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    The Invisible Man
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    The Invisible Man
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    The Invisible Man
    Ebook199 pages4 hours

    The Invisible Man

    By H. G. Wells

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    About this ebook

    The Invisible Man is an 1897 science fiction novella by H.G. Wells. Wells' novel was originally serialised in Pearson's Magazine in 1897, and published as a novel the same year. The Invisible Man of the title is Griffin, a scientist who theorises that if a person's refractive index is changed to exactly that of air and his body does not absorb or reflect light, then he will be invisible. He successfully carries out this procedure on himself, but cannot become visible again, becoming mentally unstable as a result.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSheba Blake Publishing
    Release dateJun 27, 2015
    ISBN9781329572133
    Author

    H. G. Wells

    H.G. Wells is considered by many to be the father of science fiction. He was the author of numerous classics such as The Invisible Man, The Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The War of the Worlds, and many more. 

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    Reviews for The Invisible Man

    4/5

    67 ratings56 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This was one of the books we read in the only English class I took in college, Literature of Existentialism. I'm not sure I really understood existentialism then or now, but this is certainly a book worthy of inclusion on this or any other list.
    • 4/5
      A fearsome nightmare, a hallucination of a book. The Battle Royale sequence in the beginning has the terrifying grip of a fever dream, of sleep paralysis.

      But Invisible Man, although steeped in allusions from science fiction, existentialism, Dostoevsky, and the Bildungsroman, is also very real, in its conveyance of an experience again that many of us simply cannot otherwise ever know.
    • 5/5
      The year is 1952. An aspiring author, encouraged by some of the most reputable artists of his day, comes from the Harlem Renaissance with a debut novel that leaves readers speechless. The story begins with one of the most vivid introductions and jumps into a first chapter that is enthralling. Critics heap praises on the work and compare it to the works of Doestoevsky. Within a year the novel has won the National Book Award. It is perhaps the most eye-opening account of the black experience in America ever written in novel form. It opens the door to a new era of respect for the black novelist.

      Flash forward over fifty years and there are many conclusions one could make about what happened between 1952 and today for this novel, Invisible Man. Of course its author, Ralph Ellison, went on to write many more successful works, each becoming stronger until he was regarded on an equal literary stance with other greats such as Hemingway, Faulkner, and Twain. Someone in Hollywood has attempted to make at least one decent film adaptation of the novel. And of course it is heralded by the likes of Oprah who praise it for its insight and its five decades of influence for black youth.

      None of this happened, though. It is as if Ellison’s Invisible Man was invisible itself.

      That’s not to say that there is not still great respect for the book—it appears on nearly every list of greatest books of the 20th century. Personally, I expect more, though. Perhaps this is some fault of Ellison’s. He did, after all, spend nearly forty years writing a second book that he couldn’t finish. Had he completed three or four equally compelling works, would he be celebrated today as a great? Or perhaps the overarching themes of Invisible Man—multi-dimensional race relations and the pitfalls of ideology—are too much, even today, for some.

      Whatever the case, I went into this book with some apprehension. I had read the first chapter a couple years back and had put it down to let it all marinate in my mind. I knew the rest of the novel couldn’t live up to that beginning, but I was curious. Finally, I relented and proceeded to finish Ellison’s masterpiece. Naturally the intensity unleashed at the beginning dies down–it would be cloying if it didn’t. The same wonderful imagery and evocative story-telling continues throughout, however, and Invisible Man lives up the title “classic.”

