Chapter I. The valuable contribution of well

CHAPTER II.”THE INVISIBLE MAN” AS AN EXAMPLE OF THE BUILDINGSROMAN GENRE
2.1.Brief reference to the chronological fashion of the novel
As an example of the bildungsroman genre, the plot of Invisible Man details the unnamed narrator’s moral and psychological development. The novel follows this development from the time the narrator graduates high school through his difficult first few years of real-world experience. As the novel progresses, the narrator feels increasingly burdened by his position in the world and confused about his identity. Ellison signals the narrator’s sense of burden and confusion by having him collect a series of objects, each of which symbolizes a particular encounter or experience. Some of these objects indicate the narrator’s connection to racism and the history of slavery. For instance, he carries Brother Tarp’s leg chain, Tod Clifton’s “Sambo” doll, and the broken pieces of Mary’s racist coin bank. Other objects pertain directly to the narrator’s confused identity. For instance, he carries the fragment of paper where Brother Jack wrote down his Brotherhood name. He also carries the “Rinehart” disguise, which enables him to pretend he’s someone he’s not. Collectively, these objects represent the burden of historical and imposed identities. At the end of the novel, the narrator destroys these objects or otherwise casts them away in order to discover who he really is.
The narrator tells his story in a linear, chronological fashion. However, he speaks in the past tense from the point of view of his present situation in a secret underground lair. The novel therefore begins and ends at the same point in the present time, creating a plot structure that circles back around to its original starting point. This structure enables the narrator to recount the various experiences that landed him in his cellar, and to use the act of storytelling to make sense of these experiences. Thus, despite being set in the past, the act of recollecting his past helps the narrator understand the present. In particular, this act helps him comprehend his personal and social status as an “invisible man.” By the end of the book, the reader has gained a full understanding of why the narrator retreated from society in the first place. Yet at the same time, after telling his story, the narrator also explains to the reader why he decides to return to the world above and try to change it for the better.
For the most part, Invisible Man unfolds episodically. Particularly in the first half of the novel, the narrator passes rather quickly through a series of formative experiences. These experiences include the battle royal in chapter 1, the encounter with Jim Trueblood in Chapter 2, the adventure at the Golden Day in chapter 3, Reverend Homer A. Barbee’s evening lecture in Chapter 5, the narrator’s expulsion from college in Chapter 6, and so on. This kind of episodic plotting continues until the narrator first meets Brother Jack, who has witnessed the narrator’s innate gift as a street organizer. Jack entices him to join the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood section comprises the second half of the novel, and though many different episodes take place throughout this section, the narrator tells this part of the story in a more improvisational way that recalls the structures of jazz music. Instead of each chapter recounting a distinct experience, the narrative becomes more fluid and less focused on uniquely dramatic events. Time also becomes more fluid, and sometimes months will pass between chapters. As the storytelling comes to rely less on the organizing principle of individual episodes, it betokens the chaotic events that conclude the novel. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison introduces the major themes that define the novel. The motifs of invisibility and blindness allow for an examination of the effects of racism on the victim and the perpetrator.The novel also places itself within larger literary and philosophical contexts. Especially apparent is the influence of Existentialism.At the time of Invisible Man’s publication in 1952, had reached the height of its popularity; Ellison’s book proposes to undertake a similar examination of the meaning of individual existence, but through the lens of race relations in postwar America. In existentialist works,physical infirmities frequently symbolize internal struggles; Ellison locates the tension of race relations in similar conditions: invisibility and blindness.The motif of invisibility manifests itself with the motif of blindness. The novel portrays blindness in a negative light.Invisibility can bring freedom and mobility. The positive program of existentialism calls for the individual to affirm his or her own worth and sense of meaning despite the absurdity of the universe. The narrator’s realization of the world’s absurdity prepares him to write his memoirs and eventually cast off his invisibility at the end of the novel.
Critical Essays Symbols and Symbolism in Invisible Man
A master of poetic devices, Ralph Ellison incorporates numerous symbols and archetypes (universal symbols)⁷ into his novel, each providing a unique perspective on the narrative and supporting the dominant themes of invisibility and identity. Dreams and visions generally symbolize the power of the subconscious mind. In the novel, numerous dreams and visions symbolize the narrator's retreat from reality, seeking solace in memories of his childhood or days at the college, often occurring as he escapes into his music. Ellison merges dreams and reality to underscore the surrealistic nature of the narrator's experience and to highlight the gross disparities between the realities of black life and the myth of the American Dream.
Several key symbols enhance Invisible Man's overall themes: The narrator's calfskin briefcase symbolizes his psychological baggage; Mary Rambo's broken, cast-iron bank symbolizes the narrator's shattered image; and Brother Tarp's battered chain links symbolize his freedom from physical as well as mental slavery. Other symbolism can generally be divided into four categories: colors, numbers, animals, and machines (humans depicted as dolls, puppets, or robots).
Color Symbolism.Ellison uses color to convey the novel's themes and motifs throughout the book, consistently weaving references to the following colors into the text:
Gold. Gold symbolizes power, elusive wealth, or the illusion of prosperity. References to gold and variations thereof include: the Golden Day, an ironic commentary on the lives of the veterans who, instead of looking forward to their golden years of retirement, escape only once a week on a golden day from the mental hospital; the brass tokens, which the boys mistake for gold coins; and the naked blonde's hair, described as "yellow like a Kewpie doll's." Yellow also alludes to light and enlightenment.
