisible man from his expulsion from a
Southern college to a terrifying Harlem race riot go far beyond the story
of one individual to give voice to the experience of an entire generation
of black Americans. It is an unflinching indictment of not only racism,
but any kind of prejudice that renders a man 'invisible' - a metaphysical
situation wherein you're not really invisible, but that people around you
refuse, or fail, to see you. Right from the explosive Prologue, Ellison
leads you gently away into the world of jazz, of empty melancholic
streets where the quest for visibility of one man becomes in turn
mankind's perennial quest for meaning, for absolution, in a world that
offers no answers. The Penguin Modern Classics edition is a beautiful
paperback edition of a timeless classic.
This belongs up there with Boccaccio, Rabelais, Cervantes and yes
Chaucer. It is an absolute romp through black America, as if someone
had asked the author to tell them about what it meant to be black and
he'd said to them and to himself "I'LL show you...' And in the showing
there is a great reserve of humour though as with The Sellout one could
never be sure of the intention of humour, as though it were an
unconscious product of the skin colour interface.

Yet in the end it is common humanity in an existential quandary that

comes to the fore, or rather takes a back seat. On the way we are treated
to various religious, political and downright tragic scenarios and
strategies for each of which the orator in Ellison has a rip roaring
speech.A really powerful book about race in America in the 1950s.
Strong themes of the trickster make this a compelling read, though it
does drag on at times. Worth reading as a snapshot of history and
historical literature. The invisibility is not self-attributed or due to any
physical deformity on the narrator's part. On the other hand, it is
imposed by social hegemony. Talking about the theme of the novel is
invisibility. Throughout the novel, the black curtain of invisibility keeps
knocking the conscience of humanity. An anonymous narrator is a black
man. Under the light of the monopolized white society, he is an invisible
man. It is a stirring narration of his vulgar experiences in the colour
biased society.The invisible narrator has to earn his credit, his hard-
earned scholarship at the cost of humiliation and demeaning activities to
please the white aristocracy. He was forced to fight a battle with other
blindfolded black men. In addition to that, they are forced to scramble
over electrified rugs to collect copper and gold coins. Their pain and
bruises were the sources of others' pleasure like the ancient gladiators.
Throughout his life, the narrator only experienced the ever-expanding
demarcated line between his life and the others.
In a society torn up in complex racial barbarism one's identity gets lost
again and again. A black man always has to live and identify himself by
the values and expectations imposed on him under a certain prescribed
role. In the whirlpool of racial prejudice, bigotry of behaviour, social
injustice individual identity loses track.All through his life, the narrator
comes across a series of communities like Liberty Paints Plant,
Brotherhood which all are in an oblique way endorsing a black man's
behavioural code to adjust in a white society. They are the other terms of
Ideological state apparatuses only meant for organized manipulation.
Embittered by the world of colour disparity of the narrator took refuge in
an underground cell, avoiding all the illumination of so-called society.
But finally, in the end, he determines to come out of his hibernation cell
to mark his contribution to society. He decides to exhort his presence
and make others accept his behaviour neglecting their prejudiced
expectations from him. The novel though focused on the main theme of
invisibility and racial hatred, yet incorporates other aspects like Harlem
Renaissance, Surrealism, the interplay of different State Apparatuses.
All the ideologies and promises that the so-called institutes propagated
are fake and illusory. Oppressive State Apparatus and ideological State
apparatus work at the same time.
The igniting prologue accelerated my reading but at a later half, I feel
bored and lost in the maze of complex themes and language. Yet I must
acknowledge it is a brilliant work of Ellison. It is a classic elevation of a
universal theme that is racial hatred. And here the author has cobbled
together all the sufferings of a dark man in a contemporary Afro-
American society of the early 20th century with a metaphoric emblem.