      The only disappointment I felt upon completing this book was the knowledge that there was never another. A debut novel this grand deserves another.
    • 5/5
      This was an eloquent and affecting book about racial tensions in America in the period leading up to the Civil Rights Movement. The unnamed narrator is used and abused in different ways that changed him over time from an idealistic young man to one who has been to the School of Hard Knocks where he learns that both ambitious blacks and unscrupulous whites have manipulated him to further their agendas with no regard for him as an individual. It's a powerful book about powerlessness in the south and in the streets of Harlem. IM is even betrayed in the "protected" setting of a Negro college where he is an excellent student on a scholarship.This is an intelligently written book about alienation. IM's search for identity unfolds through some superlative storytelling. From the beginning chapter where I was horrified by the Battle Royal to the Harlem Riots near the end of the book, IM experiences disillusionment with the world he dreamed of conquering as he comes to know himself and realize that "even an invisible man has a socially responsible role to play." (581) It was interesting to me to note that Ellison's full name is Ralph Waldo Ellison, and like the famous Emerson he is named after, Ellison believes in self-reliance and in the foolishness of conformity: "Whence all this passion toward conformity anyway?--diversity is the word. Let man keep his many parts and you'll have no tyrant states. Why, if they follow this conformity business they'll end up by forcing me, an invisible man, to become white, which is not a color but the lack of one. Must I strive toward colorlessness? But seriously, and without snobbery, think of what the world would lose if that should happen. America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain." (577)In my first sentence I categorized Invisible Man as a book about race, but I can see upon reflection that it is so much more. The title is Invisible Man not Invisible Black Man. The unnamed narrator's experiences are fairly universal in that the road to success has plenty of roadblocks. It is easy to feel invisible in a society that defines success by how much money or power one has rather than looking inside at our core values where our true worth lies. Though we may be invisible to society, the truth of who we are based on our thoughts, dreams, and actions is a better gauge of our self-worth. Whew! Deep thoughts. That is what a careful and open-minded reading of this book will do to you. Who knows...it might even be life changing.
    • 5/5
      One of the greatest American novels ever written. So rich and full of life and ideas. Although this is about the black experience in America, it's also about everyone, as the last sentence reveals. Allow the story to wash over and into your soul and it may reveal something about who you are, or believe to be. We are all invisible men. I also highly recommend the audiobook reading by Joe Morton (2010), he deserves a Tony or something, it was like a one-man Broadway play, the novel greatly benefits in a spoken word performance by a professional actor.
    • 5/5
      A strange and wonderful book. I expected a fairly conventional look at America from a black point of view in the early 20th century. Instead, it is a poetical, political, phantasmagorical story of an individual's education in blackness, America, and the hurman condition. This book has been more than adequately reviewed by other contributors; I would simply suggest that it an essential part of American literature, and essential reading for anyone who is interested in how America became what it is.
    • 4/5
      Like the underground man in Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground, the invisible man lives underground, but he is invisible only because others refuse to see him for who he is. They manipulate him as a tool toward their goals. When he was fighting in the battle royale, he was only entertaining the white men. When he studied at the college, Dr. Bledsoe showcased him to the trustee as a model of the school’s success. In turn, the trustee funded the school to heel his wounded heart. When he went to New York, the communists used him to solicit members and ultimately sacrificed him through the Harlem riot to promote their agenda. Even Mary, who cared for him like a mother, didn’t see him for who he is. But such invisibility is not only that of an African-American, but of all Americans, and perhaps of all human. To exist but not be seen. To reflect light but be transparent. An object of others’ agendas rather than an individual.Only when he realized his invisibility did possibilities emerge, did he become free. Only then did he found himself. The person he is, rather then the person whom others wanted him to be. And in the end, he decided to emerge from his hibernation. What are the possibilities? Or perhaps more disillusionment?
    • 4/5
      Really great novel. I feel like I need to read some commentaries on it to really complete the experience, and I will. The story is easy to follow along, but Ellison is sometime too eloquent and/or poetic for my non-poetic mind to really get at the deeper issues he's addressing. Still, this novel is full of topics for discussion.
    • 4/5
