Student Zone

The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison seems to take place in the 1940's (maybe). It is told by a young black male in New York. He tells you how he started off his life doing well and always had good standing with the neighborhood rich white men, just like his grandfather did. What mixes up all of the invisible mans hard work up to that point is that right before his grandfather died he told him that he has wasted all of his time sucking up to these rich white men and has became a "traitor". This seems to be the main turning point when the invisable main starts getting a little crazy. He is living in a hole in the ground under an apartment building and he keeps playing this same Miles Davis song over and over again in his room with 500 lightbulbs wired across the ceiling, none of which he pays any electricity for. This could be his way of fighting back for his grandfather, by fighting the corporation. The book was a big stream of thoughts and was a little hard for me to follow the first time I read it.

The misfit and the invisible man seem to have a lot in common. They both tell you about how they were good, hardworking guys before they "turned". They both show intelligence, because they both do crazy things for a "valid" reason. Their personalities both harbor some kind of resentment to the past, but with the misfit you don't get to learn enough about him to tie it in. Both stories take place generally around the same time. You can tell that they are both take place before the civil rights movement. Its also interesting because the Misfit takes place in the south, while the invisible man takes place in the north. In US history it was well known that the south clenched on to racism much stronger and longer than the north did. All of or stories up untill this point have had a so to speak "crazy" character in them. Is this a trend?

Regarding Jamie's intro -- always write as much as you feel is necessary, relevant, and interesting. Thanks!

The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison depicts the story of an African American man who is searching for own identity. In the prologue, our narrator refers to himself as the invisible man he feels that people chose not to see him. He almost feels that his presence is the figment of other people’s imagination. Ellison is showing how the racial discrepancies towards African American man are being ignored and their presences are not being met. Feeling this invisible could be a blessing or a curse. The narrator believes that being invisible could be used to his advantage or make him feel like he does not exist. He bumps into a white man one night, he thought that he had heard a derogatory comment and attacked the white man. He started to pull his knife and realized that the white man might have not seen him because he blended into the darkness. Upon the next day he read the Daily News about his attack from the prior night. It seemed that the man had reported a mugging. Our narrator has such a strong violent influence to cause an attitude of awareness by fighting and sometimes he has to suppress that rage. He feels that he can take the higher road and fight back without being noticed, almost like a silent attack.
He has been stealing electricity and living in a basement without being seen. The perks of being that invisible has given his an opportunity to live rent free. With the free electricity he hooked up his ceiling with 1,369 light bulbs because the lights will give him a solid visible form that he’s been aching to confirm. He puts on a Louis Armstrong record and begins to ponder about his reality and questioning his identity. He tells us that his grandfather was a slave and that they knew to ‘stay in their place’ if they want to survive; the teachings of his grandfather was passed down to his father and finally to him. When the young black men are in the Battle Royal, they are forced to watch a nude white woman dance and fight each other. The white observers verbally abuse these young black men for not watching her and also abuse them for watching her. They were also forced to pit against other. These black fellows do not know how they are expected to behave because they do not know their place in society. He then won a scholarship to a state college for Negroes after winning the boxing match.
The Misfit and the Invisible Man have a similar characteristic and that is feeding into the stock stereotypical thug figure. The Misfit is an ex-convict that escaped out of prison and was holding a Grandmother as a hostage and he eventually shot the Grandmother. The Invisible Man thought that he was insulted and began to beat this poor white man who just clumsily bumps into him. The violence that these characters portray shows the impulsive reaction from a clumsy action. The Misfit shot the Grandmother three times and later feels remorse from his action because he said he doesn’t find pleasure in killing people, he feel like he shouldn’t have shot the poor woman. The Invisible Man stopped himself from beating the man to death because he began to think that maybe his own doubts has caused him to lash out and stopped himself before he caused any more damage. Could these two examples from the story be looked as a reaction of an attack of the male ego?

Sorry this is so long but I could not stop writing.......... Summary:

