Friday, December 18, 2009
Where is Ellison going with this?
In the Prologue of the novel Ralph Ellison introduces his reader to the invisible man, a character whose actions and attitudes immediately condemn him as an undesirable person. The invisible man lives outside of Harlem in the basement of an all white building. Ellison establishes the Narrator's bad attitude through his description of how his narrator steals from the electricity company, and runs 1369 light bulbs for the sole purpose of frustrating the electricity company. Within the Prologue, Ellison even describes the narrator's violent outburst against a white man who calls him an "insulting name." The invisible man beats the man inches from death. I don't understand the path on which the invisible man will follow. It seems like his story, unlike the others we have read does not have a cathartic ending. There is no solution. The depressing state that we find the narrator in at the end of the story (in the beginning of the book) does not entice me to finish the work. Why would Ellison create a racially charged setting, which he obviously sympathizes with, if he does not provide a solution to the unequal and paradoxical environment that he creates around his characters.
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I have also been thinking this since the beginning, and wondered where Ellison would lead the reader in the end since we already knew the depressing fate of the narrator. If nothing really changes from the beginning, Ellison book simply shows the reader how the narrator came to his place, and presents no solution. That being said, since we are not finishing this book, I skipped to the epilogue to see where the narrator ends. He has come back to where we first met him, invisible and living in a hole. Despite this, the narrator does much reflecting, which culminates in his belief that during his "hibernation" and efforts to write down his story, he has failed to accomplish anything. Contrary to my original beliefs, however, Ellison ends the novel on a more positive and freeing note, when the narrator states that "the hibernation is over, and he must shake off the old skin and come up for breath...I'm coming out, no less invisible without it, but coming out nevertheless. And I suppose it's damn well time" (580-1). He admits that there's a possibility that "even an invisible man has a socially responsible role to play" (581). While this ending may not be the satisfaction we were hoping for because Ellison does not provide much of a solution, it shows a small escape/achievement for the narrator which, for me, was unexpected.
ReplyDeleteThere is more of reality in this unedning struggle. What Ellison is presenting is the real life of a black man who faces struggles in a society that stands in opposition to him. When we look for things like a character end, we make literature seem unrealistic. It is better to think of the Invisible Man as a person, and not merely a character in a novel. This man is fully carved out and faces real struggles that plague a nation. The so-called "end" is nothing more than a continuation of this difficult life.
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