Ralph Ellison (1914-1994)

Compact Performer Shaping Ideas

Marina Spiazzi, Marina Tavella,
Margaret Layton © 2021
 Ralph Ellison

1. Life

• He was born in Oklahoma City in 1914.

• His father died when he was three years old and his
mother worked in the homes of white people.

• He studied music from the age of

eight and, in 1937, he received a
state scholarship to study trumpet
and composition.

Compact Performer Shaping Ideas

 Ralph Ellison

1. Life

• He moved to New York, where he devoted himself to

sculpture and literary studies.

• He met Langston Hughes who put him in touch with

Richard Wright.

• His novel Invisible Man won the

National Book Award in 1953.

• In 1957 he started a teaching career

in various universities.

• He died in New York in 1994.

Compact Performer Shaping Ideas

 Ralph Ellison

2. Works

• Invisible Man (1952)  his first novel, it took him five

years to write it.

• Shadow and Act (1964)  a collection of essays.

• Flying Home, and Other Stories (1996)

• Juneteenth (1999)  his unfinished

second novel.

• The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison

(2019).

Compact Performer Shaping Ideas

 Ralph Ellison

3. Invisible Man

• The hero  a nameless African-American narrator.

• Setting  a forgotten shut-off basement on the

border of Harlem, illuminated by 1,369 bulbs.

• Main situation  hibernation, invisibility,

exploration of the depths of the narrator’s
consciousness in a narcotic dream induced by a blues
record in which Louis Armstrong asks the ironic
question: ‘What did I do to be so black and blue?’.

A 2005 video work by performance artist Jefferson Pinder

based on the Prologue of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.

Compact Performer Shaping Ideas

 Ralph Ellison

3. Invisible Man
The narrator describes several episodes of his life:

•his arrival in New York in search of a job;

•looking for a refuge underground;
•his decision to emerge into real light;
•his being chased by the police during a race riot in Harlem;
•the fall into a manhole in the middle of the street;
•his being trapped underground after the police put the cover of
the manhole back in place.
Compact Performer Shaping Ideas
 Ralph Ellison

3. Invisible Man: imagery

The book is built on contrasting images:

darkness vs light

blindness vs vision

whiteness vs blackness

The black hero works for a factory that

produces white paint.

Compact Performer Shaping Ideas

 Ralph Ellison

3. Invisible Man: imagery

The main symbol is invisibility.

The narrator never

reveals his name.

Both blacks and whites

ignore his individuality.

They fit him into their stereotypes.

Compact Performer Shaping Ideas

 Ralph Ellison

3. Invisible Man: imagery

The basement underground can be interpreted as:

the symbol of a fertile retreat from which

the hero will reemerge reborn;

a womb, in Freudian terms;

a magical underground world, in

mythical terms.

Compact Performer Shaping Ideas

 Ralph Ellison

3. Invisible Man: themes

• The isolation of the individual in an impersonal city;

• the search for identity;

• the fate of freedom in a mass society;

• the relationship between violence and guilt, reality and

illusion;

• anger, caused by an unjust

society, which seems impossible
to change.

A scene from the stage adaptation of Invisible Man (2012)

directed by Christopher McElroen for the Court Theatre of
Chicago.
Compact Performer Shaping Ideas
 Ralph Ellison

3. Invisible Man: narrative technique

• First-person narrator;

• satirical tone: use of surreal,

grotesque images;

• a Prologue introduces the main

issues of invisibility and racism;

• ends with an Epilogue where the

narrator tells the reader that he is
going to leave his hole.

Compact Performer Shaping Ideas