Invisible Man (Masterplots II: African American Literature Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Ralph Ellison
- First Published: 1952
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Social criticism
- Time of Work: The 1940’s and early 1950’s
- Setting: The Deep South and New York City
- Principal Characters: The narrator, Dr. A. Herbert Bledsoe, Mr. Norton, Brother Jack, Tod Clifton, Ras
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction, Social realism
- Subjects: African Americans, Values, New York, North America or North Americans, Northeast, U.S., Self-discovery, United States or Americans, Communism or communists, Politics, Racism, South or Southerners, New York City, Social issues, Education or educators, 1940’s, Alienation, 1930’s, Emotions, College life, Amputation, amputees, or prosthetics, Riots, Truthfulness and falsehood
- Locales: Harlem, NY, South (U.S.)
The Novel
Having spoken in the prologue of his need to come out into the light, to surface from a building that has been “rented strictly to whites” and “shut off and forgotten during the nineteenth century,” the narrator gives immediate notice that he is telling not a single but a typological, or multiple, story. Everything that has happened to him bears the shadow of prior African American history. He vows, however, that all past “hibernation,” all past “invisibility,” must now end. It falls to him to “illuminate”—that is, literally and figuratively to...
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