Bondage Of The Soul

Invisible Man, which is awarded as the "the epoch-making novel", and which can be said as "an epic of modern African-American life", is a landmark novel in the history of Afro-American literature. The author Ralph Ellison won immortal fame for this book. Through the description of the experience of a black youth, Ellison points out that the main sufferings of African Americans no longer come from the white's naked exploitation, but from a sort of racial discrimination, which is known as spiritual slavery. The thesis focuses on the spiritual discrimination in the novel. As a marginal group in the US, Afro-Americans are not understood, not respected and are even invisible in the eyes of the white. Through the analysis of the protagonist's psychological experience of losing and looking for his identity, the thesis points out that it is the spiritual discrimination that leads to Afro-Americans lose their identities and blacks can only find themselves and their values in the black culture.Firstly, the thesis introduces the American social background when the novel was published, and Ralph Ellison's ingenuity and the new Afro-American image he sets in his great novel. By 1950s, the general social status of Afro-Americans had been enhanced significantly. However, racial discrimination did not disappear, but developed into a kind of more mature one—racial spiritual discrimination. Starting from this social reality, Ralph Ellison created the great novel. He revealed the psychological pain of Afro-Americans because of being treated as outsiders by the white society through the description of a black youth's process of loss and search for identity in such environment. From this novel, Afro-Americans' spirit world began to draw people's attentions for the first time. The landmark novel Invisible Man enables people to pay attention to the spiritual world of Afro-Americans, and enhances the Afro-American literature to a new height. Next, the thesis begins to analyze the process of loss of identity in the novel. Born in a poor slave family in the Deep South, the protagonist has a natural characteristic of servility. However he excludes his black culture, and refuses to accept his black characteristics. When the protagonist enters the society, he constantly suffers from the spirit discrimination, which the whites ignore his personality and spirit, and take him as a tool rather that as a real man. Gradually, the narrator loses his identity and becomes an invisible man in the white's eyes in such a social environment. Some other Afro-Americans in the novel also lose their identities in some way, and the author of the thesis classifies them as "Masked blacks", "Post-slavery blacks" and "Radical blacks".Lastly, the author analyzes the protagonist's process of search for identity. Firstly, he awakens from the social reality. The narrator gradually accepts the black culture that he rejects before and finds the foundation of his identity in black culture. And then, the protagonist begins to oppose the white authorities to which he is obedient and submissive before and gets rid of their control. He gains his spiritual freedom after he fully accepts his black characteristics. Finally, he takes up his social and national responsibility courageously and finds the authentic freedom.