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 cause but rather to the unwillingness of other people to notice him as he is black. He describes his anguished, aching need to make others recognize him, and says he has found that such attempts rarely succeed. Now, the narrator hibernates in his invisibility, preparing for his unnamed action. He states that the beginning of his story is really the end.

The narrator describes himself as an “invisible man” because he has decided that the world is full of blind men and sleepwalkers who cannot see him for what he is. The motif of invisibility pervades the novel, often manifesting itself hand in hand with the motif of blindness: one person becomes invisible because another is blind. The novel treats invisibility ambiguously. It can bring disempowerment, but it can also bring freedom and mobility. Indeed, it is the freedom the narrator derives from his anonymity that enables him to tell his story. Moreover, as will be shown later, both the veteran at the Golden Day and the narrator’s grandfather seem to endorse invisibility as a position from which one may safely exert power over others, or at least undermine others’ power, without being caught. The narrator demonstrates this power in the prologue, when he literally draws upon electrical power from his hiding place underground; the electric company is aware of its losses but cannot locate their source.

For much of the story, and especially in the chapters before he joins the Brotherhood, the narrator appears extremely innocent and inexperienced. His innocence prevents him from recognizing the truth behind others’ errant behavior and leads him to try to fulfill their misguided expectations. He remains extremely vulnerable to the identity that society thrusts upon him as an African American. He plays the role of the servile black man to the white men in Chapter One; he plays the industrious, uncomplaining disciple of Booker T. Washington during his college years; he agrees to act as the Brotherhood’s black spokesperson, which allows the Brotherhood to use him.

“Son, after I’m gone I want you to keep up the good fight. I never told you, but our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy’s country ever since I give up my gun back in the Reconstruction. Live with your head in the lion’s mouth. I want you to overcome ‘em with yeses, undermine ‘em with grins, agree ‘em to death and destruction, let ‘em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open” (Ellison 16).

The central thrust of these last sentences – that white society is an enemy – is not so much misunderstood as set aside. The narrator rather feels guilty and is haunted by his grandfather’s words when he is rewarded by white folks for his good conduct. As mentioned earlier, the narrator’s innocence sometimes causes him to misunderstand important events in the story. In this way, he fails to examine the observable nature of the white folks’ approval.

For instance, the narrator accepts his scholarship from the brutish white men with gladness and gratitude after the degradation and humiliation that involved the “battle royal” (a graphic illustration of the narrator’s grandfather’s dictum that “life is a war”) and the holding of his speech in Chapter One. He passes no judgment on the white men’s behavior. Here, the white men’s actions provide enough evidence for the reader to denounce the men as appalling racists. While the narrator can be somewhat unreliable in this regard, Ellison makes sure that the reader perceives the narrator’s blindness.