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Summary: Suggestions for the first and not so first reader
Review: I read this book several times in undergraduate and graduate school and it never failed to promote new concepts and a feeling of intellectual and emotional euphoria--a connection with something beyond description, so full of what it is to be a human being that it even transcends the critical racial issues that are the mainstay of the book. Ellison's book could well be the greatest book to come out of the United States and perhaps the world. The true genius of the book and its author are there for the thoughtful reader to enjoy again and again. One suggestion for a beginning reader, however: consider Reaping the Whirlwind by R.J. Norell as a historical companion piece to this book. The two should be studied together in any literature or history class. As a long-ago resident of Alabama, I can guarantee the non-southern reader (especially) a new and improved connection with the beginning of Ellison's novel. Studying historical Tuskegee, AL in combination with Ellison's college with its confoundingly servile leader and puzzling statue (etc) will give even an experienced professor of literature (as one of mine was) a new root and perspective in comprehending Ellison.
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Summary: Out of sight, out of mind
Review: In his only novel, Ralph Ellison gives the reader an interesting but harsh look into the racial issues faced by African-Americans during times of segregation.
The nameless protagonist begins adulthood full of hope, but he soon faces many setbacks. After an accident involving a prominent white man, he is expelled from his southern college, losing both his scholarship and the respect he once felt for the school's black president. He moves to New York, hoping to find work, but he is less than successful. The Brotherhood, an organization dedicated to preaching equality, hires him, and he becomes a spokesperson for their Harlem section, putting his gift of public speaking to use. He eventually discovers that this association has ulterior motives, and he plans to sabotage it. His efforts are interrupted, however, when an enemy of the Brotherhood launches a fierce attack on the group.
Using a sometimes satirical viewpoint, this novel offers a clear and attention-grabbing perspective of this issue, giving the reader a better understanding than one gets from textbook accounts. It goes beyond the facts and shows how the effects of oppression and segregation are dealt with-in this case, by recognizing the ignorant blindness of society and becoming "invisible," for all intensive purposes.
The vivid symbols and fast-paced plot keep the reader engaged, although it becomes confusing at times with so much happening. Overall, this is a wonderful novel, both in entertainment and educational value, and I would recommend it to anyone looking to open his or her mind and enjoy a well-written book.
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Summary: Silent Racism
Review: Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison is the most powerful description of the modern African-American experience on record. It follows the life of a nameless protangonist as he journeys from a poor rural southern college to the streetes of Harlem. Thorughout out the book he is constantly unsure of himself and unable to find some place to belong.Each time he feels he has discovered someone who is truly color blind he finds that they are just out to use him for their own advantage. He is kicked out of his college when he shows a white benefactor, at his insistence, what life is like for poor rural blacks. When he goes north to New York, he is denied employment because of the "recommendations" his former college mentor is writing for him. He engages in Communist party rallies and human dog fights. Mostly he feels the isolation which comes from being alone in a crowd. As he makes his way through life he really does become an invisible man. Obviously not in the literal sense but in the way that someone who is constantly ignored or put on the fringes of society becomes an invisible man. He becomes invisible because of the quiet racism that pervades so much of Northern society in his day and which has continued down to the present.
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Summary: Incredible CapSule into the dynamics of American Society
Review: One of the enduring characteristics of American Literature is its deep desire to create a classic American work, a piece that will be canonized for its ability to reach all corners of an extremely diverse, dynamic, and often troubling society. Many critics may debate the merits of any individual who can claim to cover all of the cleavages of society within one work, yet Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man stands up nearly forty years after its original publication as a testimony to the dynamics of American society and more importantly, the systemic race 'problem' that America continues to manipulate and feel guilt for. Invisible Man narrative style allows Ellison to make poignant observations about the many distinctive ways of life in America: the differences between North and South; black and white, communist and capitalist, inner city and the privileged few and gender differences; these are all major societal distinctions that invisible Man stumbles upon along his road to realization and disillusionment in American society. Upon this examination of the work, Invisible Man is doubly recognized for providing a unique commentary of the continued degradation of Black America, complete with a distinctive black culture and way of life, but also for its ability to reach out and embrace elements of Literature such as the bildungsroman genre. Invisible Man's journey across the American landscape acts as a journey across time and become an education about America at a time of expansive consumerism and international interest expansion. This book is a highly recommended read that seeks to uncover a perspective about America that today may seem commonplace, but in its time, was rather revolutionary.
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Summary: Long, but worth it
Review: This was one of the longest books I ever read. However, unlike many classics, this book was worth the read. Classics I have read are usually overrated bore-fests without a plot or conflict to engage the reader, but this book was interesting. Even exciting. The haunting symbolism and wonderful command of diction in this book is astounding. Even recreational readers can enjoy this classic.
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Summary: The Greatest American Novel
Review: Unqueationably Ellison has written the greatest American novel in every sense of the phrase. The story is the epic search for an identity, an American identity in a world that labels individuals in order to negate their power. The titular modern hero represents any man or woman pinioned against the floor of life by the boot of American capitalism which dictates everyone's role in life before they're even born. It is this maxim which the Invisible Man must discover for himself, i.e. the rules of the game are not what he has learned in school and until he realizes this dichotomy between America the real and America the ideal he moves from school to work to political activisim constantly defeating himself. The novel is Zen before Zen was in. The spiritual journey described in images replete with cinema and words that narrate themselves should resonate with any reader who has ever searched for satisfaction, serenity and contentment in life only to find hurt, pain and disappointment in all the commercially prescribed solutions. The work is epic by covering the most salient facets of modern American life from a psychological perspective which attempts to heal the narrator and the reader as well. A little dated in the sense that it doesn't approach drugs/alcoholism or gay identities, Ellison had little choice but to be conservative so as not to blur the meaning of his message as well as to avoid the political oppression going on in the country at the time. The novel is sophisticated, intellectual, humorous, magical, adventurous, gargantuan, approachable, and best of all a good read. I thoroughly recommend this work NOT as an African American novel on identity, but as a novel on AMERICAN IDENTITY.
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Summary: A Modern Day Parable For Everyman
Review: When I first read Ralph Ellison's remarkable Invisible Man I was in college. Having grown up middle class midwestern white, it seemed at the time to be a marvelous piece of work that plunged me into the nightmarishly crushing world of racism from the black perspective. It opened my eyes to racism in a way that I could never have possibly percieved from the perspective of my own limited experience. Thirty years later I pulled this book from the shelf and reread it on a whim. A number of things struck me on this reading that never occurred to me from my earlier limited youthful perspective. First of all, Invisible Man is timeless and I find it hard to believe that it was written nearly fifty years ago. This book is about far more than racism, it is about loss of innocence and rape of the soul. It is about exploitation, manipulation, and the gross hypocrisy that exists in our society. It is a work of great literary merit. Ellison displays verbal virtuosity of great breadth with beautiful and lyric eloquence. It is at times so dark and overbearingly heavy that a sensitive or less serious reader might cry out for relief. It is so relentless in plunging from one nightmarish episode to the next that one can reasonably say that it is often over the top, and yet any fair-minded reader can easily forgive the excesses of Ellison's vision for the importance of the message that it brings home. Any reader, be he or she black, white, yellow or brown, who must make a way in this world--any reader who attempts to rise from the consciousness of the unprivelidged child or who is a seeker in life, should read Invisible Man as a cautionary tale as well as a great work of art. Please read this book if you have the courage and honesty to see the world through the eyes of the victim. This book has helped me to see those who had often in the past been invisible to me and I thank Ralph Ellison for making it possible.
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