The Invisible Man Ralph Ellison Analysis

Biography.com states Ralph Waldo Ellison was born on March 1, 1914, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and was named after journalist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson. His parents, Lewis and Ida, both loved their children and enjoyed reading literature. As a young child, three years of age, Ellison's father passed away in a work related accident, in turn, leaving Ida to tend and raise Ralph and his younger brother Herbert by herself. As Ellison grew older, he realized that his father’s desire was to witness his son become a writer. In 1936 Ellison left for New York with the intent to earn money for his college expenses, but instead became a researcher and writer for the New York Federal Writers Program. Here is where he met Richard Wright, Langston Hughes and Alan Locke, who helped guide and mentor the young writer. During this time, Ellison began to develop some of his short stories and essays, and worked as the managing editor for The Negro Quarterly. In about 1945 Ellison began to write what would become the Invisible Man, which focused on an African-American civil rights worker from the South who is socially and mentally divided due to the racism he encounters (“Ralph”). These
The invisible man really had three levels of “invisibility”(Ellison 3): Completely invisible, semi-visible, and visible. Some prime examples of when the narrator was semi-visible take place when the letter for Mr. Emerson is received and then the invisible man is told to work at Liberty Paints, almost as though moving around as if he were a game piece, thrown around recklessly on a gameboard. When he gave speeches for the Brotherhood, did they really listen to what he had to say, or did they pay attention just because of his ethnic background? He says in the prologue “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me”(Ellison). This invisibility is what led to the writing of this book, and how Ellison defined his