Customer Reviews

Invisible Man

5 star:		(140)
4 star:		(49)
3 star:		(20)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

Having grown up in the South during the civil rights era, I thought I knew all there was to know about the black/white relationship, or lack thereof. But lately, probably due to the aging process and a desire to revisit my (and other's) past, I've been delving into books that take me someplace different and offer a different perspective. The first book I read was "Raising Fences"--totally captivating and alive with emotion. Then I read "The Bark of the Dogwood"--a tale of the heroics of an African-American housekeeper in Alabama during the 60s. Then I came across "Invisible Man." Boy was this one an eye opener. First of all, this book could stand alone on the writing style--it's great. But couple this with the author's handling of the materials and you've got what should be termed "a classic." "Invisible Man" was something of a sensation when it first appeared, albeit in smaller than normal circles, but over the years it appears to have picked up steam. The reason for this is simple: it's a great book. Also recommended: Raising Fences and The Bark of the Dogwood

Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is at its core a treatise on man's inhumanity to man. What could cause people to put up with the horrifying "Battle Royal" depicted early in the novel. It's very simple, actually, as Ralph Ellison repeatedly lets us know. Most human beings treat their fellow men as pawns to be manipulated in order to fulfill certain selfish means. We see this again and again in the novel. The white benefactor to the college views the main character and his university as nothing more than another tax write-off or an antidote to his nagging conscience. When he is confronted with the reality of the deep South, when the horror of the true conditions of most blacks is revealed to him during the road trip, the main character is expelled for exposing these members of society the dean wants to keep "invisible." The Communist Party also views blacks as nothing more than a special interest group that they can keep in check and manipulate through their rhetoric. To them, the main character, with his great legitimate success and intelligence, is a greater threat than Ras the Destroyer, a mindless thug. Ras is helping the blacks stay invisible, but the main character is pushing them to succeed and forcing society to deal with them as human beings, which the party finds unacceptable. Upon realizing this, the main character at first tries to "defeat them with yeses" as his father advised him and withdraws from the people who cannot see his inner being. However, he concludes that such an acceptance is a betrayal of himself. He decides to learn to start "saying yes and saying no" to the roles that are thurst upon him.

What is the universal message here? It is that in this world, social relationships have been established between human beings, but in almost all of these relationships we are restrained from exposing our inner self. Think about it. Try to count how many unwritten rules you follow in you interactions with other people. There are things you can and cannot say, feelings you can and cannot express, ideas that you can and cannot convey, parts of your soul that you can and cannot reveal. It all depends on who you are dealing with. How are we to respond to such a situation? We must "say yes and say no," we must accept certain boundaries but strive to look beyond them and, little by little, push them back. Pick up a copy of this great American Masterpiece. I promise Invisible Man will make you think! Another, much lighter book I need to recommend is The Losers Club by Richard Perez (Complete Restored Edition), an Amazon purchase that I stumbled on by accident and truly love.

I don't know which was morer captivating to me: Ellison's writing style or Ellison's message. Obviously a must read for today's generation to understand not only the struggles, but the resulting feelings and perceptions of race at that time. Ellison presents it with such a powerful demonstration of words that you can experience his trials and tribulations. Great read!

He is an invisible man, not that he is physically invisible, but because people refuse to see him as he is, or so the story starts.

The story is about a youthful, unnamed black man, who starts off naive and full of idealism. Throughout the book, he faces different ordeals, transforms himself several times, and makes many discoveries about the society in which he lives, each time growing as an individual and trying to find his identity.

The reason I liked this book so much because the way in which it was written makes you care about something you otherwise might not, let alone know about, how blacks weren't even paid attention to in the United States in the period before the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. They weren't so much oppressed or hated, but rather ignored altogether, which, when you think about it, is much worse. It shows just a taste of how much blacks have been wronged, by whites as well as blacks. It also helped my on my path to finding who I was, even though I am not black myself.

The only thing I really disliked about this book was the slow pacing. In my opinion, the story could have been told in less detail and in less time, while still having the same effectiveness.

