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'Invisible Man' by Ralph Ellison

A Review

By Enobong TommelleoPublished 6 years ago 3 min read
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"Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat."

This book has been on my reading list for a long time and I was so happy to finally get around to reading it. I bought an old copy (owned by the Stiegel family—whoever they may be) at an independent bookshop in Chicago called The Dial, combining my love for classic literature, old books, and independent bookstores.

It’s an American classic, on many school reading lists, and my mum remembers studying for A Level in Nigeria and all the while I have been sleeping on what has now become a firm favourite. Set in both the American south and New York City, it portrays the story of a young, black man in 1930s American coming to terms to his position society. Not so much a coming-of-age, more so an awakening to the reality of the duplicitous nature of those who claim to be society’s leaders. Perplexed by the advice of his dying grandfather to "overcome ‘em with yeses, undermine ‘em with grins, agree ‘em to death and destruction," the protagonist navigates through the politics of being a black college student in the south and, later, of being a black activist in the North, all the while seeking out an identity unique of his own. I call him ‘the protagonist’ because he has no name. Spoiler alert (just kidding), he’s invisible. Not a ‘spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe’ but invisible "simply because people refuse to see me."

I started reading this book with preconceived notions. I thought I knew what it was about. To be frank, I thought it would another portrayal of the cruelty black people suffered in pre-civil rights America, and, in part, it was. It was also much, much more. Ellison’s protagonist is flawed. He has anger issues, struggles to control his emotions, and is highly naive. He spends his youth battling his grandfather’s advice, not able to believe the underlying lies hidden beneath the world he inhabits, until he accidentally threatens its terms.

This is the story of a man brought up in the open lynching and segregation of the south and is confounded by the open closeness of white people to black people and more subtle racism of the north. He is a man who wants to fight injustice with whoever wants to do so and cannot understand why some of his race deem him a traitor for working with those outside of his race. Ellison investigates the realities of police brutality against black people as well issues of victimisation, how white people try so hard not to be black whilst becoming black and black people try so hard to be white and they end up ‘dull and gray’ and everybody loses because we are all striving for conformity in a world that thrives in diversity. He sees leaders of both races propagated two very different philosophies but both using the people for their own means and both united in dishonesty. Sound familiar?

This book is full of profound self-reflection. Beautifully written and painfully still relevant ninety years later, it’s a book that makes you think and question and then think some more. Yes, it follows one man of a certain time, age, and race through a certain society and yes, his unique experiences are what bring him to the conclusions he comes to. But the invisible man is nameless and faceless because he’s any one of us and all of us. This isn’t a story about the black experience (alone), but of the human experience.

And so, much unlike my normal style, I leave you with two quotes instead of one:

"I sell you no phoney forgiveness, I’m a desperate man–but too much of your life will be lost, its meaning lost, unless you approach it as much through love as through hate."
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About the Creator

Enobong Tommelleo

I love books! Taking the advice of Rory Gilmore, I always have a book to hand. Former intern with Booklist and a book reviewer, reader of everything–I snub no genres. And roommate to a cat.

Follow me on instagram @enobooks

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