Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison's novel Invisible Man
The Plot
Invisible Man opens with a Prologue. The un-named narrator tells you that he is an invisible man living in a hole under the streets of New York somewhere near Harlem. His hole is warm and bright. He has come here to hibernate, to think out the meaning of life, after the events he is about to narrate. What drove him to this state of hibernation? He begins to tell you.
The story starts when the narrator graduates from high school in a southern town. The leading white citizens invite him to give his graduation speech at a "smoker" in the ballroom of the local hotel. He arrives to find himself part of a "battle royal" in which local black boys are forced to fight one another blindfolded for the entertainment of the drunken whites. After the battle, the blacks are further humiliated by having to crawl on an electrified carpet to pick up coins. Finally, the hero is allowed to give his speech and is rewarded with a leather briefcase and a scholarship to the state college for blacks.
The narrator is a good student at college and is sufficiently well thought of to be allowed to drive distinquished white visitors around the campus and commuinty. Near the end of his junior year he drives one of the trustees, a Mr. Norton, out into the country. They arrive by accident at the cabin of a black sharecropper named Jim Trueblood, who has caused a terrible scandal by committing incest with his daughter. Trueblood tells his story . . . .
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Table of Contents
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| Advisory Board |
v
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| How to Use this Book |
vii
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| THE AUTHOR AND HIS TIMES |
1
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| THE NOVEL |
8
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| The Plot |
8
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| The Characters |
13
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| Other Elements |
29
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| Setting |
29
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| Style |
31
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| Point of View |
33
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| Themes |
35
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| Form and Structure |
38
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| The Story |
40
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| A STEP BEYOND |
110
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| Tests and Answers |
110
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| Term Paper Ideas and other Topics for Writing |
123
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| Further Reading |
127
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| Critical Works |
127
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| Author's Other Works |
128
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| The Critics |
130
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