      A very interesting book about Harlem and the different social movements happening at that time. There was an "unreal" feeling about the way the book was written. It felt almost like the whole story was happening in someone's dream or like the narrator was insane. It gave me the feeling the whole time like I almost understood what was happening but not quite. I wasn't sure if the author was alluding to events I should have known about or whether the author wanted to give me that feeling. This is defintiely a book I will have to read the Spark Notes for to make sure I didn't miss something important. (And it always annoys me when I can't just read a book and enjoy the book without having to see what others said about the book to understand it.)
    • 5/5
      I learned a good deal about the life of afro-americans in the USA. It is a wonderful book. But it is painful and dramatic. Life is not easy for blacks in the US. I wish there was a better understanding of the importance of africans in the construction of what we (including us, brazilians) are today. Our culture, our life, our language, our music and hundreds of other aspects of our daily life is linked to their culture.
    • 2/5
      "...one of the greatest jokes in the world is the spectacle of the whites busy escaping blackness and becoming blacker every day, and the blacks striving toward whiteness, becoming quite dull and gray."Ellison is certainly a skilled writer and his prose impressive (his dialogue, not so much). The story is expertly layered with imagery, metaphors, and foreshadowing. I appreciate some of his more blatant imagery (such as the kneeling slave statue or his infamous paint mixing scene). I am glad to have read such an African American classic, such an acclaimed social commentary... but it will be the last.I have found this book to be more tedius than entertaining; more garrulous than insightful. There are many gaping holes in the storyline which I understand were left to mystery purposefully by the author, but instead of intriguing the plot, it was confusing this reader. Perhaps Ellison's language is too subtle for me to grasp or too sophisticated for my palate. For a subject as powerful and personal as racism, it fell short of the claims made on it.A fellow goodreads user (Nathaniel Calhoun) said it best in his review:'This is strongly reminiscent of German Expressionist drama from the early 20th century. It suffers from an inability to actually characterize anyone beyond the protagonist. Every other character is crushed by the need to represent a whole class or demographic. All of the other figures are episodes in his life, his personal development, his realization of society's deep-seated decay and his inexorable (and predictable) movement towards disillusionment. Which is to say that it is a heavy-handed, young, stereotype filled book.Yes, it is a worthy historical object. Yes, it is an interesting foil to other pieces of American literature (which does not have too many books of this variety); but I don't think it deserves great praise if it is judged on its own merits. The prose is nothing special, the dialect isn't handled with particular grace, it has an irritating tendency to state the obvious and to self-interpret and the author actually takes the time to call attention to the fact that he is choosing to rant at you for the last five pages--a total admission of weakness.I am, however, giving it two stars in the "it was okay" sort of fashion. I'm not upset that I read it. I just won't read it again, teach it or recommend it to anyone.'
    • 4/5
      Invisible Man was on a list of "100 Significant Books" I was working through, and is considered one of the great novels of the 20th Century, not just one of the great American or African-African works. I've heard Ellison described as the "Black Joyce" which is rather unfair to Ellison--both because he's his own man, and because his novel is much more readable and enjoyable than Joyce's Ulysses, also on that list. The theme is stated right in the beginning, in one of the most eloquent openings I've read in literature:I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids — and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination--indeed, everything and anything except me.That's from the Prologue. The first chapter sets the tone for the novel: surreal, brutal, disturbing. In it and developed throughout is this conception of the Booker T Washington vision of how to respond to racism as treason to self and to race. I can't help but feel Ellison is unfair to Booker T. Washington and his legacy, particularly in how he depicts his fictional counterpart Bledsoe, but I can't deny the power of Ellison's imagery and language, and it's fascinating in its way how this novel written in the late 1940s and published in 1952 is still relevant today. I can hear so many echos in it that reflect racial divides--not so much in terms of black and white but more the black versus black debates: W.E.B. DuBois versus Booker T. Washington; Shelby Steele versus Cornell West. And despite all I've read before on the period, I do feel the book made me better understand why both the Communist Party and Black Nationalism might have appealed in the first half of the 20th century to American blacks frustrated over their treatment by their fellow Americans.Not everything about the novel works for me however. So many of the incidents in the book are too bizarre to be taken as real, I found it off-putting at times and it made it harder to feel for his narrator and take what happens to him seriously. For one because I didn't feel they all fit together