Invisible Man. Ralph Ellison. New York:

Signet, 1952. 503 pp.

Hopefully someone never picks up Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, mistaking it for the science fiction novel The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells. As great a book as Invisible Man is , I can not help but feel that one would be woefully disoriented reading Ellison’s distillation of his thoughts on race and identity in novel form when one expected a story about an actual invisible man.

However, maybe that is a hope in vain, because Invisible Man is a novel that will disorient almost anyone who reads it. The book is about an African American man who has rejected in the mainstream world and has holed up in a basement, through discussing the events that lead him there issues of racial harmony, the illusion of success, and black nationalism are discussed.

The book starts out with the main character/ narrator (who remains unnamed through the novel” announcing that he is an “invisible man”, and then goes on to say that he is this way “because people refuse to see him” ( Ellison 7). This sets up mind boggling questions in the first paragraph of the book, which is that if people can’t see him because they didn’t see him in the past,  has he been invisible forever?, and why can’t they choose to see him now?

This disorientation enhances the novel, because the novel is one that is built on top of confusion, and the main character’s dealing with confusion. Whether his place in society, behavior around whites, or his own “invisibility” there is not a clear answer for

any of these problems. Which makes sense considering the time period the author wrote it in( the 1950s)  was a rather dark place for civil rights and most everything would not have a straightforward solution. The stream of consciousness style that Ellison uses, enhances this confusion more thoroughly. In fact this style was picked because Ellison thought that the modern styles of day such as Naturalism could not represent what he wanted to represent.

All in all, Invisible Man is a very challenging book, and I felt as Ellison examined aforementioned issues in a dark and interesting way. However that’s not to say that there is no humor to be found in the book, a dealing with mental patients early in the book grim as it may be, resulted in gales of laughter from myself. So I for one would recommend Invisible Man to anyone who wouldn’t mind delving into some weighty issues and different prose style then one is currently used to, the book is supremely rewarding.