Ellison

Ralph Ellison, ah, how we keep meeting this way! I disliked your work at first, but I must say...it has grown on me tremendously. The Invisible Man has made three appearances in my collegiate life. At first, I assumed Lit. Professors were being paid commission to assign the novel at every turn, espousing it's endless merit to my cynical "don't bother me I already know lots about books!" early-twenties brain. Oh how mistaken that brain was, tsk tsk. The reason Professors kept assigning the work is because it was important. But important how? I asked myself one night, after wrapping up it's third chapter. It seemed like a book that would be important for African Americans and white folks in a race relations kind of way (it was). It also seemed like a book that would be important in advocating for disenfranchised groups of people the world over, albeit in a somewhat brutal way (it was). I missed something though. Reading a portion of the work now, four years later, I see that The Invisible Man was more important in the shaping of modern American Fiction than any other title I can immediately recall. Ellison's creative method is stunning and cerebral, disorienting at it's best, ghastly at it's worst. The novel calls uneasy truth to the forefront of thought, forcing the reader to examine it carefully, and with purpose. The storyline lures one in, and then Ellison's world attacks you from an unseen point, turning from a straightforward narrative into a discombobulated beast of fiction. That is how I envision this text in my head, a desperate, wounded person that you are afraid to look in the eye, a person that speaks the truth while you're left sheepishly staring at your feet. The excerpt we read for class is one of my favorites (save the opening diorama of light bulbs and radios, see Jeff Wall's representation, above). True, it is graphic, but it's violence is for the sake of symbolism. The reader sees masks of every kind (the narrator's grandfather, the rosy cheeks of drunken men), humans described in animal terms, and painfully realistic violence, but when we as readers look past the whirring sentences, we see that Ellison is trying to show us something. This is a novel that breaks things down, both socially and artistically into the most base of human instincts. Pain and violence are possible in the author's world as are racism and exploitation. Yet, for Ellison every force has an opposite that becomes apparent as the work progresses. There is hope, equality and comfort buried somewhere in the text, but we must each seek it out for ourselves. Too bad we only get one chapter......