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2baswood
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
This is an extraordinary novel that reads like a jazz rendition of an old New Orleans standard tune; it has themes a plenty, highs and lows, caricatures, exaggerations, is riotously funny and strains at the seams to hold it's central motif. The hero, whose name is kept secret is the invisible man of the title and his story is told in the first person. He is not literally invisible, but it is the "real me" his true self that other people cannot see and Ellison is suggesting that this is the issue for many people. It was particularly applicable to black people in 1952 when the novel was published and was seen as a novel of protest for black people who were striving to achieve equality and who were fighting a white majority.
The book can be read as a bildungsroman as we follow the hero through a number of set piece events; the battle royal, his expulsion from college, his job in the paint factory, his work for the Brotherhood, the death of Clifton his colleague and finally; the riot in Harlem. At the end of these events our hero has learnt much about himself and the world around him; "None of us know who he is and where he is going" he says in an epilogue, but it is evident that some people need to have control over others and these others are the invisible people. Everything our hero attempts to achieve turns to dust and other people suffer; his repeated question is "Did I do something wrong" it is only when he realises that he is not to blame that he can attain some sort of peace with himself.
The set piece events are exaggerated for effect and they can be very funny, but the humour is sometimes black. The first of these is the battle royal where a number of young negroes are rounded up to fight until the last man is left standing at a smokers club. Many of the pillars of the community are present to watch and the atmosphere becomes something akin to an event that could have been staged in the Coliseum at Rome as first the young boys are made to watch a nude blonde woman before starting in on the fighting. The survivors are then encouraged to fight for coins, scraps of metal that have been placed on an electrified metal meshing before their ordeal is over. Our hero has been roped into the event even though he is ostensibly there to make a speech as a reward for his oratorical skills at school. He finally gets to make his speech and impresses enough to win a scholarship to a black college. Other set pieces involving our hero are equally dramatic and equally funny. He chauffeurs a white trustee of his college and takes him to the old slave quarters of the town ending up at a bordello, where he quickly loses control of events. When he moves up to New York he gets a job in a paint factory and succeeds in being unwittingly instrumental in blowing up the plant. Everything seems to happen to him and at times it reads like a particularly rumbustious comedy as he lurches from one disaster to another. Ellison manages to move the story along at a cracking pace during these passages, but sometimes loses a little control as the humour can be in a sort of unnatural tension with our hero's attempts to find a meaning to everything that is cracking off around him. There is no doubting that it is fun to read and elements of illusion and even fantasy add to the mix and the novel borders on being a Rabelaisian nightmare at times; I am thinking here of our hero in the paint factory infirmary, undergoing a kind of lobotomy as a cure for his sickness. Is he mad one wonders? Is it all a dream? these questions contrast with some gritty realism forcing the reader to continually take stock of what is happening.
Illusion and fantasy elements are given extra credence by some unforgettable caricatures of leading characters. Lucius Brockway, the janitor in the basement of the paint factory, who may or may not be have delusions of grandeur, Ras the destroyer; the black activist who charges into the riot in Harlem, spear in hand on an old nag. Brother Jack the red haired one eyed leader of the Brotherhood who imposes a Kafka like discipline and secrecy over much of the Brotherhoods tactics. These larger than life men and women just stray far enough outside of true characterisation to turn them into symbols of a deeper malaise and there is much symbolism in this novel. Darkness and light are the most obvious, but there is also chaos, control, blindness, invisibility, music and illusion.
One mustn't lose sight that the novel is about a 'them and us' situation, blacks and whites. The whites are in control of much that is important and our hero sees his role as raising the consciousness of black people and in doing so Ellison raises the consciousness of the reader to the racial issues affecting America in the 1950's. The book can be seen as a historical document of race relations at the time written by a black man writing with passion and zeal about real issues in America. There are very few shades of grey, but I think it would be a mistake to limit the books message to this idea, as what was true for black people in America is equally true for many minorities today. It is a book that highlights the plight of invisible people everywhere who are subject to unjust control of their lives in an effort to keep them invisible. Our hero comes to a sort of realisation at the end and Ellison starts the novel with a powerhouse of a prologue where he sets up many of the symbols that are key to his text.
The shock value of the novel has dissipated over the intervening years, but the energy and quality of much of the writing is still there to be admired. It is not evenly paced and sometimes gets a little lost in its own energy, but Ellison stops it running away with itself. Some brilliant set pieces and there is much to discuss especially the symbolism, although it can feel a little uneven. An important book and one that I greatly enjoyed. A four star read (probably would have been five stars in 1952)
This is an extraordinary novel that reads like a jazz rendition of an old New Orleans standard tune; it has themes a plenty, highs and lows, caricatures, exaggerations, is riotously funny and strains at the seams to hold it's central motif. The hero, whose name is kept secret is the invisible man of the title and his story is told in the first person. He is not literally invisible, but it is the "real me" his true self that other people cannot see and Ellison is suggesting that this is the issue for many people. It was particularly applicable to black people in 1952 when the novel was published and was seen as a novel of protest for black people who were striving to achieve equality and who were fighting a white majority.
