Blindness In The Odyssey

586 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Literary analysis of the Odyssey

The novel began with the narrator embarking on a journey to the underworld. As he entered the battle royal, Ralph Ellison set up the narrator’s story using the archetype of the Odyssey. The narrator spends the entirety of the book trying to become enlightened, and to prove to his grandfather and Dr.Bledsoe that he is more than what they think he is. However, the book ends with the narrator stuck in a dark hole, living underground, right back where he started. This contrast to the story of odysseus allows Ellison to demonstrate how the narrator failed to become what he had tried so hard to be, and how his enlightenment had been destined to be a troubled one. An important motif that the author returns to at the end of the book is blindness. Beginning with the blindfolds in the battle royal, then to the blindness of the pastor, Ellison highlights how their physical blindness is also figurative. The black men who fought in the royal were blind and failed to see the white men were taking advantage of them. By the end of the book, the narrator recognizes that “the true darkness lies in [his] mind”(579) but fails to see that had he made other choices, he would never have wound up where he is at the end of the novel. He spends the last moments of the book underground, …show more content…

Ellison brings the grandfather back in order to show that though the narrator has grown up and matured, he is yet to truly overcome his demons. This again contrasts the story of odysseus, because the narrator could not do what odysseus did. He could not escape his darkness, his past, and himself. The narrator himself understands this, “I’m coming out, no less invisible without it, but coming out nevertheless.”(581) The narrator has failed to achieve a proper enlightenment, and even though he may finally get out of the darkness, he will still remain

Show More
Related

  • Invisible Man Blindness Quotes

    1120 Words  | 3 Pages

    This quote, cited from the prologue of the novel, strengthens Ellison’s purpose by supporting the assumption of the narrator that because the man was white and he was black the man did not actually “see” him. This is because during the novel the white people attempt to suppress the freedom of African American people. The narrator also states the man refused to see the narrator as a person but rather more of an object and therefore did not recognize the reality of the situation or the kerfuffle between the narrator and himself.

    Read More

  • Sight And Blindness In Sophocles's 'Oedipus Rex'

    1063 Words  | 3 Pages

    Sight. Sometimes even though you can see, it is not good enough. After all, the eyes can be deceiving. Sometimes it seems that life is an illusion. The moment you think you’re seeing the right thing, the image shifts on you. In Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, when Oedipus tries to see and control to his destiny he is blind but is blinded by his pride, and only when he is really blind does he see.

    Read More

  • Ralph Ellison's Battle Royal

    1162 Words  | 3 Pages

    Had he told the same story from any other character's point of view, the reader would most certainly be reading a different story. I. M. His point of view is essential to the message Ellison is trying to get across, and he does so in a way that allows the reader to be fully immersed in the situations that occur. Work Cited Ellison, Ralph. A. A.

    Read More

  • The Odyssey

    537 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Odyssey is a tale that has changed literature and storytelling. In this tale Odysseus is a Soldier from the battle of Troy trying to get home to his island of Ithaca, where he is king. His wife and son must wait ten years while he is trying to make his way home. In Odysseus’s absence wooer’s, or better known as suitors, learn of his absence and travel to Ithaca to win his wife’s hand in marriage. These men come every day feasting on Odysseus’s food and wine, and give his servant’s orders. His son Telemachus, does his best to keep the suitors from ruining his fathers house but he is only a boy, and doesn’t receive the respect of an adult. Telemachus then has a visit from the god Athena, whom Odysseus is friends with, who advises him to travel to find out about his father. In his travels he hears that Odysseus may still be alive. Meanwhile Odysseus goes through a series of adventures and hardships that prove his wisdom. It is interesting in contrast of the Iliad, even though Achilles was much stronger and a better warrior, Odysseus was portrayed as a greater hero due to his wisdom. He uses this wisdom to escape from the Cyclops.

