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The Invisible Man's Quest for Identity

Thus, by the analysis and the comparison of the different choices proposed to the invisible man, one is lead to the progression he passes through.
             2. The Invisible Man's Quest for Identity.
             2. 1 Disillusionment from the Philosophy of Booker T. Washington.
             The first chapters of the book describe the narrator as an innocent and naive boy attending a black college in the South. Until his expulsion he has lived with the - later abandoned - illusion that by receiving education and exercising humility towards whites he will be able to "help shape the destiny of [the black] people" (31). To achieve this goal he believes "with all [his] heart and soul" (84) in the principles of Booker T. Washington - in the novel impersonated by the college's founder - with whom he identifies himself to such a degree, that he visualized himself "as a potential Booker T. Washington" (19). The yet unsophisticated acceptation of these values by the young man can also be seen in the close relation of his speech at the smoker in chapter one to Washington's Atlanta Exposition Address, which Ellison in parts copied literally. In this speech it is also well depicted how the protagonist practices humility and subservience towards whites as it contains exactly, "what such people of the time typically wanted and expected to hear" (Sten: 93). Thus granting him "a thunderous applause" (30) and the college scholarship.
             As he gets thrown out of the college by Bledsoe, for taking Mr Norton to places around the campus that this one was not supposed to see, the invisible man's identity which was closely linked with the college's philosophy ("Here within this quiet greenness I possessed the only identity I had ever known . ", 84) is demolished. Nevertheless he still holds on to Washington's ideas since he does not know any other possibility. Bledsoe justifies his action by blaming the narrator for having "caused this school incalculable damage" (117) and "as the leader of this institution [he could not] possibly let this pass" (118).


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