with the narrative and narrator--they feel episodic, rather than part of an arc for his character. There's something here that makes me think more of Kafka, where every character and scene is pregnant with symbolism. Ten months pregnant--with triplets. Sometimes I thought the racial imagery and handling of issues were very heavy handed. (Optic white paint, "the right white?" Really?) And I never identified and rarely sympathized with Ellison's unnamed "invisible man." At times, and not just at the beginning, he's just too naive and foolish to be believed, such a tool, even for someone that young. He changes so much to fit those he's around, is such a chameleon, that seems more the explanation for being "invisible" than the color of his skin. (Even if I get Ellison's point he is a chameleon because of racism.) He even allows his own name to be effaced at one point and at another wears a disguise. One of the few times he exerts himself as an individual is when he chooses to buy yams from a street vendor and eat them right there. Few of the characters outside the narrator ever seemed real to me, especially the female characters. It doesn't help that so much of Ellison's dialogue comes across as, if not stilted, than at least stagey and filled with stock phrases. The Epilogue just doesn't work for me. It's as eloquent as the prologue, but didn't convince me it linked up with the narrator's experiences. On the other hand, there is a streak of humor through the book I couldn't help appreciating. (I loved Ellison's description of his character's first encounter with the New York City subway system--over fifty years later, and the description is still apt.) But you know, on that list of "100 Significant Books," this one is the only one by an African-American, and often seems mentioned as the book to read in that category. I did like Invisible Man a lot, but I wouldn't consider it as amazing a read as Alice Walker's The Color Purple, Toni Morrison's Beloved or especially Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. All of those books have characters I cared about much more than Ellison's narrator. On the other hand, not only was this a surprisingly fast-paced read, but many of the scenes, despite of or because they're so bizarre, are definitely very memorable and likely to stay with me a long time. And that's why for all the problems I had with it I rated it four stars. Very much worth the read.
    • 5/5
      “Invisible Man” is a revolutionary view of racism in early twentieth century North American time period. Ralph Ellison richly explains the life of an unnamed protagonist who lives in secret and dark place. The protagonist alludes to the darkness of his home and the invisibility of his identity, but counters both of these with a home that is bright with wall to wall lighting. The protagonist believes that his invisibility as an African American man is well balanced when he returns to his peaceful home.The protagonist did not arrive at the conclusion that he was an invisible man likely, and in his adolescence he fought to be recognized in white America. He received a prestigious scholarship to attend a “black” college and worked his hardest to distinguish himself both inside and outside of the classroom. However, due to an unfortunate series of events he was expelled from his college and sent from his southern home to live as a blue collar worker in the north. All of this was the beginning of his awakening of his invisibility not only to white Americans, but to black Americans as well.In the end the protagonist decided that the best place for him to live was far removed from society; and so he retreated to his home that is full of the light that he brings in. Although the protagonist ends his story alone he is not lonely, and he is not regretful for his decision to retreat from society entirely. After his experiences the protagonist could have found no better decision. Ralph Ellison masterfully attacked the issue of racism from the perspective of one person who felt the burn of prejudice from white Americans as well as black Americans, and who in the end harbored contempt for both of them.
    • 5/5
      An astonishing and powerful book. The story of one man's rise and fall into invisibility is just as apt for today as when it was first written in 1952. I found that I just couldn't put this down and as the story progressed I wanted to find out exactly what turned our man invisible.
    • 3/5
      Just read it. Worth the read for its description of race relations and political activism. Interesting for historical, sociological, philosophical discussions. However, I found it unequal in quality. The beginnng is slow and boring. If you hang on, it gets much better. The part I enjoyed the most is when he starts getting involved in the Brotherhood.
    • 4/5
      The main character is an unnamed black man who, at the start of the book, considers himself to be nothing but a stereotype and therefore socially invisible. He hides himself away from society. The narrator goes on to describe and try to make some sense from the events in his life which lead to his self-inflicted imprisonment. This is an intelligent novel and the author makes great use of metaphor and imagery to bring to life social issues facing African Americans in the early 20th century, reformist ideologies of the time and most importantly, personal identity. My favorite section of the book is where the narrator dresses in a disguise and is over and over again mistaken for a man named Rinehart. But just who is Rinehart? The lover, the gambler, the reverend? Rinehart seems to be a man of many identities, at the cost of losing his own. The narrator becomes disillusioned with his life and realizes that he has lost his own identity.
