Hi everyone,
This week I will be presenting on Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man. This is a very heavy novel, filled with powerful themes and ideas, so I found it a little difficult to narrow my analysis down to just one main idea. In spite of this I decided to go with the idea presented about social identity and conformity. In an ironical way Ellison describes how becoming an invisible man is the process of freeing oneself from the expectations and opinions of others, and in doing so finding one’s personal identity despite the drive to conform within a group. I found this ironical because in being individual and realizing oneself, Ellison shows how this doesn’t cause a person to stand out, as might be expected, but rather causes them to lose their social value, and thus become invisible. The excerpts I chose highlight this point made throughout the novel, and I hope they give you an insight into the main themes presented by Ellison.
I am new to Ellison’s work, so my interpretations might be a little naive, but I tried to find as much textual evidence as I could to support my topic, all I can hope is that I do his brilliant novel justice.
As a side note I wanted to point out the similarity between Ellison’s ideas and those of Camus in his book The Stranger. Both novels show men who are unable to conform to society, and who are on a journey to self realization. However, Ellison’s protagonist is continually fighting to be part of something, a social group or organization, because this is how he believes he can find his identity and purpose. On the other hand Camus’ protagonist unknowingly exists outside of any classification because he doesn’t know how to conform to what society believes is his role and his identity. In the end both men find their meaning in freedom, or as Ellison claims, in invisibility.