Invisible Man opens with the sardonic voice of a nameless protagonist who has spent years underground recovering from the emotional, psychological, and physical turmoil he’d endured while trying to fit into American society. As Ellison labored over creating the story of his pilot, he found that another story was taking shape beyond it-one about a young African American’s quest for identity and self-definition in a world determined to control and define him after its own socially-constructed patterns. Through the story, Ellison intended to depict the absurdity of democratic ideals when manifested in the case of a high-ranking individual, skilled in a challenging and respectable career field, yet still considered a second-class citizen because of race. When captured and taken to a Nazi prisoner-of-war-camp, the pilot discovered he held the highest military rank, yet, at the same time, the lowest social standing. In the introduction to the 1980 edition, Ellison explains the novel was inspired by a fledgling story he’d started writing in 1945, which was about an African American pilot shot down over enemy lines during World War II. Ellison composed Invisible Man in a similar revolutionary vein, as a bildungsroman (coming-of-age story) that deals with self-discovery despite the obstacles of societal constraints. It was a period of cultural revolution, of discovering and redefining what it meant to be an African American in the modern United States. Upon its publication in 1952, it became an instant success, winning multiple awards the following year and establishing Ellison as a key twentieth-century literary figure.Įllison wrote Invisible Man shortly after the conclusion of the Harlem Renaissance (1918-1937), a movement in the United States in which African Americans across innumerous artistic disciplines collectively produced works of art inspired by Afrocentric pride and identity. ![]() ![]() This is the opening line of Ralph Ellison’s hit novel, Invisible Man.
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