Numerous dualities pervade throughout Ralph Ellison's classic novel, "Invisible Man": sight and blindness, unity and separation, identity and invisibility, and abandonment and gain. This bipolarity appears consistently as a major pattern in IM's decisions and actions, and turns him into a stronger individual capable of facing his true identity as it did in. "Keeping] [himself] Running" (33), IM, the protagonist, gains his paths that would guide him out of the toilsome world and toward his true identity through numerous abandonments of his conceptual possessions. .
IM ironically obtains opportunities that would guide him to the answer of the troubled quest for identity through his abandonment of his pride and dignity as a human. Enduring a group of old, white men shouting, "Leggo, nigger! Leggo!" (28), IM fights at the humiliating Battle Royal with his passion to deliver a speech about the advancement of black Americans. Although IM eventually gives in to the white M.C. who terrorizes him for saying "social equality" instead of "social responsibility" (31), his surrender to the dehumanization is not actually disgraceful, for it gave him the opportunity to "KeepRunning" or to step into his long journey toward identity (33). At college, where he arrived with the opportunity he has earned through the Battle, IM continues on toward the answer to his troubled quest. IM encounters another critical moment in his journey when he finds out that Dr. Bledsoe wants him out of the college and to go to New York City. "[IM] fairly shiver[s]" when going to meet Dr. Bledsoe, or one of the "men of power" (137). Intimidated, IM "convinces himself [that] [he] would have to submit to punishment" (147), once again abandoning his pride as a man. Such abandonment shuts IM's door to the world of college, but at the same time opens another that leads him to the City, in which IM can see himself in a real world and contemplate on his true identity.