Narration In The Blues

The African American writer Ralph Waldo Ellison was deeply influenced by Blues since his childhood. Due to his deep understanding of and study on Blues, his novel Invisible Man is undoubtedly soaked up with Blues flavor. Blues lends the resiliency to the novel, and makes it escape from a frozen state. The rhythm of the work presents the conflicts with Blues-like changing tempos slow and relaxing at one time, fast and suffocating at the other, but as a whole, it is not chaotic like the popular Swing in his time. In Invisible Man, the prologue and epilogue are unified, just as a rounded Blues-form A-B-A.Many critics and scholars have noticed the great influence of Blues on Ralph Ellison and his Invisible Man. Yet few has made an in-depth analysis on how Blues is woven into Invisible Man which was accomplished after seven years' efforts to make each word and sentence count in significance and style. This thesis endeavors to discover the notes of Blues that were either underestimated or overlooked, aiming to provide a fresh angle to the understanding of Ralph Ellison and Invisible Man.This thesis contains three parts. Besides Introduction and Conclusion, the main body consists of three chapters. Chapter one is concerned with the surface and deep narrative structures in the novel. A boomerang of "death-and-rebirth" pattern in surface narrative structure implies an old idea that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat its mistakes. Meanwhile, the well-constructed structure echoes the theme of identity in the novel that only by going back to his black cultural, may invisible man find his right position in the society. Ellison wishes to transcend racism rather than confine himself to the black experiences, which is best exemplified in Invisible Man. With the assistance of Gremas' deep narrative structure, Ellison poses a "blue" question for the dilemma of human beings' existence, "We are invisible"! Chapter two focuses on the slow tempo of the blue story in terms of temporal arrangement. As the Blues originates from the slaves' songs which often express a general feeling of hopelessness and oppression, the tempo of a Blues text is generally slow. The slow pacing can be seen not only in the syntax and rhythm of the prose but also in the pace of the tale's revelation. Invisible Man is narrated in the first person singular like a Blues to "retrospect" his miserable experiences, most of which are presented in dialogues, and some important images repeat themselves, words echoing with the Blues "bent" keynote. Chapter three discusses the magic effects that Blues language brings by analyzing how this magic language is constructed. Ellison adopts direct speech and free direct speech to narrate the story. Since direct speech remains the vocal features of Blues, black cultural connotation ("call-and-response"), and lyric rhythm, it imbues the novel with typical musical effects. And free direct speech is often adopted to reveal the subconscious mental activities of a character in the form of the interior monologue.Through rhetorical devices from the black preachers and other black writers, and by dexterous use of the black Blues, Ellison creates not only the sound but also the high-sounding musicality in his text. Blues with its juxtaposition with typical black features and European music factors offered Ellison an effective way of his expression, to write realistically on the one hand but transcend racism on the other. This unique literary style matching the unique Negro's experience gives a clue to the appreciation of works by Ellison and his black followers.