James B. Lane's article "Underground to manhood: Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man" has many important points. All of these points connect to the theme of the "Invisible Man", the search for the identity. The article discusses such issues as Ellison's use of symbolism in the novel and what it represents to the invisible man, Ellison's fundamental assumption of the problem, which leads the main character to the new understanding of the world, and invisible man's values and how these values helped to find his identity.
             One of the James Lane's points is that "Ellison used the imagery of dreams and sight to demonstrate the degree to which racism blinded blacks to reality"(Lane, 2). The invisible man had a crazy grandfather who influenced him for the whole life. The grandfather once told his grandson about a dream in which he carried a briefcase of letters, the last one of which said "Keep This Nigger-Boy Running"(19). Later in life invisible man was expelled from college and sent to New York with seven letters to help him find a job. But soon the invisible man discovered that the principal of his school had betrayed him by sending him to New York with no return. He betrayed him by writing the letters that said "Keep this nigger-boy running"(19). The letters were a realization of his grandfather's nightmare, and the realization of the race against him.
             Another one of the James B. Lane's arguments is that "Ellison's fundamental assumption in Invisible Man was that black people became recognizable only when they suppressed their real self and conformed to emasculating parodies of the white man's self-contradictory image of them"(Lane, 2). White Americans could only see African Americans as a group. No one cared to take notice in individuals, it was as all of the African Americans were the same, all of them were uneducated, di...