    • 4/5
      “Invisible Man” reminded me in the beginning of a Dickens coming of age tale, a story of trying to make one’s way in the world from a lowly starting point, yet with one important difference: the additional handicap of racism, of being judged and denied simply because of the color of one’s skin, a handicap that cannot be covered up or shaken, and one that reduces the nameless narrator to animal status in the eyes of those in power. The people the narrator meets, white and black, are almost all distorted and odd. He tries to play by the rules of the world, but finds the world absurd. In this sense the book also seems to fit into post-war existential absurdist literature, but through an African-American’s perspective. A profound unfairness pervades the novel, one that seeks to keep African-Americans in a predefined box, to strip all individuality, to strip identity, and to make invisible. In the worst case it manifests itself as cruelty, such as the sadistic pleasure “upstanding” white citizens take in a “Battle Royal” between young African-Americans, and in the best case it manifests as manipulation, as “friends” seek to make the narrator the “next Booker T. Washington” in order to help aggregate political power. However in this role he is simply a soldier who is not meant to think but to obey, a pawn in the game, and little more than a modern-day slave to those who control him. Invisibility comes in many forms, including “rebirth” following outrageous medical experimentation into a world which has stripped him of all dignity, even the diminished dignity it had afforded him as a black man, a world in which, like a newborn, he has no identity. Removal of identity is mirrored in the removal of home, as an elderly black couple is evicted. Here poverty, almost pathetic poverty, is on full display in the form of their worldly possessions, and yet these are deeply meaningful objects, objects that speak of a life forged under limited means; unfortunately it’s one which can be taken and humiliated and ruined by unseen white power. Removal of identity is also taken to the limit in removal of life, arbitrarily, a reaction by the police to an individual out of all proportion with his offense, and with no more concern that they would have in squashing a cockroach on the kitchen floor.In Ellison’s words: “… a novel could be fashioned as a raft of hope, perception and entertainment that might help keep us afloat as we tried to negotiate the snags and whirlpools that mark our nation’s vacillating course toward and away from the democratic ideal.” Is there hope in this book? I think so. But as the narrator carries around with him a segment of a filed off leg chain, it’s a legacy that can be transcended and overcome but not without a great struggle, and regardless it is always carried internally, and cannot be forgotten.Quotes:On history:“For history records the patterns of men’s lives, they say: Who slept with whom and with what results; who fought and who won and who lived to lie about it afterwards. All things, it is said, are duly recorded – all things of importance, that is. But not quite, for actually it is only the known, the seen, the heard and only those events that the recorder regards as important that are put down, those lies his keepers keep their power by. “On race relations:“’Please him? And here you are a junior in college! Why, the dumbest black bastard in the cotton patch knows that the only way to please a white man is to tell him a lie! What kind of education are you getting around here?”“Maybe he was dissimulating, like some of the teachers at the college, who, to avoid trouble when driving through the small surrounding towns, wore chauffer caps and pretended that their cars belonged to white men.”“My face was warm, but I returned her glance as steadily as I dared. It was not the harsh uninterested-in-you-as-a-human-being stare that I’d known in the South, the kind that swept over a black man as though he were a horse or an insect; it was something more, a direct, what-type-of-mere-man-have-we-here kind of look that seemed to go beneath my skin…”“So she doesn’t think I’m black enough. What does she want, a black-face comedian? Who is she, anyway, Brother Jack’s wife, his girl friend? Maybe she wants to see me sweat coal tar, ink, shoe polish, graphite. What was I, a man or a natural resource?”“Still it was nothing new, white folks seemed always to expect you to know those things which they’d done everything they could think of to prevent you from knowing. The thing to do was to be prepared – as my grandfather had been when it was demanded that he quote the entire United States Constitution as a test of his fitness to vote. He had confounded them all by passing the test, although they still refused him the ballot…”“Now he’s part of history, and he has received his true freedom. Didn’t they scribble his name on a standardized pad? His race: colored! Religion: unknown, probably born Baptist. Place of birth: U.S. Some southern town. Next of kin: unknown. Address: unknown. Occupation: unemployed. Cause of death (be specific): resisting reality in the form of a .38 caliber revolver in the hands of the arresting officer, on Forty-second between the library and the subway in the heat of the afternoon…”“It was all a swindle, an obscene swindle! They had set themselves up to describe the world. What did they know of us, except that we numbered so many, worked on certain jobs, offered so many votes, and provided so many marchers for some protest parade of theirs?”