Invisible man
"Who the hell am I" (Ellison 386)? This question puzzled the invisible man, the unidentified, anonymous narrator of Ralph Ellison's acclaimed novel, Invisible Man. Throughout the story, the narrator embarks on a mental and physical journey to seek what the narrator believes is "true identity," a belief quite mistaken, for he, although unaware of it, had already been inhabited by true identities all along. Ellison, in Invisible Man, uses the main characters invisibility and conflict with the outside world to illustrate the confusion of identity that many people experience. The narrator's life is filled with constant eruptions of mental traumas. The biggest psychological burden he has is his identity, or rather his misidentity. He feels a "wearing on the nerves" (Ellison 3) for people to see him as what they like to believe he is and not see him as what he really is. Throughout his life, he takes on several different identities and none, he thinks, adequately represents his true self, until his final one, as an invisible man. The narrator thinks the many identities he possesses do not reflect him, but he fails to recognize that identity is simply a mirror that reflects the surroundings and the person who looks into it. It is only in
However, invisibility is only his way to avoid reality. That is the whole reasoning behind identity. Even if he thinks of himself as really nothing more than of common flesh and bones, he is no less a president because his identity is for the public to perceive and not for himself. Like a stereotype, identity exists externally from the person it identifies because it exists within the eye of the viewer. His identity positions him in the center of attention of thousands of people, yet he feels he is unseen. Norton, a rich white trustee of the black university, the narrator is a simple object intertwined with his fate, a mere somebody, he explained to the narrator, that "[was] somehow connected with [Mr. Despite the narrator's belief that, after his long journey, he has finally found the true understanding of identity and discovered his real identity, he is mistaken, for all the identities he experienced were real. Nobody is seen exactly as who they want to be seen, but that does not mean they are invisible, just that the identity they are presenting might not be what the world expects. Without other people around, a person will not have an identity and there will be no need for one. Not even brother or sister, a best friend, a spouse, or a person's parents who created him or her can totally understand. The narrator can believe himself to be whatever he wants, but what he sees of himself is not what others see of him. However, that white man does see him, just that he is seen through an identity without any respect. Instead of being seen as a social leader, he is seen by those two as a social disgrace in the eyes of the black community. A name, or rather call it an identity, is dynamic and interchangeable; a being is static.
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Acceptance Essays
