Music, Folklore, And Figurative Imagery: The Heritage Of Black Literary Tradition In Invisible Man

The novel Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison is a record of the nameless narrator's journey in contemporary America, from South to North, illusion to reality. The novel is a masterpiece full of black literary tradition. Ellison exhibits his insight of African American people living in the American society by skillful employment of traditional African art forms: the sad blues, improvisational jazz, African American folk song, folk tale, and figurative imagery, and so forth.The author tends to approach the novel by means of African music, folklore, and figurative imagery. Throughout the African American experiences, African Americans are excluded from the mainstream American culture for long enough. Thus they have to turn to other resources to record their emotions. As traditional literary techniques, African American music, folklore, and figurative imagery are used to illustrate African American people's double consciousness and to recover their lost identity.This thesis focuses on the African American literary tradition in Invisible Man and examines how Ellison manages to combine these artistic techniques during the nameless narrator's search for identity and recognition. Ellison's use of Blues and jazz reveals their value for the existence of the self-conscious Afro-American group. Then through the analysis of Afro-American folklore tradition and several folkloric references in the novel, it can be concluded that folklore serves as a vehicle of the African American experience of sensibility and their deprived black humanity. Finally the author would deal with the figurative imagery in the novel, which are endowed with implicative meanings and speak more than their literal meanings. The author is mainly concerned with two sets of figurative imagery: the imagery of imprisonment and the imagery of awakening. The figurative imagery demonstrates the spiritual process of the narrator's self-definition and his gradual awakening in the American society. In his novel Invisible Man, Ellison transcends his racial dilemma and presents historical and universal significance by means of African American literary tradition of his own racial and cultural heritage.