Commenting On The Protagonist's Identity Crisis In Invisible Man

Ralph Ellison, a grandson of black slaves, is a great American writer. He was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1914, and was raised largely in Tulsa Oklahoma. In1933, he left Oklahoma to begin a study of music at Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama. Between 1937 and 1952, he published 9 short stories and more than 10 book reviews, with Invisible Man as the most important one.Ralph Ellison's epic novel Invisible Man, published by Random House in 1952, is the tale of a black youth's search for identity. As an urban novel, it brilliantly depicts the spiritual isolation of the ghetto. More than that, Invisible Man traces the passage of its hero from rural innocence and self-deception to cosmopolitan maturity and disillusionment and possible redemption. First as a self-effacing student at a Southern Negro College, next as a naive laborer in a Northern paint factory, then as a radical agitator on the streets of Harlem, finally as a man forced to flee the insane nether world of the ghetto in the midst of a race riot by literally going into the bowels of the city, the protagonist of Invisible Man is frustrated on his existential voyage by the absurdities of racism, hypocrisy, and physical and spiritual poverty. Invisible Man was hailed by writers such as Saul Bellow and critics such as Irving Howe as a landmark publication; some critics claimed that it was the most important American novel to appear after World War II.A recurrent theme in all of Ralph Ellison's writing-essays, stories, and the great novel, Invisible Man—is the problem of identity. And this concern is not exclusively racial. Although he recognizes and accepts the Negro's identity, he also deals with the white men's search for their own identities. Thus, the identity theme in Ellison's work eventually embraces the major problem faced by all his countrymen in the twentieth century—the problem of American identity.In this thesis, the author will make a comment on the protagonist's identity crisis in the novel of Invisible Man. This thesis mainly consists of three chapters.Chapter One points out that identity "crisis is a major concern of the novel of Invisible Man. Historically, the time when the novel was set is a turbulent one. Great Depression, mass...