Ralph Ellison - Invisible Man Revision

Throughout Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man are events serve only to put the main character through hardships. By the end of the novel the narrator has hit rock bottom, forced to live underground in New York. When he begins writing his memoirs, he first states his rather unhappy conclusion of being an “invisible man,” a person people force themselves to ignore, and that he is stuck that way in his underground hovel. By the end of his memoirs, however, he comes to the realization that even an invisible man has obligations to society. The reason this results in a happy ending is because, unlike nearly all of his progress in life up to this point, this was truly his own decision to do something productive, and is perhaps the most significant idea to come from the main character from the entire novel.

While the narrator was often spurred into productivity throughout the novel, it was never purely from his own behest. The scholarship he received to afford his college education wasn’t given to him purely from his own deeds, but from the sadism of the men who exploited him to do atrocious deeds for their entertainment. The main characters’ getting a job in New York was almost by luck. The act of Emerson’s son opening the letter and revealing Bledsoe’s betrayal to the main character was completely out of the main character. He joined the Brotherhood because he needed the money, even in spite of his