This is a book that deals with racism and blacks in society, so know what you're getting into when you read it. Ellison uses a lot of Southern or uneducated diction, which can be confusing at times if you've never heard it spoken before. He also uses a lot of symbols, which I thought were well used and added greatly to the book. This great American novel, though quite lengthy at 500+ pages, is worth the read, even if you're like me and not really into that sort of stuff.

I read this novel for an English class, so it was a close reading and I had to go back a lot, reread, and identify many things, things I wouldn't have noticed with just a casual reading. Everytime I went back and read something over, the book made more sense and I liked it more.

Even though Ellison addresses many of the racial problems in America, and possibly inspired things to be done about them, many problems still exist today. Perhaps more people need to read it and be opened to another view of things.

Ralph Ellison's INVISIBLE MAN tackles an issue that frankly is so huge and complex that you wouldn't think it could be captured in a single novel. However, Ralph Ellison pulls off the nearly impossible. Unlike other stories about the suppression/oppression of African-Americans which usually depict the protagonist as a victim of circumstance who is viewed as an enemy of the white people (read NATIVE SON), Ellison depicts the more real and punishing truth. That truth is that the African-American is hardly viewed at all by the white race. The African-American is unseen, his/her needs not addressed, his/her existence not acknowledged. This is a sentiment (if it can be called that) which is echoed in King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail".

Ellison's nameless and blameless protagonist isn't viewed as a person by anyone. He is seen as a source of entertainment, or a source of athleticism, or a case to be tended to... anything except a human being. Ellison's story is devestating, and yet not fatalistic. The protagonist's continuing sense of decency, self-assertion (in his own way) and humanity is not squelched, even at the end. The fact that he bothers to tell his story indicates a hope for an audience to his drama. Perhaps there is hope for all of us.

I am writing this review to all those who overestimate Ellison as much as to those who underestimate him. I saw one post saying that "Ellison was the Muhammed Ali of fiction". I'm sorry but Ellison isn't even a top ten fiction author in the last century (Joyce, Orwell, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, James, Nabokov, Huxley, Forster, and Lawrence). That being said Invisible Man is still an incredible piece if fiction. Ellison's depiction of the black man's struggle across the racial divide in America is touching and true. Literature exists to artistically portray the nature of human behavior and emotion. Ellison does this well, and provides us with a powerfull and intelligent novel.

Ralph Ellison, for starters, exhibits a masterful command of the English language and all of its literary power from therein. For the neophytes reading this, Invisible Man is not merely "a book about overcoming racial injustice" -- as it would appear on the surface to many. To typecast this work in such a way would do nothing short of a grave disservice to the late Ellison. Invisible Man, contrarily, transcends mere race and delves into, as Ellison calls it, "the beautiful absurdity of the American identity."

We are all aiding and abetting lies, Ellison says, by judging others in a coldly insular & scientifically calculated manner based solely upon one's outward appearance -- not unlike the The Brotherhood, Norton, Bledsoe, & Ras the Exhorter. As our hapless (and interestingly nameless), yet undeniably endearing, protagonist astutely states, "The truth is the light and light is the truth." As he is invisible without truth, the truth, conversely, is unattainable without light.

Ellison takes us on a circuitous, if not tumultuous, road to self-awareness that is tragically achieved through his naive and idealistic dreams being systematically shattered by the irrepressibly cynical charlatans in whom he has put his unconditional trust such as the Iago-like Brother Jack. In a book where perception is anything but reality, Ellison's cryptic characters (such as Brother Jack and his inexplicable use of a foreign language and inscrutable glass eye as well as the ostensibly omnipresent, yet never present, Rinehart) without doubt add to this mysterious, yet pervasive, feeling of uncontrollable helplessness of our protagonist who is being inexorably jettisoned into a blurry chaotic world grossly devoid of right and wrong.

Two FYIs: Appropriately, the only letters on the book cover which become "invisible" when looked at from a distance are the two I's. Also: read the prologue again after reading the entire book seeing, as Ellison succinctly states in both the prologue and epilogue, "The end was in the beginning and lies far ahead."

