invisible man

Critical Analysis of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison is a distressingly honest portrayal of the struggle an African-American man felt as he tried to elevate his position in society in the United States during the 1950’s. The protagonist, a man who name is never revealed to the reader, struggles to find individualism and identity in a time where racism almost always insures the repression of such. The narrator highlights his first-person account with several violent events; the least gruesome of which has an uncomfortable sickening effect on the reader. Bluntness, however, is a tool Ellison uses to effectively express his objective; Ellison strives to show that racism is uncomfortable. A key mechanism in the advancement of this point is violence. Ellison’s gripping tales of race riots, street fights, and torture absorbs readers into his chronicle and shocks them with the protagonist's recurring struggles stemming from the underlying dilemma of...