Invisible Man Motif

One could argue that we are all just puppets and dolls who are destined to dance on concealed strings, never realizing who or what pulls them. Ralph Ellison's novel, The Invisible Man, is filled with depictions and mentions of dolls as if to remind his audience that no one has entire control over their own lives.

In the story, the unnamed narrator, the "Invisible Man", comes to the realization that all his life he has been a servant, puppet, and plaything to those around him, especially to white people. Whoever they were, be they Dr. Bledsoe, the president of his college, his dead grandfather, who told him to undermine white people, or members of the Brotherhood, who pretended to care for and about him because he was doing them a service,

When it comes to the Sambo dolls, not only the thread but Invisible Man's own physical characteristics mirror those described: "It's cardboard hands were clenched into fists. The fingers outlined in orange paint, and ... it had two faces, one on either side of the disks of cardboard, and both grinning” (446). The hands "clenched into fists" is the Brotherhood's message in short: mighty and powerful, ready to battle in any way for what one supposedly believes in at any moment. However, these fists are controlled solely by the one holding the strings and not the person themselves, just as Invisible Man was told what and how to say things by the Brotherhood as well as who to be. Moreover, the black Sambo puppet is completely content and unaware that he is merely a toy and easily manipulated like most black people during Ellison’s time. The puppet smiles obliviously to the crowd surrounding him, watching his every move and back to his controller, his puppeteer. It is this smile specifically on the face of the doll that enrages the Invisible Man because he

During what is often referred to as the "Battle Royal Scene", the naked, blonde, white woman present is illustrated as possessing hair "that was yellow like ... a circus kewpie doll" (19). Using this piece of imagery, Ellison draws an interesting parallel between the struggle of the dark man and fair woman. The fact that they are both described as dolls in the novel is no accident. Both the girl and the man are merely showpieces and toys for the white men in the novel: the white woman being a stripper only there to entertain the white men and Invisible Man being a naive, ambitious black boy who is also only there for these high-brow men's entertainment. Both the narrator and the girl are merely toys to the men, and the men soon lose their interest in them, throw them aside, and move on with their lives without a second