    Read More

  • Intertwining Fates as a Motive for Invisibility in Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man

    837 Words  | 2 Pages

    Invisibility is a motif introduced even before the first page of the novel is turned. Although The Invisible Man was written over a 7 year period, Ralph Ellison uses invisibility as a representation of the status of a black man during the society of the late 1920s and early 1930s (Reilly 20). Symbolically, the black man is invisible to the white man because the latter is blind towards both the reality of the black man’s physical presence and influence in society. The narrator is in a continuous struggle with himself throughout the novel in a difficult attempt to discover who he is in a racist America, and make his mark on a white society. During the search for his identity, the narrator attempts to define himself based on the ideas of others and what they want him to be. In doing so, his fate becomes intertwined with those who have given him his “temporary” identities. Those above him have been using him as tools for their own future successes and gaining power over him in the process. He does not realize this until later on in the novel however, and he works to rectify his mistakes soon after the realizations of self worth and invisibility both become clear to him. Because the narrator had continued to model himself as anything but what he actually was, he was invisible to himself and to the people in control of his life. The fact that the narrator’s invisibility has been brought about by other character’s actions, brings up the issue of intertwining fates. Ellison uses characters and locations to accentuate this theme even more.

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Colonialism In Joseph Conrad's Invisible Man

    2036 Words  | 5 Pages

    Ellison’s narrator states that he has “been hurt to the point of abysmal pain, hurt to the point of invisibility. And [he defends] because in spite of all [he finds] find that [he loves]. ... [He’s] a desperate man – but too much of your life will be lost, its meaning lost, unless you approach it as much through love as through hate. So [he approaches] it through division” (Ellison 567). The narrator articulately uses paradoxes to enthrall the reader in this segment of his epilogue. Still, the contradiction apparent between the narrator’s emotions is entirely possible, as there is no reason that both love and hate cannot coexist in an individual. The speaker, a bona-fide invisible man, despite all the hardship he has faced, still describes his story with some love. The idea of balance is brought into the equation, something that Ellison has seldom told of in the story, a friendly contrast to the rest of the novel’s stark unfairness and disparity. In the end, our storyteller finds that despite the hate thrust upon him, he feels compelled to love just as equally if not more. This gives a positive light to human nature, while suggesting that the antagonistic race of the novel, Caucasians, will ultimately feel that emotion as well and reconcile with African Americans. That’s a message that finally found its way into the minds of the American

    Read More

  • Essay on the Genius of Ralph Ellison

    2040 Words  | 5 Pages

    Roughly autobiographical in nature, Ellison's Invisible Man is also a chronology constructed to parallel the history of African-Americans, from slavery, Emancipation, subjugation, and a rising consciousness of injustice perpetrated against them. However, Ellison's literary finesse produced an opus that draws in every member of American society. Rather than alienating whites by portraying a man victimized by a racist system, Ellison appeals to the universal needs of humanity to be valued, recognized, and respected. Through his portrayal of an enigmatic, complex, invisible protagonist he makes the reader reflect upon the societal dynamics that marginalize people and create the unsettling climate that the protagonist's needs and feelings may be identical to those of the reader.

    Read More

  • The Significance of Mr. Norton and Fate in Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

    2152 Words  | 5 Pages

    In his novel Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison has developed the invisible man by using the actions of other characters. Through his prophecy, Mr. Norton has secured the destiny of the narrator, himself, and all persons in the novel. Mr. Norton forebodes that the narrator will determine his fate, but Mr. Norton doesn't realize that the fate determined is universal: that every being is invisible and without this knowledge, people are blinded by their own invisibility. The narrator is able to come to terms with this self-realization at the end of the end of the novel, and by doing so, he has become an individual and a free man of society, which in essence, is what Mr. Norton had first symbolized in the narrator's mind. At the end though, Mr. Norton will symbolize a blind, shameful society that the narrator becomes invisible to. The narrator was only able to become invisible by Mr. Norton's foreshadowing; for it was he who helped drive the narrator to the North and accompany his fate.

    Read More

  • Invisible Man Analysis

    715 Words  | 2 Pages

    The narrator participating in a "battle royal" prior to delivering a speech on the progress of the Black people. These are the days during which he is still a hopeful scholar, at this point he is living the life that others have told him that he should live, and defines himself as he believes he is seen through their eyes. The abuse he goes through in the battle royal give him the first feelings that everything is not as it seems, but fail to do anything to change the narrator's perceptions of himself. If given the chance, the narrator may have gone on living the life that society had set for him and never realized his invisibility, but fate had other plans for him.

