/lit/ - Literature

>>22435905
Well the biggest thing is in the title itself. Ellison's narrator, who is never named, says he is an Invisible Man, and claims he is so because "nobody is able to SEE me."

What he means by that is, nobody actually sees him for the person, the individual, that he is. Rather, they see him as a blank canvas, a tool, an instrument, that they can make use of, and project whatever they want on to him.

Ellison's narrator gets this from white people constantly. The book starts out in the Jim Crow South, so of course he is projected onto there. But when he moves north, and goes to New York City, and meets more left-wing white people, even actual socialists and communists, they STILL don't see him. They're arguably even worse to him than the straight-up racists in the South, because they pretend to be his friend and ally while simultaneously making use of him and employing him as a tool to spread their agenda. The projection is more direct in the South, and more subtle in NYC, but it's always there.

Nobody ever actually sees the narrator for who he is. Even other black people, like the president of the historical black college the narrator initially attends, ultimately views him as something he projects onto him, rather than what he actually is.

What it taught me is that so many people who claim to have the interests of black people at heart ultimately don't actually see them for what they are, as individuals. This is especially true of left-wing white people. Rather, blacks are things they project ideas and ideals onto, which may not have any actual bearing in reality. The narrator, and black people as a whole, are never actually seen for who they really are, but rather who whites, especially white liberals, WANT them to be, THINK of them as being.

That's what I got from the book, applied more broadly to America as a whole.

Picrel by virtue of Invisible Man alone. Best piece of negro literature. Otherwise it would be James Baldwin if he wasn't such a whiny faggot

>Captcha: HRTP4

Invisible Man appreciation thread. This book is not talked about frequently enough here. Its opening paragraphs are simply some of the best I’ve ever read.
>I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids -- and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination -- indeed, everything and anything except me.
>Nor is my invisibility exactly a matter of a bio-chemical 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. A matter of the construction of their inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality. I am not complaining, nor am I protesting either. It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves. Then too, you're constantly being bumped against by those of poor vision. Or again, you often doubt if you really exist. You wonder whether you aren't simply a phantom in other people's minds. Say, a figure in a nightmare which the sleeper tries with all his strength to destroy. It's when you feel like this that, out of resentment, you begin to bump people back. And, let me confess, you feel that way most of the time. You ache with the need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world, that you're a part of all the sound and anguish, and you strike out with your fists, you curse and you swear to make them recognize you. And, alas, it's seldom successful.
(1/2; exceeded character limit)

Ralph Ellison still remains the single greatest negro author

>Machado de Assis
>Frantz Fanon
>Alexander Pushkin
>Alexandre Dumas
>Wole Basedinka
>Derek Walcott
>W.E.B. du Bois
>Adolph L. Reed, Jr.
>Cornel West
>Thomas Sowell
>James Baldwin
>Ralph Ellison
>Richard Wright
>Jean Toomer
>August Wilson

-Machado de Assis

-Frantz Fanon

-Alexander Pushkin

-Alexandre Dumas

-Wole Basedinka

-W.E.B. du Bois
-Adolph L. Reed, Jr.
-Cornel West
-Thomas Sowell

-James Baldwin
-Ralph Ellison
-Richard Wright
-Jean Toomer
-August Wilson

No degree.

>>11653516
*Eghm, excuse me!*