Narrator's Invisibility
The prologue of Invisible Man introduces the major themes that define the rest of the novel. The metaphors of invisibility and blindness allow for an examination of the effects of racism on the victim and the perpetrator. Because the narrator is black, whites refuse to see him as an actual, three-dimensional person. Therefore, he views himself as invisible and describes them as blind, eventually accepting his invisibility as almost a superpower. Throughout the novel, the narrator remains obscure to the reader, never revealing his name. The names that he is given in the hospital and in the Brotherhood, the name of his college, even the state in which the college is located all go unidentified. The narrator remains a voice and never emerges as an external and quantifiable presence. This obscurity emphasizes his status as an “invisible man” as which he introduces himself in the prologue. He explains that his invisibility owes not to some biochemical accident or supernatural c...