“Whence all this passion towards conformity anyway? - diversity is the word. Let man keep his many parts and you’ll have no tyrant states. Why, if they follow this conformity business they’ll end up by forcing me, an invisible man, to become white, which is not a color but the lack of one. Must I strive towards colorlessness? But seriously, and without snobbery, think of what the world would lose if that should happen. America is woven of many strands; I would recognize them and let it so remain.”On being a throwback:“What was I in relation to the boys, I wondered. Perhaps an accident, like Douglass. Perhaps each hundred years or so men like them, like me, appeared in society, drifting through; and yet by all historical logic we, I, should have disappeared around the first part of the nineteenth century, rationalized out of existence. Perhaps, like them, I was a throwback, a small distant meteorite that died several hundred years ago and now lived only virtue of the light that speeds through space at too great a pace to realize that its source has become a piece of lead…”Given the searing nature of the content of the book and its message, it’s easy to overlook the style and beauty of Ellison’s writing. Some examples:“I stretched out beneath the covers, hearing the springs groan beneath me. The room was cold. I listened to the night sounds of the house. The clock ticked with empty urgency, as though trying to catch up with the time. In the street a siren howled.”“The sun seemed to scream an inch above my head.”“I’d had too many drinks. Time ran fluid, invisible, sad. Looking out I could see a ship moving upstream, its running lights bright points in the night. The cool sea smell came through to me, constant and thick in the swiftly unfolding blur of anchored boats, dark water and lights pouring past. Across the river was Jersey and I remembered my entry into Harlem. Long past, I thought, long past. It was as if drowned in the river.”And these expressions all within the same paragraph: “the riotous lights of the roller coasters”, “the infant joy of fountains”, and the “hard stone river of the street”, and shortly later, a crowd which “…swung imperturbably back to their looting with derisive cries, like sandpipers swinging around to glean the shore after a furious wave’s recession.”
    • 5/5
      I teach this, but it's worth reading if you haven't.
    • 5/5
      I read this for a term paper in 11th grade and to this day I find it to be one of the most powerful pieces of literature I have ever read. The numerous themes that appear in Ellison's work are timeless and really make one reflect on life as both an individual and member of society.
    • 4/5
      This is the first of six large works assigned to my college's Contemporary American Literature course. Disregarding some annoyingly overt symbolism, it's a rich, powerful novel. Essential reading.
    • 4/5
      Invisible Man was what I would call an interesting book. Interesting because I was able to grasp that it had different layers which I didn't understand completely. The prologue was a fantastic read, and the whole novel had a bit of what I would call Modern Surrealism throughout it. Modern Surrealism meaning that certain situations which the main character found himself in, were a bit unbelievable and nonsensical/chaotic. If I had to pick a favorite part in the novel I would say it was either the opening scene when the main character was driving the white Mr. Norton around the poor part of the negro community, or when the main character was a part of a communist organization in Harlem. It was interesting to read about the interactions of a black man in a communist organization.Also, because part of it was set in Harlem it reminded me of The Autobiography of Malcolm X which also took place there. I read that book a few months ago. Overall I would say it does deserve it's status as a piece of modern classical literature and the only complaint I had about it was that you never got too attached to the main character. I would add more depth to the characters themselves rather than focusing on what they did.
    • 4/5
      Camus, with soul. 'Dripping with symbolism. As a matter of fact, it's all symbolism. I'm very glad I read it.
    • 5/5
      In 1952 when this book was published, it was "hailed as a masterpiece." The main character, as narrator, weaves a moving tale events that all have the same theme. He is invisible - from the man he nearly killed for running into him because he hadn't seen him, to the man he trusted, who actually had a glass eye, and therefore could not see him - and all those in between. The prologue begins with main character stating that he is invisible because people refuse to see him. The rest of the novel is proof of that statement. The book is written with symbolic notions throughout. For example, he lives in a paint factory basement where only white paint is produced. The story begins with the narrator receiving a scholarship to a black college after being forced to participate in a bloody "battle royale." From there, his journey is one mishap after another during which he becomes involved with black militant groups, communists, women, jazz, and white people who all make him feel invisible. In the epilogue, the narrator states, "When one is invisible he finds such problems as good and evil, honesty and dishonesty, of such shifting shapes that he confuses one with the other, depending upon who happens to be looking through him at the time (572). Betrayal in the form or institutional and individual racism and cruelty is an ongoing theme, woven so brilliantly throughout. Does the invisible man speak for you, too?
