Invisible Man Essay: Race, Blindness, and Monstrosity -- Invisible Ma

Race, Blindness, and Monstrosity in inconspicuous Man Id like to read Ralph Ellisons Invisible Man as the odyssey of one mans search for identity. Try this scenario the narrator is presently an academic, then a factory worker, and then a socialist politico. no(prenominal) of these careers works out for him. Yet the narrators time with the so-called Brotherhood, the socialist multitude that recruits him, comprises a good deal of the novel. The narrator thinks hes found himself through the Brotherhood. Hes the beside Booker T. Washington and the new voice of his people. The work hes doing will in conclusion garner him acceptance. Hes home. Its a nice scenario, but the narrator realizes his journey must(prenominal) continue when Jack, the leader of the Brotherhood Now see here, he began, leaping to his feet to tip across the table, and I spun my chair half around on its hind(prenominal) legs as he came between me and the light, gripping the edge of the table, sputtering a nd sink into a foreign language, choking and coughing and shaking his head as I balanced on my toes, set to propel myself forward comprehend him above me and the others behind him as suddenly something seemed to erupt out of his look . . . (Ellison, Invisible Man, 409). The careful bureaucracy gives way to rage he regresses, spew and swearing in a foreign tongue, leaning forward as if to attack the narrator. And the eruption? Jack is a Cyclops, the one-eyed mythological monster of terror and lawlessness I stared into his face, feeling a sense of outrage. His unexpended eye had collapsed, a line of raw redness showing where the hat refused to close, and his gaze had lost its command. I looked from his face to the glass, thinking hes disem... ...Citizen is a thug drunk that no one listens to. Yet Jack is a brother, or, as Invisible Man puts it, the great white father. Hes not such an loose enemy to defeat, and the problem wont just go away. The map of racism, blindness, and monstrosity that Ellison draws is half(prenominal) because the monster is never defeated. Perhaps this too is characteristically American. Ellisons evolved Cyclops has staying power. Hes enceinte resistant to the heros tricks and, though blind, he will thrive. Ellisons Odysseus is doomed to wander long-lived than eleven years. 1 This is the Gaelic word for nonsense. Works Cited Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. untried York Random House, juvenile American Library, 1952. Homer. The Odyssey, translated Richmond Lattimore. New York Harper Collins, 1991. Joyce, James. Ulysses. New York Random House, 1990.