Editor's Choice
What are the narrator's dreams in "Invisible Man", and how are they fulfilled?
Quick answer:
The narrator’s dreams and goals change throughout the book, but his determination to discover his own identity is clear. He starts out with a desire to be a Booker T. Washington-type leader, but he eventually realizes that he is invisible because people refuse to see him. He then dreams of a better life for himself and decides that he must act alone in order to accomplish this goal. Once he realizes this, the hibernation is over; then he can move toward his final destination—his destiny—to become an individual who has embraced himself and cannot be ignored.
Ralph Ellison’s classic tale of self-discovery explores and distinguishes stereotypes and prejudices in the North and the South over a fifteen-year period from the mid-1930s. The author portrays the narrator not as a bitter protagonist but as a black man with dreams and aspirations living at a dark time in American history.
The narrator sets the stage for his quest to discover his own identity by stating,
I am an invisible man.
He is determined to find the identity he lacks, but realizes,
I am invisible ... simply because people refuse to see me.
The narrator exists in a subservient role in the South, from which he desires to escape. He recognizes his apparent plight in life but remains unable to discover what it really means to be black in America. Much of his naivete is based on his own inability to view his life experiences. He remains blind...
Unlock This Answer Now
Start your 48-hour free trial and get ahead in class. Boost your grades with access to expert answers and top-tier study guides. Thousands of students are already mastering their assignments—don't miss out. Cancel anytime.
Already a member? Log in here.
to them. Thus, his quest is clear. The narrator must alter his perspective and come out of the darkness.
Ellison demonstrates how blind the narrator is to his own persona and talents. He originally has dreams of achievement and states,
I visualized myself as a potential Booker T. Washington.
Still unable to capture his dreams, he begins to rely on his invisibility. When forced into a “battle royal,” he succumbs to a life of struggles as a black man in a society controlled by white people. Ellison blindfolds his heroic protagonist. The author symbolizes the obstacles to the narrator’s success as a result of his blindness to reality.
An underlying theme in the novel is the parallel of invisibility between those in white society who refuse to “see” the black man and the narrator, who refuses to see himself. To fulfill his goals, the literary hero overcomes these obstacles through a series of ordeals, each of which enlightens his vision and leads him out of the darkness. One such experience is the narrator’s rejection of the Marxist Brotherhood’s vision of a classless society. He understands that communism favors the “group” over the individual and that this philosophy is diametrically opposed to his individual quest for identity. He also notices how Dr. Bledsoe feigns humility in the presence of whites, but lies to them out of their sight. The narrator has been following the same process of accepting his subservient status. He must overcome the double standard.
Once the narrator understands that he has been focusing his life on the goals and values of those around him instead of his personal dreams, he begins to gain the self-reliance he seeks. He escapes from his self-imposed hibernation, establishes his identity, and paves his path to the future. Now, he must walk the walk:
The hibernation is over.
Although he remains “no less invisible,” he has learned it is up to him to change the vision. He can now go forward transformed.
At the beginning of the novel, the narrator wants to be a young Booker T. Washington: to be an educated, self-made man who stands for a strong work ethic. More than that, he wants to simply be an individual. He wants to be visible, to be seen for himself, not for his race, gender, socio-economic status, or as a representative of a group.
His "dream" of becoming an individual is, like the poem of Langston Hughes, "deferred" throughout the novel. With each new chapter comes an initiation, a self-discovery that his dream must be redefined or put on hold. At the beginning, before the Battle Royal, the narrator thought he was better than the other young black men in the ring. Because of his education and public speaking ability, he thought he held status in white society. After the fight, however, he realizes he is just like the other black men: blind with naivete and unseen by whites as an individual.
He will go through several more initiations that lead to this same self-discovery: with Dr. Bledsoe at college, with Lucious Brockway at the paint factory, with Tod Clifton in the Brotherhood, and with his own grandfather's curse.
At the end, the narrator is still invisible. So, he goes into hibernation. Unlike Dostoevsky's "underground man," the Invisible Man says he will emerge from his hole. In the Prologue he says:
A hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.
We can only assume that he does emerge with the same dream; we must assume that he will be seen as an individual.
So says the Enotes editor:
The invisible man starts his tale as an innocent, one who believes that "humility was the secret, indeed, the very essence of progress.’’ His greatest aspiration is to be an assistant to Dr. Bledsoe, the president of his college, who kowtows to whites in an attempt to hold on to his position. The invisible man believes, consciously or unconsciously, ‘‘the great false wisdom … that white is right’’ and that it is ‘‘advantageous to flatter rich white folks.’’ He grudgingly admires other blacks who do not share his scruples; for instance, he is both humiliated and fascinated by the sharecropper Jim Trueblood's self-confessed tale of incest, and he is similarly impressed by the vet at the Golden Day: ‘‘I wanted to tell Mr. Norton that the man was crazy and yet I received a fearful satisfaction from hearing him talk as he had to a white man.’’