Red. Red, often associated with love and passion as in red roses, generally symbolizes blood, rage, or danger in the novel. Brother Jack's red hair (which, along with his blue eyes and white skin, underscore his all-American identity), the red-faced men at the battle royal, the vet's red wheelchair (underscoring his courage), and the frequent references to Santa Claus as a symbol of evil are part of a red motif that accents unpleasant personalities and symbolizes the narrator's uneasiness evoked by these characters. Numerous references to red, white, and blue — the white men at the battle royal with their blue eyes and red faces — mock the principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness symbolized by the Stars and Stripes.
Black/White. Ellison makes several profound statements about American society and the language of racism (white generally symbolizes goodness and purity, while black symbolizes evil and corruption) by reversing traditional black/white symbolism and its associated white-is-right philosophy. Black is generally portrayed as good and positive (black skin, Ras's "magnificent black horse," and the "black powerhouse"). White is associated with negative images of coldness, death, and artifice: snow, the white blindfolds, the white fog, the images of a mysterious "white death," the "cold, white rigid chair" at the factory hospital, the optic white paint produced at the Liberty Paint Factory, and Brother Jack's "buttermilk white" glass eye. However, in keeping with Ellison's tendency to reject polar opposites, this symbolism is sometimes reversed: the fragrant white magnolias and the narrator's favorite dessert, vanilla ice cream with sloe gin.
Blue. Blue alludes to the blues, a form of African American folk music characterized by lyrics that lament the hardships of life and the pain of lost love. In the novel, the blues are characterized by Louis Armstrong's "What Did I Do to Be So Black and Blue?" The song haunts the narrator throughout the narrative. The blues motif is also emphasized through frequent references to musical instruments, blues language (exemplified in the excerpts from black folk songs such as "Poor Robin") and references to blues singers such as Bessie Smith and to characters in the novel who sing the blues, such as Jim Trueblood and Mary Rambo. Focusing on the harsh realities of life that black men and women such as Jim and Mary overcome through their strong religious beliefs and unwavering faith that tomorrow will be a better day, Ellison's novel provides a literary counterpart to the blues. The blues provides a musical counterpart to Ellison's novel. References to the color blue also include the blues-singing cart-man's discarded blueprints, the white men's blue eyes, and the naked blonde's eyes, "as blue as a baboon's butt."
Gray. Like white, gray (a slang term used by blacks to refer to whites) is generally associated with negative images. Examples include gray smoke, the dull gray weathered cabins in the former slave quarters, and the gray tinge in the white paint at the paint factory, which symbolizes the bland and homogenous result of mixing black and white cultures without respecting the unique qualities of each. Gray is also alluded to in the fog that greets the narrator upon his arrival at the paint factory, which casts a gloomy and dismal shadow over the landscape and foreshadows the narrator's horrific experiences at the factory and factory hospital.
Green. Although generally associated with nature, in the novel, green is the color of the lush campus verdure and money, the narrator's main motivator.
While Ellison's images of the South are alive with colors of nature — green grass, red clay roads, white magnolias, purple and silver thistle — his images of the North are painted primarily in shades of gray and white. Thus, color contrasts the rural South with its farms and plantations, providing people a means of living off the land, against the urban North, depicted as cold, sterile, and inhospitable.
Number Symbolism.Number symbolism is common in mythology and the Bible, from which Ellison draws many of his symbols and images. The following numbers are especially significant throughout the novel:
Three. Three is widely regarded as a divine number. Many myths and religions have triads of hero-gods: the ancient African deities Ogun, Obatala, and Sango; the Greek gods Zeus, Hera, and Poseidon; and the Christian Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The universe moves through three cycles (growth, dissolution, and redemption) which mirror the three phases of the life cycle (birth, life, and death). In Greek and Roman mythology, the heroic quest consists of three stages (departure, initiation, and return). In the European worldview, time is divided into three parts: past, present, and future, but according to the African worldview, reality consists of three worlds: the worlds of the ancestors, the living, and the unborn. In the novel, the number three occurs at several key incidents: Waiting to give his speech on "Dispossession" at the sports arena, the narrator sees three white mounted policemen on three black horses. He notices three brass rings among Brother and Sister Provo's possessions. Trying to escape from Ras's men, he sees "three men in natty cream-colored summer suits . . . wearing dark glasses."
Seven. Seven signifies completeness and perfection: seven wonders of the ancient world, seven seas, and seven ages of man. According to the Bible, God created the world in seven days. Biblical scholars also refer to the seven last words of Christ, meaning the seven last sentences Christ allegedly uttered, compiled from all the Gospels. According to the Jewish religion, there are seven heavens, of which the seventh is the place of God. In his classic book, The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois refers to "the Negro" as "the seventh son." In the novel, Dr. Bledsoe gives the narrator seven letters addressed to seven prospective employers. By focusing on the number seven, Ellison underscores Du Bois' statement, highlighting the narrator's experiences as symbolizing the experiences of black men in white America.
Twelve. Twelve, like seven, symbolizes completeness and perfection. But in African American folklore, the number twelve also refers to playing the dozens — a wordplay ritual that often involves insulting one's mother.
Machine Symbolism.Through frequent references to "the man in the machine" (the first occurs in Chapter 2, where Trueblood dreams that he is trapped inside the clock), Ellison emphasizes the stark contrasts between the agricultural South, with its farms and plantations, and the industrial North, with its factories and steel structures. This image is particularly powerful in Chapters 11 and 12, which focus on the Liberty Paint Factory and the factory hospital. The narrator is trapped inside the glass and metal box. In the final dream sequence, the bridge (the "machine") becomes a man and walks away. Machine symbolism emphasizes the destruction of the individual by industry and technology, highlighting the lack of empathy and emotion in a society where people are indifferent to the needs of others.