Invisible To Society

In the prologue of The Invisible Man, the narrator describes how he lives an invisible life, unseen to the society he lives in. He is not invisible “like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe,” but by virtue of how others react to him because they do not accept his reality. The narrator, an African American, struggles with his identity as he is judged by his cover rather than his book and is often grouped into labels such as just a black man, a southerner, or a member of the Brotherhood.

“I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids -- and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination -- indeed, everything and anything except me.”

The narrator also describes an instance involving him bumping into a white man, and in response was called an insulting name. The white man continues to insult the narrator with vulgar names even after he pulls out a knife and threatens to kill him.

"He lay there, moaning on the asphalt; a man almost killed by a phantom. It unnerved me. I was both disgusted and ashamed. I was like a drunken man myself, wavering about on weakened legs. Then I was amused. Something in this man's thick head had sprung out and beaten him within an inch of his life. I began to laugh at this crazy discovery. Would he have awakened at the point of death? Would Death himself have freed him for wakeful living? But I didn't linger. I ran away into the dark, laughing so hard I feared I might rupture myself."

It was then that the narrator realized that the white man did not see him. He saw the image of a nigger, and nothing else.  By calling the narrator a nigger, it dehumanized the narrator and reduced him to nothing more than just a black “mugger”. Ellison uses this instance in the chapter to distinguish that not only is the narrator invisible, but the whites in the society he is living in are also blind. They refuse to see and notice blacks as people. This paradox of true vision and understanding of a person’s character rather than image plays a huge role throughout the novel. The narrator takes pity on the man by calling him a “Poor fool, poor blind fool…. mugged by an invisible man!” This instance highlights the struggle for representation and identity acceptance by the narrator.

In Chapter one, the narrator describes the words of his dying grandfather on his deathbed.

“Live with your head in the lion's mouth. I want you to overcome 'em with yeses, undermine 'em with grins, agree 'em to death and destruction, let 'em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open…Learn it to the younguns," he whispered fiercely; then he died.”

The narrator’s grandfather advises that compliance is the best way to overcome a white-dominated society that fails to truly notice blacks. The façade of invisibility serves as both a theme and motif for the novel as the narrator vows to be visible. Ellison greatly shows how for whites, it is easy to miss something you are not looking for or do not care about. For the narrator, as a black male in the early 20th century, his search for acceptance from himself and society serves as his goal for social recognition and societal representation.

Questions:

1. Are all black people in the novel invisible or is it just the narrator?
2. How does the role of racial inequality and the motifs of blindness and invisibility contribute to how the narrator perceives himself and how others perceive him?
3. Do you believe that the narrator blames society for his invisibility just to cover up the fact that he struggles to see himself as well?