    • 2/5
      833 Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison (read 18 Dec 1965) (National Book Award fiction prize for 1953) This is a famous book but when I read it I was totally unimpressed, and have very little memory of it. It appears on many "best" lists, including Anthony Burgess' 99 best novels published in English from 1939 to 1984, and I have over the years been interested I reading all the novels on that list--as of August 2010 I have read 42 of them--so I am glad I read this, but it said nothing to me.
    • 5/5
      Outstanding book. It is the epitome of the Great American Novel. It is a shame Ellison only finished one book. Brilliant prose and intriguing story of a young black man from the south in the early part of the 20th century who makes his way up North in hopes of a better future. I wrote a number of papers on it and there was no lack of subject matter for turning out a literary theory critique.
    • 4/5
      Ellison asks a lot of his narrator — he needs him to be innocent enough to make many of the scenes humorous, or at least not horrifying. And yet the narrator also needs to go through a crisis of identity — to gain enough understanding of the world by the end to be paralyzed. I think people tend to gravitate to either of those characteristics, but not both. I like the scene in the Golden Day. Others like the prologue and epilogue. To me the humor is what separates Invisible Man from a Go Tell it on the Mountain or a Native Son — you want to read it again and so you get more out of it.Ellison never finished another novel. I think this one is a pretty good note to leave on, but it would have been interesting to see another facet of Ellison. Invisible Man is a Magnum Opus, a Great Novel, an attempt at the Meaning of Life. If he'd tried for just an engaging story, I wonder what would have come out?
    • 3/5
      A young black man is expelled from college after an afternoon drive spirals out of his control. Betrayed by his role model he flounders, disillusioned, in New York. He starts off optimistic and enthusiastic about his future. By the end he has lost all faith in humanity. He has runs ins with union factory workers, shock treatment, an eviction and a few other messy situations. He ends up working for a "brotherhood" that's trying to unite the black community in New York, but is run by white people. There were aspects of this book that I thought were interesting, but the plot comes across as disjointed and the nameless main character seems so helpless. It seemed like every decision he made was a bad one. Every person he decided to trust betrayed him and he was so naive. I wanted him to be a little more cynical, more world-weary. He was so surprised when bad things happened to him, but it seemed like he never did anything to avoid these situations. I think there was certainly some bad luck involved, but I was just so frustrated with him that it was hard to root for his success.
    • 4/5
      A dramatic description of the struggles faced by a young generation of black Americans. In the decades following the abolition of slavery and during the gradual introduction of laws prohibiting discrimination, black people continued to face hardships in the shape of racism. These hardships were often fuelled by powers that tried to take advantage of the sensitivities of black people, and the residual sense of superiority in the minds of right-wing white Americans.
    • 3/5
      What’s most amazing about this book is the time that it was written – late 40s, published in the early 50s. Yet it pretty accurately predicts most facets of the civil rights movement for blacks, good and bad. In fact, the first scene in the book, the “battle royale” contains, in miniature, most of what happens later. Black man rewarded by white, reward turns out to be denigrating, blacks fight amongst themselves, whites are pulling the strings, and so on and so forth.My advice, if you are reading this edition, is to skip the introduction – read it later if you want to. The author does quite a bit of pontificating.The novel also is somewhat heavy-handed with the symbolism. Everything is a symbol, or can be viewed as a symbol. That gets old quickly, especially when it is so obvious.
    • 2/5
      Maybe this is one of those books that really is better to be gone over in literature class, or maybe I'm just slow, but I sure didn't understand much. The prologue was sheer brilliance; after that things just got weird. A nameless African-American narrator describes his journey from ambitious college student to disillusioned hermit, encountering a series of bizarre characters along the way. From reading other reviews I understand that most of these characters are meant to represent certain groups or archetypes, but aside from the communist Brotherhood I missed the references. I'm not sure that mattered, though, after reading the epilogue, which just rehashed the points I did grasp. I tried to just go with the flow but far too often my response to this book was, "Wait, what?"