Invisible man

            Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is the story of an educated black man who has been oppressed and .
             controlled by white men throughout his life. As the narrator, he is nameless throughout the novel as he journeys .
             from the South, where he studies at an all-black college, to Harlem where he joins a Communist-like party .
             known as the Brotherhood. Throughout the novel, the narrator is on a search for his true identity. Several letters .
             are given to him by outsiders that provide him with a role: student, patient, and a member of the Brotherhood. .
             One by one he discards these as he continues to grow closer to the sense of his true self. The entire story can .
             be summed up when the narrator says "I'm an invisible man and it placed me in a hole- or showed me the hole I .
             was in." (455). During the novel, the narrator values several important things, which shape his identity as well .
             as his future. Through his experiences and the people he has met, the narrator discovers the important values .
             of his education, his invisibility, and the meaning of his grandfather's advice. .
             The narrator, a very intelligent man never had the chance to use his education to the full extent because .
             someone was always there putting him down. The narrator, looking back on his life, realizes how people .
             walked all over him; "All my life I had been working for something and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell .
             me what it was"(15). This shows how the narrator, being an African American growing up in the south, people .
             always told him what to do and how to do it. This is an example of racism, because although the narrator is very .
             well educated he still was not able to overcome the white supremacist society that he was surrounded by. Not .
             only was the narrator held back by whites, people of his own race also held him back. Letting people of his own .
             race talk to him as if they were more superior shows how weak of a man the narrator was; "Nigger this isn't any .