And yet, it becomes immediately obvious that the same crime could be so much more easily covered up when the perpetrator possesses a respected skin tone and possesses significant financial resources. Norton's reaction to this story seems intensely suspicious, and the writing may suggest that something similar has happened in his own past. Jim Trueblood has 'accidentally' impregnated his own daughter, and this lurid incident has become a source of shame for the black community and a source of celebration for the prejudiced white community. Norton" serve to underscore the complex and fascinating differences in the way crimes are treated across races. This long and careful allegory of the young black man making his way through the white world is filled with passages so crammed with myth and meaning that the closest comparison I can make is to Rushdie's carefully disjointed " The Satanic Verses".Įllison is an absolute master of making simple events utterly unforgettable to the reader secondary characters such as "Jim Trueblood" and "Mr. "Invisible Man", Ellison's master work, is breathtaking, indescribable, and completely unique. With just a few clicks now, someone can become a completely new person online and can keep their true identity unknown to all, much like how the, “Invisible Man,” is able to remain nameless throughout the novel. While I’m sure Ellison did not hive this in mind while writing the book, I repeatedly drew comparisons between the “invisibility,” in this novel and the sort of invisibility one can take on now in the age of the internet. This, I believe, adds to the persona of an, “invisible man,” as without a name it is nearly impossible to remain identifiable, especially in the case of the narrator as he wears multiple disguises and adopts more than one alternate personality. One thing specifically that I found extremely interesting and smart was the fact that throughout the entire novel, the main character remains nameless. I did however, still find the book very interesting. Knowing this, the whole idea of living underground to avoid the world, seemed strange to me and for that reason I could not give it five stars. While the book is obviously fiction, the majority of it is based off facts and seems very realistic. The novel depicts the journey of an unnamed black man from “model student,” to member of a multiracial, communist organization called the Brotherhood to living in a man-hole.Īs much as I enjoyed reading this book and appreciate the sentiment behind it, I cannot give it a full five star rating. Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man, focuses on a young black man in the middle of the 20th century.
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