The book can be read as a bildungsroman as we follow the hero through a number of set piece events; the battle royal, his expulsion from college, his job in the paint factory, his work for the Brotherhood, the death of Clifton his colleague and finally; the riot in Harlem. At the end of these events our hero has learnt much about himself and the world around him; "None of us know who he is and where he is going" he says in an epilogue, but it is evident that some people need to have control over others and these others are the invisible people. Everything our hero attempts to achieve turns to dust and other people suffer; his repeated question is "Did I do something wrong" it is only when he realises that he is not to blame that he can attain some sort of peace with himself.
The set piece events are exaggerated for effect and they can be very funny, but the humour is sometimes black. The first of these is the battle royal where a number of young negroes are rounded up to fight until the last man is left standing at a smokers club. Many of the pillars of the community are present to watch and the atmosphere becomes something akin to an event that could have been staged in the Coliseum at Rome as first the young boys are made to watch a nude blonde woman before starting in on the fighting. The survivors are then encouraged to fight for coins, scraps of metal that have been placed on an electrified metal meshing before their ordeal is over. Our hero has been roped into the event even though he is ostensibly there to make a speech as a reward for his oratorical skills at school. He finally gets to make his speech and impresses enough to win a scholarship to a black college. Other set pieces involving our hero are equally dramatic and equally funny. He chauffeurs a white trustee of his college and takes him to the old slave quarters of the town ending up at a bordello, where he quickly loses control of events. When he moves up to New York he gets a job in a paint factory and succeeds in being unwittingly instrumental in blowing up the plant. Everything seems to happen to him and at times it reads like a particularly rumbustious comedy as he lurches from one disaster to another. Ellison manages to move the story along at a cracking pace during these passages, but sometimes loses a little control as the humour can be in a sort of unnatural tension with our hero's attempts to find a meaning to everything that is cracking off around him. There is no doubting that it is fun to read and elements of illusion and even fantasy add to the mix and the novel borders on being a Rabelaisian nightmare at times; I am thinking here of our hero in the paint factory infirmary, undergoing a kind of lobotomy as a cure for his sickness. Is he mad one wonders? Is it all a dream? these questions contrast with some gritty realism forcing the reader to continually take stock of what is happening.
Illusion and fantasy elements are given extra credence by some unforgettable caricatures of leading characters. Lucius Brockway, the janitor in the basement of the paint factory, who may or may not be have delusions of grandeur, Ras the destroyer; the black activist who charges into the riot in Harlem, spear in hand on an old nag. Brother Jack the red haired one eyed leader of the Brotherhood who imposes a Kafka like discipline and secrecy over much of the Brotherhoods tactics. These larger than life men and women just stray far enough outside of true characterisation to turn them into symbols of a deeper malaise and there is much symbolism in this novel. Darkness and light are the most obvious, but there is also chaos, control, blindness, invisibility, music and illusion.
One mustn't lose sight that the novel is about a 'them and us' situation, blacks and whites. The whites are in control of much that is important and our hero sees his role as raising the consciousness of black people and in doing so Ellison raises the consciousness of the reader to the racial issues affecting America in the 1950's. The book can be seen as a historical document of race relations at the time written by a black man writing with passion and zeal about real issues in America. There are very few shades of grey, but I think it would be a mistake to limit the books message to this idea, as what was true for black people in America is equally true for many minorities today. It is a book that highlights the plight of invisible people everywhere who are subject to unjust control of their lives in an effort to keep them invisible. Our hero comes to a sort of realisation at the end and Ellison starts the novel with a powerhouse of a prologue where he sets up many of the symbols that are key to his text.
The shock value of the novel has dissipated over the intervening years, but the energy and quality of much of the writing is still there to be admired. It is not evenly paced and sometimes gets a little lost in its own energy, but Ellison stops it running away with itself. Some brilliant set pieces and there is much to discuss especially the symbolism, although it can feel a little uneven. An important book and one that I greatly enjoyed. A four star read (probably would have been five stars in 1952)
3baswood
Ralph Ellison only published one novel in his lifetime. He was a musician mainly jazz I think and he wrote some essays on the subject and so I hope to get to these this year.
4rebeccanyc
I think Ellison studied music in college and was a life-long music lover, but I don't think he ever worked as a musician. He was a writer and a college professor, as far as I know.
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