An Existential Approach To Identity In Invisible Man

Ralph Waldo Ellison (1914-1994) has come to be recognized as one of the most important contemporary writers in America with the publication of his well-known novel Invisible Man, which has attracted enough attention from various aspects, such as the literary world, criticism and political field. The fact that the novel has been translated into more than ten languages and enjoy great popularity in many countries is not only owing to Ellison's subtle use of symbolism, surrealism, and blues music, and his particular utilization of rich black folklore, but also to detailed narrating of the life experience of a non-identity black youth, so as to reveal and profoundly analyze much of the hardship in modern men's quest for identity. The novel, probably written under the influence of existentialism, goes deep to explore the reasons why modern people feel more and more alienated with identity eroding and lost. There is then a lack of authentic proof to claim that Ellison intended existentialism to be his philosophical basis in writing his novel. Nevertheless, Mark Busby once commented decidedly in his book Ralph Ellison,"[…] Invisible Man confronts absurdity and suggests existential themes […]".1 In reality, we can easily find a lot of existential elements scattering throughout the novel, which, so to speak, make up an undertone in which the protagonist's life problems are more soulsearchingly treated from a vantage point in an attempt to generalize men's dilemma of alienation and identity loss. This is, therefore, the purpose of this thesis intended for a tentative research from an existentialist perspective on the...