The State of “Invisibility” in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man
“My hole is warm and full of light. Yes, full of light. I doubt if there is a brighter spot in all of New York than this hole of mine, and I do not exclude Broadway. Or the Empire State Building on a photographer’s dream night. But that is taking advantage of you. Those two spots are among the darkest of our whole civilization—pardon me, our whole culture (an important distinction, I’ve heard)—which might sound like a hoax, or a contradiction, but that (by contradiction, I mean) is how the world moves: Not like an arrow, but a boomerang. (Beware of those who speak of the spiral of history; they are preparing a boomerang. Keep a steel helmet handy.) I know; I have been boomeranged across my head so much that I now can see the darkness of lightness. And I love light. Perhaps you’ll think it strange that an invisible man should need light, desire light, love light. But maybe it is exactly because I am invisible. Light confirms my reality and gives birth to my form. A beautiful girl once told me of a recurring nightmare in which she lay in the center of a large dark room and felt her face expand until it filled the whole room, becoming a formless mass while her eyes ran in bilious jelly up the chimney. And so it is with me. Without light, I am not only invisible but formless as well, and to be unaware of one’s form is to live a death. I myself, after existing some twenty years, did not become alive until I discovered my invisibility.”
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison consists of a real mix of elements that create a high cultural piece of work. This is a novel in which democracy, social struggle, and self-consciousness are very well defined. This excerpt sums up each of the three aspects mentioned before and gives clear examples of how it is to go through all of them.
In my continuing essay, I will talk about all of the three main problems of this novel — democracy, social struggle, and self-consciousness — and how they lead to a certain development of the protagonist. To sustain my opinions and ideas I will use as critical sources Modern American Drama 1945-2000 by C.W.E. Bigsby and A History of American Literature by Richard Gray.
The story revolves around the life of an unknown black man. The country he lives in sees him as ‘‘something different’’. Even though slavery had been abolished a very long time ago, black people were still seen as someone that can’t fit into a world ruled by white people. The concept of democracy was still unsure for them even after the slavery abolition. They needed rights, and protection and they needed to be accepted and respected, things that were hard for them to get. The democracy they received was still something that isolated them from the rest of the world. The institutes for black people — schools, for example — had to be separated from the ones for white people. This happened due to the vast majority of racist people. Democracy was there but still unfair. These types of rules divided the people even more and thus the social struggle of black people started to evolve even more. As the narrator of the novel says: ‘‘Beware of those who speak of the spiral of history; they are preparing a boomerang.’’ Even though you escape from the unfairness for a moment, it will come back to hit you once again. And democracy, as it is, represents nothing more but an additional element for a more defined state of ‘‘invisibility’’.
Being “invisible” in this novel it’s nothing but having no social status. As Richard Gray said: ‘‘struggling to come to terms with the dilemma Ellison summed up in one of his essays: ‘the nature of our society is such that we are prevented from knowing who we are.’ ’’ Society does nothing but to restrain the man, forcing him into questioning himself about his own state of being. For a black man in a society that rejects him, social adaptation it’s a hard thing to obtain. This is one of the main reasons why there are places in which most of its habitants are black people, in Harlem, for example, in New York. Black people preferred to be as distant as possible from white people, to create their own place, their own culture so they could create their own identity. This state of ‘‘invisibility’’, in some way, helped them to become something unique. And as the protagonist of the novel said, he became to feel alive only when he became aware of his invisibility. Another element used by Ellison to imply these aspects is ‘‘redeeming the past through the present, of giving voice, through present being’. Ellison is giving voice to the past through his character. The past still echoes in the present life, the black people are still seen as ‘‘unimportant’’, and the only way to reinvent everything is by creating new cultural directions. Music, art or literature, all of these made black people more aware of their own capability to create, and so they began to be more conscious of their existence, but not only conscious of their physical existence, but also of their cultural selves.
In Invisible Man the state of being invisible in the eyes of society becomes a burden but also is seen as a manifestation of liberation. Black people were not important for the whites so anything they did was also unimportant. Their existence is not important for others, but it must be important for themselves. Ellison’s protagonist realized he exists when he became invisible for others and visible for himself. He loves light because is the only thing that ‘‘gives birth’’ to his form. He wanted to light up a dark place, to live in light so he can feel alive. And as I mentioned before, being able to create also confirms your existence. Harlem Renaissance was the biggest self-conscious moment in the black culture. It didn’t matter if they were not accepted in the other cultures; they made one for themselves and they appreciated each other for this. It can also be seen as a ‘‘process of negating the world of things as given.’. As Mario Vargas Llosa said, fiction will always be a rebellion against the real world and what it implies. Creating new ways of expressing their culture, the black people saw in the real world nothing but blackness. And how the main character also said he learned how to see the darkness of light, and that darkness consists of ignorance. The black people got their democracy through the power of creating and they forged their existence with the help of art.
Everything that the black people created confirmed their existence in their society but also confirmed it for themselves. In a world that never accepted the black people, they managed to create their own world, negating the real one through art. Democracy, social struggle, and self-consciousness became the main keys to a successful life, even though it was hard for the black people to go through all of them.
And thus they received their democracy through self-liberation and the power to create, something the white people couldn’t offer them. They were not seen as someone that deserved this type of power, and they were thus forced by the white people to create their own ways. Social struggle, as well as the ‘‘democracy’’ they got from society, was also an obligation to become something new. Because it was hard to adapt in the white people’s world, the black people learned how to be themselves among their kind. They learned and they created. And because of that, they became self-aware of their existence. Self-consciousness is the most important, for everyone. If you can’t give meaning to yourself and can’t be aware of your capabilities then you are not living. And so did Ellison’s character. He knew he existed the moment light gave form to his body when lightly touched his body. His invisibility to society helped him live as he pleased and create as he pleased, and nothing is more beautiful than the liberty of creating.
The struggles of the black people helped them into forging what black culture is today. Self-liberation and self-consciousness helped them to create their own selves then and it still does today. Ellison wanted to point out that everything he did, he did it for himself so people can understand that the black culture rose from the denial received from the white people and their ignorance and denial still exists, and the only way to resist it is through culture. Their invisibility represents nothing but only mere ignorance from the white people, and the refusal to accept them as being part of the society because they refuse to see the black people as being cultured.
Bibliography
- Bigsby, C.W.E. Modern American Drama 1945-2000. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. Print.
- Gray, Richard. A History of American Literature. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2012. Print.
