Invisible Man (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Ralph Ellison
- First Published: 1952
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Social
- Time of Work: The 1940’s and early 1950’s
- Setting: The Deep South and New York City
- 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.)
Characters Discussed
The narrator, the canny, unnamed voice of the story. The narrator looks back on a life begun in the Deep South and brought north to the United States’ premier African American city-within-a-city. In language full of richly oblique double meanings and nuances, he speaks of writing “confession,” of ending his “residence underground,” and of implying in his own specific case history that of an altogether wider, historic black America.
Dr. A. Herbert Bledsoe, the president of the college that the narrator attends. In one guise, Bledsoe plays...
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