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Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison | Analysis
(English Literature for BS English, M.A English, and competitive exams) For College & University Students The main protagonist of Ralph Ellison’s invisible man is not the only one who remains unseen as the novel unfolds. Another element also cloaked in invisibility follows our unknown character throughout the novel, changing both beat and tempo as the novel develops. Rather like the invisible man, the ongoing musical beat that runs throughout the invisible man’ may not be visible yet it is very clearly felt and heard. It is the distinct incorporation of the inflowing musical beat that allows for an interloping of ideas based upon the visible, the invisible, and the creative in the novel.
The main theme within the ‘invisible man’ is that of the more obvious theme of invisibility. Ellison explores through the use of music such as in the form of jazz the moments or experiences where invisibility takes control. Such breaks in visibility signify a chance for the protagonist to escape and break the mold of what can be called ‘constitutional visibility’ allowing for the exploration of one’s own identity and individuality. An individuality and identity that is not in any way restricted to what is generally accepted as visible.
Such breaks that allow for such explorations to take place within the novel can be seen from the very beginning wherein the prologue the protagonist recalls a certain incident: Once I saw a prize-fighter boxing a yokel. The fighter was swift and amazingly scientific. His body was one violent flow of rapid rhythmic action. He hit the yokel a hundred times while the yokel held up his arms in stunned surprise. But suddenly the yokel … struck one blow …. The smart money hit the canvas. The long-shot got the nod. The yokel had simply stepped inside of the opponent’s sense of time.
Through such a passage the reader is able to see that there is an alternative to the scientific approach. The yokel uses time and space in order to overpower the violence of science allowing creativity to achieve success. The restriction imposed by science is overcome through the ability to analyze and interpret a situation differently. In this instance, it was the yokel’s ability to step into the time frame of the prize-fighter and thus provide for a different strategy towards victory. One that was able to unite creativity and originality.
Rather in the same way the ‘invisible man’ uses the music of Louis Armstrong with the combination of the reefer to discover a rather unconventional way of listening to Armstrong’s music, thus in that way offering new ways of interpretation.
Through the work of Victor Zuckerkandl, critic Nathaniel Mackey creates a rather interesting argument. Mackey states that ‘because music exists the tangible and visible cannot be the whole of the given world. The intangible and invisible is itself a part of the world, something which we encounter, and something to which we respond’ this statement can be seen running throughout the ‘invisible man. It is visible where the protagonist describes the dreamlike images evoked by Louis Armstrong’s music. These images run throughout the novel as seen at the very beginning by the incorporation of the prize-fighter and the yokel. These cuts and breaks in the narrative are essential to grounding this feeling and theme of invisibility whilst at the same time allowing Ellison to create improvisation through the use of language. Such technique is central to the very framework of the novel. The novel itself flows like a piece of music, with one incident happening right after the other. Each incident offers a break, a certain point in which the protagonist is given a certain moment in which his identity and individuality are either challenged or asserted.
Even so, Ellison does not rely on merely the invisible man to convey the W. Bell calls the portrayal of ‘the historical quest of black Americans for identity in a society whose traditions simultaneously inspire and inhibit their impulse toward freedom and self-realization. Characters like True blood immerge. Although he has committed the sin of incest, True blood does not allow his guilt to bind him. He turns towards the blues for guidance and repentance. One can even say that true blood turns inward, looking at himself and at what defines him as an individual. W. Bell says that ‘the courage and discipline that true blood discovers in the blues are essential values that the hero must learn by acknowledging his folk heritage’. The character of the junkman that the hero meets later in New York is also a reinforcement of the idea of the blues as being part of the cultural heritage of the black community. The idea of jazz and the blues and the power that they were able to distribute lies in their ability to parallel the then-black life. Writing in ‘Living with music’ Ellison is quoted as saying ‘life could be harsh, loud and wrong if it wished, but they lived it fully and when they expressed
improvisation, to piece together different instruments playing their own spontaneous versions of the chords that create a song, so did the many different cultures and cultural traditions come together to piece the American tradition. This piercing of the American culture and tradition is seen throughout the novel as the protagonists come face to face with a variety of individuals, ranging from different backgrounds that have all come together to form what is termed as ‘American’.