Ralph Ellison’s story, “ The Invisible Man” is a first person narrative by a black male who grows up outside of Harlem during the center of inequality. He first hears the truth about life as a boy when his grandfather utters his last words. His grandfather admits to accepting his place in a white world and regrets living life as a “traitor”. The boy then hears these words for the rest of his life.
His first realization occurs when he delivers a speech at his graduation. It described the sense of equality one should find by looking to those who live nearest to you regardless of race. He says, “ On my graduation day I delivered an oration in which humility was the secret, indeed the very essence of progress. (Not that I believed this- how could I, remembering my grandfather? I only believed that it worked.” Some of the local upper-class citizens invite him to deliver it during a private party. Feeling accepted the boy eagerly accepts but is soon disappointed. Upon arrival there are ten black boys who are dressed in small shorts and escorted into a small boxing ring. They soon encounter a naked woman dancing and are embarrassed and physically aroused. The boys are then asked to fight each other blindfolded and tear into each as a result of fear. He reluctantly continues with the hope that he will still be allowed to deliver his speech. After the bout is finished, while competing for money laid out on a rug, come to find that is electrically charger as a source of entertainment for the men. The night ends as the boys are paid and all told to leave accept for him. The boy delivers his speech while the men laugh and chat ignoring his almost every word. The men become enraged when they realize his view of social equality threatens their every belief. After they force the boy to admit his place will always be below them, they reward the boy with a leather briefcase and a scholarship to the state college for Negroes. That night in a dream he hears himself read a letter from his grandfather that says, “ To Whom It May Concern, Keep This Nigger-Boy Running.”
The prologue then tells of his life after college. He lives outside of Harlem in the bottom of a building rented out to whites. He now realizes most of his life he has been invisible to the world. This is not because of his physical state, but that people refuse to see who he is only they see what they want.
After reading both stories, I found that the characters had a few things in common. The most obvious shared characteristic is the effect that injustice has created in their lives. The Misfit was in jail and does not remember ever committing a crime and fells that there was no action to be punished for. The Invisible Man was surrounded by injustice his whole life because of the color of his skin. Also, they both claim to be products of their environment. The Misfit tells the grandmother that when he lay in jail he could still not remember what he was there for. This seems to be the root for all of his evil. I also think that because he was desensitized during his sentence and because of this feels no remorse for the killing of others. In fact he seems like he feels better when others suffer as he did. The Invisible Man says during the prelude that,” I believe in nothing if not action.” Both of these characters feel that others should pay the same price that they have.
There are also dome differences in the characters. The Invisible Man stays out of the way of society by hibernating in his “hole”. The Misfit is out and about and even has friends with him during his escapades. Also the Misfit hurts people regardless of whether or not they have hurt him. The invisible man only harms those who cannot “see” him. Finally the Misfit fails to admit or recognize that he would ever go about changing his ways. The Invisible Man tells us that, “ All sickness is not until death, neither is invisibility.” This makes me think that he feels that one day either he will create an object that delivers him success in the social hierarchy, or that he thinks society will finally see him for who he is.
nd even left some things out......

Summary of Invisible Man: (I’ll start with the 1st chapter, since it occurs first, chronologically, and then add in bits from the prologue)
The story is told by an unnamed African-American protagonist who is, at the time of his writing, living in Harlem, NY. He recalls two stories from his upbringing in the Deep South, one of which occurs when he was a child and another around the time of his graduation, several years later. His grandparents, former slaves, had “stayed in their place, worked hard, and brought up (his) father to do the same,” meaning they were considered to be good pillars of the community, and he recalls that he had done the same until he was made aware of his “invisibility.” His grandfather had, on his death bed, given what was considered by most of the relatives present an alarming, if not delusional, pep talk to his son, saying to “keep up the good fight…our life is a war…I have been a traitor all my days…” Essentially, telling his son that living by the book and not fighting the establishment was going against his people. The protagonist insinuates that this speech (or curse, as he calls it) is what made him realize and embrace his “invisibility.”
Several years after his grandfather died, the protagonist is invited to a gathering of several upper-class, white townsfolk as a result of his giving a rousing and highly-praised oration at his graduation ceremony. He was told that they wanted him to repeat the speech at the gathering. When he arrives there, though, he is told to participate in a brawl they called a “battle royal” with several other African-American classmates in which they all fight with blindfolds on. After participating in the brawl, plus a one-on-one fight with a much larger foe, plus being shocked by an electrically-charged rug, he is extremely beat up—almost to the degree of suffocating on his own blood. He was then asked to present his oration, all the while putting up with jeers and threats. After he had finished, the school superintendent had presented him with a scholarship to the state college for Negroes, which the protagonist was more than overjoyed to accept. That night, he has an ominous dream about his grandfather (which I’m sure has many Freudian implications) in which he opens a letter which reads, in part, “Keep This Nigger-Boy Running.”

Commentary:
In reading an excerpt from Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man as well as Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find, I did find a few similarities to the characters of the Misfit and the Invisible Man. While most would consider both characters examples of a degenerate class (they even make references to themselves in this light), they both seem to be searching for justification in their degenerate actions. For example, when discussing his brutal encounter with a “sleepwalking” man, the Invisible Man insinuates his belief that he had no choice but to do what he did. Not only that, but he mentions that “Something in the man’s thick head had sprung out and beaten him within an inch of his life,” insinuating that it wasn’t even he, the Invisible Man, that committed the act at all. He goes back to somewhat admitting responsibility near the end of the prologue, giving testament to the idea that he harbors guilt for his act (or acts, as we’d probably find out if we read further), however he still places blame on the beaten man’s irresponsibility, essentially saying that he was irresponsible for not recognizing the fact that the Invisible Man was dangerous.

