Critical Analysis of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison is a distressingly honest portrayal of the struggle an African-American man felt as he tried to elevate his position in society in the United States during the 1950's. The protagonist, a man who name is never revealed to the reader, struggles to find individualism and identity in a time where racism almost always insures the repression of such. The narrator highlights his first-person account with several violent events; the least gruesome of which has an uncomfortable sickening effect on the reader. Bluntness, however, is a tool Ellison uses to effectively express his objective; Ellison strives to show that racism is uncomfortable. A key mechanism in the advancement of this point is violence. Ellison's gripping tales of race riots, street fights, and torture absorbs readers into his chronicle and shocks them with the protagonist's recurring struggles stemming from the underlying dilemma of racism. As the book progresses, the protagonist learns from his experiences with violence that it is impossible to live his life according to everyone else's directions. The violent experiences ultimately bring him to the realization that he must create a name for himself "and by himself "instead of accepting all the names and characterizations others give him. .
Violence manifests itself often in Invisible Man and quickly becomes one of the main themes. Immediately after introducing himself, the protagonist describes the battle royal in which he partook upon graduating from high school. He explains that he expected to recite his graduation speech to the "town's big-shots," but that when he arrived at the hall he was told that since he was to be there anyway he might as well take part in the battle royal as part of the entertainment. This is his first submission to an outside instruction, and the pattern continues throughout the book until his realization becomes more and more clear.