Infinite Impossibilities and the Narrator of Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

 

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Other essays and articles in the Literature Archives related to this topic include : “Overcome ‘em With Yeses”: Advice and Self-Realization in Ellison’s Invisible Man

 

Throughout Invisible Man, much of Ellison’s attention appears to be on the idea of being able to mentally recreate oneself in order to pursue “infinite possibilities” of the mind and to accept the rather limited but available possibilities in society (563). The mind is the only place where the narrator can find himself because it surpasses everything that American society builds up: race, class, education. In order for the narrator of Invisible Man to find his true inner self, he has to be able to see himself not just as a member of the Black race, but as a man, as an individual whose mind is not controlled by his social situation.

 

In his novel Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison realizes that the facts of American society are implied in racial identity. The facts being that the myth of the black race is taken for reality, and that to white Americans, blacks are invisible--they have no real voice. Therefore, the closer the narrator of the novel gets to individuality, the more he is able to stray away from racial identity and the politics that come with it. The narrator recreates himself by killing the mentality of his younger self (the self that lacks “infinite possibilities,” the self controlled by society). He “shakes off [this] old skin” through narration.

 

For the narrator of Ellison’s Invisible Man, the process of writing liberates him from racial identity, or at least it liberates his mind from racial identity; it allows the narrator to see himself as an individual and thus allows him to see the possibilities that come with self-knowledge. The narrator’s determination to confine his tale through the perspective of his younger self, ultimately allows him to change the frustration he feels in the beginning of the story into consciousness and insight. Through his narration, the underground narrator of Invisible Man develops a growing self-awareness and realizes everything that he was too blind to see as a young man. He was too blind to notice the existence of society’s myth of the besmirched nature of blacks. He doesn’t understand that White America is pleased when they can reinforce this myth through cases such as Trueblood and his story of inadvertent incest. He was too blind to notice the flaw in Washington’s agenda--to deny social equality and accept White America in order to obtain a better economic status--which would ultimately keep segregation alive. He looked up to men like Norton and Mr. Emerson’s son (who even asks “Who has identity anymore anyway?”), too blind to see that both men have a rather weak sense of self when compared to Trueblood, who can openly declare, “I ain’t nobody but myself,” and the vet who, unlike the narrator’s younger self, is able to see the “simple facts of life” (184, 67, 153).

 

Along these lines, it should also be stated that the younger narrator in Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison gives speeches for the Brotherhood, all the while not realizing that he’s being deceived and manipulated. More importantly, he is too blind to see his own invisibility. At one point the vet tells the younger narrator that he’s “hidden right out in the open…if only [he’d] realize it” (157). The vet tells him to be his “own father”--in a way, telling him to create himself, not allow a country to sire him--and that “the world is possibility if only you’ll discover it.” And sure enough, it is only until later in the novel, when past narrator comes closer to present narrator, does the Invisible Man actually see that he is an “invisible man,” a “material, a natural resource to be used. [He] had switched from the arrogant absurdity of Norton and emerson to that of Jack and the Brotherhood, and it all came out the same” (522).

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