This ties in with the Misfit in that it seems as though he, too, while harboring a smidgen of guilt, tries to place the blame elsewhere. He mentions that he can’t remember how he ever ended up in prison the first time, but that it was prison that made him the way he is. He also tells of how his father had high hopes for him. I believe O’Connor meant to portray guilt in that way, giving you the sense that the Misfit felt guilty for not living up to those hopes. The Misfit claims to be innocent of murdering his father, but I think this anecdote about his father plays into the belief that he did, in fact, kill his father. (On a side note, I believe the reader always assumes truthfulness in what he’s reading, in a suspension-of-disbelief sort of way. In other words, while suspending disbelief, a reader takes for granted that the information given to him is truthful, in the context of the story. Therefore, it’s strange to me to be told something in a story and have to decipher whether the character is telling a lie or not—akin to what we experience with the Devil in The Man in the Black Suit.) In another attempt to justify his actions, the Misfit insinuates that he’s doing the Grandmother a favor by putting her close to death. He says near the end of the story, “She would have been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.” However, as we see with the Invisible Man at the end of the prologue, the Misfit, too, admits fallacy in his own way, advising the Grandmother to “enjoy the few minutes you got left…by killing somebody or burning down his house.” By saying that, he’s admitting to his passion for “meanness,” as he calls it, and thus admitting fallacy.

Ellison’s Invisible Man is the recollections of a black man as he grows up knee deep in social inequality and racial prejudice. The prologue deals with the man’s situation in Harlem in the present tense where he tells his personal story from a squatter’s basement where 1,369 pirated lights and a Louis Armstrong record maintain his gentle balance between violence and insanity.
He is a slightly deranged anti-socialite who revels in his ability to be invisible to white people from years of silence and inaction in the face of racism and hatred. After the prologue the invisible man explores his childhood and the series of events which have come to create his particular viewpoint on the subjects of black and white.

Comparatively The Misfit in O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and The Invisible Man of Ellison’s Invisible Man share a number of characteristics.
Both The Misfit and the Invisible Man consider themselves to be products of their environment. They feel as if they have been shaped by society. The Misfit recalls his boyhood in the penitentiary and it seems to explain why he is a criminal. His reflection excludes why he was originally sent there but his description, “Turn to the right (left) (floor) (ceiling), it was a wall” (130) intimates that his violence flared in the prison. The Invisible Man, in the prologue, tells us that he is invisible not because of “biochemical accident to my epidermis. That invisibility to which I refer occurs because of a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those with whom I come in contact.” So it is in effect society who has made him invisible. They exclude him from their environment. The Misfit and The Invisible Man to a certain extent feel that they are not in control of their predicaments.
They each have a destiny sent down to them from their grandfathers. The Misfit’s is “to be into everything” as his father says. The Invisible Man has a curse sent from his grandfather, it becomes his destiny to work against his own race by agreeing with white people and being subservient to them. Both characters feel compelled to carry out and ensnarled within their destinies. The Misfit has carried on odd jobs all his life and seen most of the world. The Invisible Man holds the notion throughout his entire ideal that he will prove himself by reading his speech that denounces his own people.
Their visions of what society is differs slightly. The Invisible Man sees the people around him as grey and spectral — where everyone is a small part of something larger. He has broken from society because he knows that to cooperate with society is to aid the very people he knows he ought to loathe. For him being invisible has allowed his escape from a certain catch-22 where helping his situation and hurting himself run together. The Invisible Man had learned to mask himself, hide himself, conceal his intentions and his true motives because that is the curse his grandfather had given to him. In his invisibility the Invisible Man has found an escape from the social problem.
The Misfit’s idea of society is different. There are images where The Misfit recalls that, for him, “I found out that the crime don’t matter. You can do one thing or you can do another, kill a man or take a tire off his car, because sooner or later you’re going to forget what it was you done and just be punished for it.” (131) This conjures up a hopeless feeling that for people like The Misfit there is something huge and unstoppable waiting, something everyone is in on but him. In fact he thinks it is unfair that he is punished and derives his name from the fact that it doesn’t add up what bad things he has done and all that he has been punished for. In a way he feels justified as if he should be allowed to catch up. “Yes’m, somebody is always after you,” He says. He doesn’t look for escape the same way The Invisible Man does. He runs toward the fire and believes that — if everyone is after me — if crime and punishment are unrelated — “then its nothing for you to do but enjoy the last few minutes you got left the best way you can” and for him this is destruction.