Invisible Man Precis

Ralph Ellison, in his book Invisible Man, (1952), claims that the life of the Blacks in America during that time period was not as fair as it should have been. Ellison supports this idea by narrating the tale of a man, an Invisible Man, and the hardships he must face. The purpose of the book is to depict the unfairness, trickery, and cruelty that exists in this world in order to help people take action, open their minds, and change the world, one small, invisible step at a time. The book is written in an unorthodox way (through the narrative of an Invisible Man) for audiences who are willing to open their minds, look into the past, and reflect upon their current lives.

My Thoughts on Invisible Man

Personally, I enjoyed Invisible Man on several levels. It had amazing imagery, well-developed characters, brought up some powerful emotions, and managed to make me understand and immerse myself with a time period that I, at first, did not believe was still relevant to me.

This book also made me learn much about the history of African Americans from a personal standpoint. Even though blacks became free and emancipated after the civil war, they did not enjoy the same rights as whites and it was practically as though they were still slaves. Bad attitudes were kept alive, blacks kept low-paying jobs, and were kept down. This is shown when Trueblood talks about his story and says that the when the white townsfolk learned about the fact that he had raped his daughter, they gave him money, and were not angry at him. This is because they believed that Trueblood raping his daughter was how he should be acting as a black man.

I also very much enjoyed the ending of the book. It has an epic climax to the story that actually ties back to the beginning of the book. This is extremely similar to Frankenstein, where, at the end of the book, the focus of the story shifts back from the narrator’s friend’s tale, to the ship where the friend first began to tell his tale. It wraps it up quite nicely and manages to explain the Invisible Man’s “invisibility” in several pages.


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It's short, but it works.