Ellison is the Muhammad Ali, the colossus of fiction - I have never experienced a work of art in ANY medium as rich, provocative and poignant as "Invisible Man." Bar none, be it painting, sculpture, theater, film, poetry... One of the best, most succinct ways I can think of relaying the impact of IM is the way we speak on the street, by saying: That's deep.

Most of the "reviews" I've read here simply recount the many plot situations and/or entirely lack the depth to "get" what Ellison is doing as an artist and human being. For if nothing else, Ellison's work is unique in this respect: it reverberates on SO many levels to so many different kinds of people...

Athletes have a way of talking about when they can do no wrong, when every shot goes in the basket, or the baseball looks as big as a watermelon - They say that they're "in the zone." THAT's what IM is.

It's THE American story by an artist at the height of his powers, in the zone...

To be quite honest the book, "Invisible Man" was not what I expected. First, it's entirely too long, somewhat boring, a little confusing and terribly disturbing to me. I thought it was going to be mostly about a man isolating himself from the world. To my surprise the book is about a black man and the struggles he endures because of his race. There are many parts of this book that I found upsetting, one in particular is when the young man (narrator) is asked to deliver his speech, the one he had given at his graduation. This speech he must now deliver to some important white men, and ends up having to watch a nude women dance, then given clothes for the purpose of fighting blindfolded in a ring with other black kids. After being assaulted by these kids he has to fight a very large black boy who beats him. After that match the boys are paid with coins that are placed on an electric mat for the sole purpose of embarrassing the boys again in front of the white men. Finally, the boy is asked to deliver his speech which ends up being only a few drunk white men listening. Throughout this book, the Invisible Man goes through his life suffering because he will not conform to others expectations. By the end of the book he realized he will always have to struggle with the racial issue. Believing he will never be seen as the man he knows, he gives up and goes underground to become the Invisible Man. I will not recommend this book to anyone I know.

Throughout reading this book I found myself questioned with "Why and I reading this". Although very well written, I felt that it took the author 3 pages to say something that could have been said in a half of a page. When I first picked this book to read, I thought that it would be about an African American man and his struggles in slavery, not some agitator who ultimately gives up on everything he worked toward to become and invisible man in society that lives in solitude. What kind of message is this book sending out? Is it to give up on your dreams, hopes, and aspirations? That is ultimately what I got out of the book. After reading this book I became unsure of whether or not I actually understood it's meaning. Maybe this was why I found a strong dislike for the book. Some parts in this book struck me as rather odd. The scene in the beginning of the book is what I found most peculiar. This is where the narrator is young and is asked to deliver his speech, made at his graduation, to a group of important white men in his community. When the narrator arrives he is forced to watch a naked woman dance and is then given clothes, which to his dismay are for the purpose of fighting blindfolded in a portable boxing ring with other young black kids. After brutally being attacked many times by other kids, he is left alone in the ring with a much bigger black boy and is forced to fight him. The other boy wins and after their match, the boys are "paid" with coins and a few bills that are placed on and electrified mat which purpose is to embarrass the boys even further in front of the white gentlemen. Only after all of this torture is he instructed to give his speech, which only a few of the drunken gentlemen listened to. I myself could have done without this scene. I saw no relevance or purpose to it being in the book other than to inform the readers that he is a gifted public speaker with much to say, which was established many pages before this inappropriate scene. A few other scenes such as when we (the readers) find out about Jim Trueblood and how he impregnated his daughter, the accident and the Liberty Paints plant where the narrator ends up at the hospital and the doctors are unsure of what to do, and the seduction by a white women's rights activist whose husband didn't notice some black man sleeping with his wife made me stop reading and say to myself, "what the heck!?" I did not understand why scenes such as the ones mentioned above were written.I feel that one word that would best describe this book in my opinion is pointless. Maybe I just couldn't grasp the true meaning of this book, or maybe it really was terrible. I will never know, but I do know that I enjoyed this book the least out of all the books I ever read.