The True Maeaning of Invisiblity - 942 Words

With the title that Ralph Ellison chose for this book one could easily conclude, without even reading it, that the text is science fiction and deals with the super natural. Upon actually reading it however it becomes painfully obvious that the main character of â€Å"Invisible Man† is quite visible indeed. Fictional or not, he is a regular human being made of flesh and bone, and he even says so in the first sentences of the book. So how can this black man possibly deem himself invisible? Perhaps this nameless protagonist cannot be blamed completely for this freak occurrence. Maybe the invisibility stems from a lack of sight of the people (mainly white) around him. Those people allow themselves to be blinded by the semitransparent veil of stereotypes and racism, causing them not to be able to see the protagonist/narrator for who he really is. With that being said, the narrator himself still has a part to play in this so called invisibility. Throughout the story the narratorâ₠¬â„¢s actions cause people to see him as someone he is not. It seems as though every time there is about to be a turning point in the narrator’s life his good ambitions are tampered with by the cruel intentions of those around him. The genres of this work appear to be African American literature, satire, and in a sense it is a coming-of-age kind of story. As such, the story follows the narrator’s life during the great migration/Harlem Renaissance era and has many different locations. It starts off in the