Ellison comments in his ‘Shadow and Act’ that: ‘The Blues is an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one aching consciousness, to finger its jagged edge and to transcend it, not by the consolation of philosophy but by squeezing from it a near-tragic, near comic lyricism. As a form, the blues is an autobiographical chronicle of personal catastrophe expressed lyrically…’
In other words, what Ellison is stating is that the blues offer another medium through which the philosophy of life is brought out. Philosophy as such revolves through and around the complexities of improvisation. The crude or white-washed walls of science are completely disregarded by Ellison for a far more natural or artistic sense of being. Where one’s path is life is defined by the tragedies and experiences he or she goes through, so that we are able to emerge triumphant in the end, whilst temporarily relying on the comforts of the present. This according to Ellison is the true essence of one’s freedom of identity.
Albert Murray further expands on this in ‘The hero and the blues’ stating that the blues present us with a near ancient tragedy sort of existence where the hero is able to persist through life and through whatever ugliness that life presents to him through what Murray calls ‘a device for making the best of a bad situation’.
Such a philosophy can be partly seen through the grandfather’s words that the protagonist hears echoing throughout the novel. His, the grandfathers, was a philosophy of yes-sing them. Such a philosophy may be on the surface regarded as a show of submission by the black man to the white man’s dominance. Yet to the grandfather it was a way of survival. A way of like Murray says making the best out of a bad situation. In a world where the black community was regarded as lowly and inferior to the white community, it is hard to see how a full-on offensive would have helped
determine equality. In fact, a full-on offensive by the black man toward the white man would have left the black man poor, helpless, and hungry. This show of submission is part of the grandfather’s departing wisdom. The wisdom that urges our protagonist to fight in a defensive rather than offensive mode as this would be a fruitful result. This would be achieved by: ‘‘Live with your head in the lion’s mouth, I want you to overcome ‘em with yess, undermine’em with grins, agree’em to death and destruction, let ‘em swoller you till they vomit or bust open’’
Although not completely understood by the main protagonist the grandfather had imparted a rat sphinxlike riddle of advice that although appeared to be that of subjection was actually a means of survival. By urging his grandson to say yes he is not urging him to bow down to the white man but rather to assert himself. He is saying ‘yes’ knowing that he has the power to say ‘no’. His ‘yes’ is a show of dignity, a statement stating that he is agreeing as a free man, not as a slave, and that that ‘yes’ is a means of survival. The grandfather is not the only one to have picked up on this idea of having to say ‘yes’ in order to survive. Bledsoe is another character who aims to ‘yeses’’ the entire white race to death. Yet the difference between Bledsoe and the grandfather is that Bledsoe does it through complete selfishness. This is the danger that Bernard W. Bell says Ellison is ultimately implying. ‘..the danger of compulsive individualism in a laissez-faire social system based on the conflicting principles of egalitarianism and racism.’
The hero’s grandfather’s words are elusive and open to a wide scope of interpretation, yet for Ellison, this was the exact embodiment of the meaning of jazz. Jazz as seen in Ellison’s essay ‘The Charlie Christian Story’ was regarded by Ellison as an art of individual assertion within and against the group. Each true jazz moment … springs from a contest in which each artist challenges all the rest; each solo flight or improvisation represents … a definition of his identity: as an individual, a member of the collectivity, and as a link in the chain of tradition. Thus because jazz finds its very life in an endless improvisation of traditional materials, the jazzman must lose his identity even as he finds it. Ellison’s last words echo the very theme of ‘the invisible man and the final act of the hero within the book. For in order to become visible Ellison’s hero has had to become invisible. And although our
never free from the workings of his mind. These processes or thoughts are the forces that lead him to realize that “Gin, jazz, and dreams were not enough. Books were not enough.”. By the end of the novel, the invisible man has come to realize his grandfather’s words as part of his own social responsibility. It is at this point that the role of improvisation has diminished. The invisible man has come to relish his own social responsibility.
A responsibility that embodies the individual yet at the same time re- establishes the value of the community. A jazz player may improvise in a solo bringing out his own identity yet he must also work together with the rest of the group to bring out the larger part of the song. It is this larger part of the song, the bigger picture that allows for the protagonist to accept his social responsibilities. A bigger picture results not through, merely an understanding of improvisation but rather through the simple act of forgiveness and love.
“It’s ’winner take nothing’ that is the great truth of our country or of any country. Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat. Our fate is to become one, and yet many.
