Analysis

Invisible Man is a novel by Ralph Ellison, published in 1952. Ralph Ellison was a African American writer and attended Tuskegee University. Written 2 years before The Civil rights Movement, Invisible Man addresses issues facing African Americans such as racial segregation and discrimination. This milestone in American literature, is a first person account of the prejudices and paradoxes associated to being black in America.

Invisible man is illuminated by comparison to the two reformist racial policies of Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery (1901), Atlanta Compromise Speech (1895) and W.E.B Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk (1903). These Nonfiction works each portray very different outlooks on the future of black Americans. Washington advocated for blacks to welcome a tolerance for segregation and to have submissive attitudes in hopes of impressing the whites into “granting” them proper recognition. Du Bois introduced this concept of double consciousness ­­­ “the sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others,” (The Soul of Black Folks 25) which he claims blacks have to reconcile. Invisible man exhibits aspects of each ideology throughout his development.

The narrator starts his journey as a successful and hopeful high school graduate whose Washingtonian’s style speech advocating the importance of humility and submission to black progress earns him an opportunity to present his speech to the town’s most powerful white men. After establishing a link between his blackness and invisibility, the narrator at the start of the novel implicitly criticizes his younger self’s alignment with Washington’s racial policies. He overtly states, “in those pre­invisible days I visualized myself as a potential Booker T. Washington” (18). The various acts of oppression and indignity to which the protagonist is exposed to illuminates the greatest failure of Washington’s racial reform policy of passive obedience and respectability politics.

Respectability politics refers to attempts by marginalized group to ‘act right’ and to show that their social values aligned with mainstream values. Though the ideology of respectability politics is a modern term, Washington embodied and advocated for this concept in his Atlanta Compromise speech, in which he promised the predominantly white audience that “you and your families will be surrounded by the most patient, faithful, law­abiding, and unrestful people... we shall stand by you with a devotion that no foreigner can approach, ready to lay down our lives, if need be”.

The first act of oppression to which the narrator is exposed to occurs when he is invited at a community gathering of the town’s leading white men under the pretense of giving his Washingtonian style speech. He later discovers there would be a battle royal, a boxing match in which he would be forced to participate in. Throughout the physical and psychological abuse the narrator endures in the battle royal, he continues telling himself that if he impresses the white men he will be rewarded and repeatedly asked

himself, “Would they recognize my ability? What would they give me?” (24). By allowing himself to be blindfolded and manipulated, he allowed whites to further demean him to a point of his own admission, “I have no dignity” (22). The narrator’s Washingtonian attitude ends up paying off as he is rewarded with gold coins and a scholarship to a black college. These rewards are soon called into question by the narrator’s realization that the gold pieces are worthless tokens and through a dream in which he opens the envelope containing his scholarship and finds an ominous message, “Keep this nigga­boy running” (33).

The narrator maintains his white loving and Washington’s passive obedience self defeating mindset even when he gets to New York. He believes that if he looks/act respectable and impresses important people he will be able to return to the Institute.

The novel goes as far as comparing Washington’s appeasement to slavery through the character of Mr. Emerson Jr. Emerson Jr. is the son of one of the wealthy white trustees to whom the narrator appeals for a job, armed with a confidential “recommendation” letter. Emerson Jr. shows the narrator how vain and fruitless his Washingtonian pursuit of success is by unveiling the malicious character of the Dr.Bledsoe (recommender), and declares “You have been freed” (192). However, when he get to harlem he has to confront a dilemma referred as double­consciousness by W.E.B. Du Bois in The Soul of Black Folks.

It is not after being electronically lobotomized in the factory’s clinic of Liberty Paints that the narrator finally breaks away from the confining passive obedience of Washington and confronts W.E.B Du Bois’ perpetual conflict to reconcile his American self with his black self. Mary, a strong, motherly black woman acts as catalyst to this reconciliation. She embraces her heritage and black culture, which helps the narrator reconnect with his heritage. This is evident through acts such as him switching from common English to ebonics during his speech at the Provos’ eviction: “They ain’t ​ got nothing, they caint ​ get ​ nothing, they never ​ had ​ nothing” (279). He also stops concerning himself with how others viewed him, thus freeing himself of Du Bois’ double consciousness.

Through his encounter with a street vendor selling sweet baked yams, the narrator rids himself of his concern on how others view him, as he unabashedly devours two sweet yams on the street of New York: “I no longer felt ashamed of the things I had always loved.... What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?” (266).

The narrator’s journey through defeat after defeat shows Ellison’s direct criticism towards these racial reform policies. Through the actions of the narrator, Ellison presents the detrimental impact of Washington appeasement and self­defeating Du Bois conflict of selves. Both of these ideas has a bases on the idea that black Americans should define themselves by their race which is problematic according to the novel. In the end, the narrator rejects both ideologies and appears to arrives at his own philosophical position, which seems to have an introspective quality about itself. The narrator’s philosophical position seems to state that blacks should embrace their individuality and common humanity rather than fixate on issues of race and nationality.

Works Cited: ­

Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk. New York: Modern Library, 2003.

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Ellison, Ralph W. Invisible Man. 2nd ed. New York: Vintage International, 1995.

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Washington, Booker T. Up from Slavery. Toronto, Canada: Dover Publications, Inc., 1995.

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Louis R. Harlan. "Booker T. Washington Delivers the 1895 Atlanta Compromise Speech." ​ Booker T. Washington Delivers the 1895 Atlanta Compromise Speech​ .

N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Mar. 2016. <​ http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/39/​ >.