    Read More

  • Overcoming Obstacles In The Odyssey

    285 Words  | 1 Pages

    People in today's society must overcome many obstacles. Some are large, some are minuscule. The persistent acts of racism and sexism that people face in this world could be discussed, but instead two less spoken obstacle seems more fitting for this journal. Many people struggle with these obstacles every day. of the struggles people face are mental illnesses, and age.

    Read More

  • Essay On Obstacles In The Odyssey

    468 Words  | 1 Pages

    In the “Odyssey” by Homer there is a hero that had a reputation of being clever and strong. This story is about a man named Odysseus that was in the Trojan war and was heading home but got off course. It took years to get back and was faced with many adventures and obstacles to get back home such as Sirens, Cyclops, and even some deities. He was also helped by Hermes Zeus messenger. He had to use all of his strength and knowledge if he was ever to return home but, which one did he have to use the most?

    Read More

  • The Invisible Man

    934 Words  | 2 Pages

    To understand the narrator of the story, one must first explore Ralph Ellison. Ellison grew up during the mid 1900’s in a poverty-stricken household (“Ralph Ellison”). Ellison attended an all black school in which he discovered the beauty of the written word (“Ralph Ellison”). As an African American in a predominantly white country, Ellison began to take an interest in the “black experience” (“Ralph Ellison”). His writings express a pride in the African American race. His work, The Invisible Man, won much critical acclaim from various sources. Ellison’s novel was considered the “most distinguished novel published by an American during the previous twenty years” according to a Book Week poll (“Ralph Ellison”). One may conclude that the Invisible Man is, in a way, the quintessence Ralph Ellison. The Invisible Man has difficulty fitting into a world that does not want to see him for who he is. M...

    Read More

  • How the Opening Scene in Invisible Man Introduces the Major Themes of the Novel

    953 Words  | 2 Pages

    The opening scene of the novel introduces the theme of blindness. As the narrator says, “When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination-indeed, everything and anything except me,” (Ellison 3). This quote shows how people do not see the narrator. The narrator says that people “refuse” to see him. An example of this is when he bumps into a white man at night. The narrator says, "…when it occurred to me that the man had not seen me, actually, that he, as far as he knew, was in the middle of a walking nightmare!” (Ellison 4). This quote is an example of how people are blind and do not see the narrator. The narrator realizes that the man had insulted him because he did not see him. Blindness is a recurring theme in the novel, and shows how people refuse to see the truth in their community. Another example of blindness in the beginning of the novel is the battle royal that the narrator is forced to take part in. All of the fighters are blindfolded, and therefore are blind to see how the white people are taking advantage of them. Blindness is shown as a negative theme in the novel.

    Read More

  • The Odyssey Literary Analysis

    1143 Words  | 3 Pages

    “The Odyssey” is an epic poem that tells the story of Odysseus and the story of his many travels and adventures. The Odyssey tells the main character’s tale of his journey home to the island of Ithaca after spending ten years fighting in the Trojan War, and his adventures when he returns home and he is reunited with his family and close friends. This literary analysis will examine the story and its characters, relationships, major events, symbols and motifs, and literary devices.

    Read More

  • Battle Royal, by Ralph Ellison

    2168 Words  | 5 Pages

    "Battle Royal", an excerpt from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, is far more than a commentary on the racial issues faced in society at that time. It is an example of African-American literature that addresses not only the social impacts of racism, but the psychological components as well. The narrator (IM) is thrust from living according to the perceptions of who he believes himself to be to trying to survive in a realm where he isn't supposed to exist, much less thrive. The invisibility of a mass of people in a society fed the derivation of IM's accepted, willed, blindness. The reader must determine the source of what makes IM invisible. Is part of IM's invisibility due to his self-image or surrender to the dominant voice in the United States? The answer lies in whether or not the blindness and the invisibility were voluntary or compulsory.

    Read More

More about Blindness In The Odyssey

Open Document