Quest For Personal Identity In Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man

Invisible Man is set in the 1930’s, in the time of the Great Depression. The novel is first set in the American South, where segregation is in full swing and where there is immense racial discrimination. The narrator was born and raised in the South but after getting into trouble at his college, he moved up North to New York City, where blacks and whites were more equal. The narrator moved to the neighborhood of Harlem, the center of African American culture. The narrator is amazed by the stark contrast between his home in the South and the city of New York. He is astounded to see white drivers obey the commands of black policemen and when he rides the subway, a white woman does not seem to mind that he is in close proximity of her. In New York, the narrator seemed to find a sort of racial freedom. However, despite the ‘racial freedom’, it is still his race that determines how others perceive him. So, really, neither the South nor the North are very helpful for him on his quest to find his individuality and identity. It is only by becoming invisible to society, literally (when he hides in the basement of a building rented to whites only) and figuratively, that the narrator is able to operate in a setting in which he can discover his true self.

7. Themes:

1. Quest for Personal Identity: The entire novel

Ideology can be limiting: Throughout the novel the narrator comes to realize that he is restricted from finding his complex identity not only by people in society but also by the general ideologies they create. The narrator finds that ideologies are too simple to define something as complex as humanity. There are several ideologies introduced throughout Invisible Man, but the strongest one is introduced in the Brotherhood, which claims to be helping the people, but in reality is betraying the freedom of the individual by trying to tell them what to think. You cannot wrap up the different complex aspects of human life and human thoughts in a simple