Invisible Man: A Piece Of Jazz Yelling For Black American's Predicaments

Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is one of the most influential American novels since World War II. The art of the book derives from its jazz flavor. The novel has such a strong jazz style that it is considered as a work improvised by a jazz musician. This thesis is to analyze the form, the content, the theme and the artistic features of the novel from the perspective of jazz. Ellison, a major in classic music, was deeply influenced by jazz since his childhood. With his deep understanding and study on jazz, his novel is undoubtedly soaked up jazz flavor.Jazz forms lend the resiliency to the novel, and make it escape from a frozen state. The rhythmically-written work presents the conflicts with jazz-like changing tempos, sometimes slow and relaxing, sometimes fast and suffocating, but as a whole, it is not chaotic like the popular Swing in his time. In the book, the prologue and epilogue are unified, just as a rounded jazz-form A-B-A. It is narrated in the first person singular like a blues, and it has a similar polyphonic texture of call-and-response. While the "past 1" calls, the "present I" echoes, and they present the story at these two levels simultaneously. With the development of the plot, they are integrated in the prologue and epilogue.The novel is densely interspersed with references to all kinds of jazz. They serve as the soundtrack of the novel and succeed in converting the literal to the visual and the audible. Consequently they heighten the theme, affect readers and arouse their inner sympathy.Invisible Man resembles jazz not only in form but also in spirit. It runs through the liberal spirit in quest of self. In the novel, the hero's development is through innocence to enlightenment, and finally he establishes and transcends self. The expression "invisible man" reveals black American's plights clearly. Blacks are invisible, marginal and excluded in the U.S. But the hero's way to gain freedom is by no means radical likejazz.. Having been "for" then "against" the society, he retreats to an underground basement in a jazz-like way of non-action as Taoism, hoping even an invisible man has a socially responsible role to play.In addition, the novel carries the innovative spirit of jazz. Ellison has daringly explored a new style of American black literature at his time. He manipulates a way of combining the realism and modernism by absorbing both the white and the black heritages. The whole novel is like a piece of jazz yelling for American blacks' predicaments, imbuing audiences with the real situations of blacks.The jazz-style of the book makes the black culture distinct and presents the blacks' grim reality in a unique way. However it is not a mere "protest novel" but concerned with "the American theme", with the plight of the existence of man as a whole. Its critical reputation and popularity have only grown in the past five decades. Now Invisible Man is still firm in the canon of American literature with its unique style and artistic charm.