Quest For Selfhood

From his earliest published writings in the late 1930s until his death in 1994, Ralph Ellison had been an active commentator on American literature, culture, race, and identity. However, his reputation mainly comes from his one published novel Invisible Man. Ellison spent seven years in composing this great work, which largely embodies his gifted writing skills and far-reaching political and aesthetic concerns. Since the very day of its publication, Invisible Man, due to its artistic gorgeousness and thematic richness, has become a strong appeal to a broad spectrum of important figures. "The novel was reviewed everywhere that mattered by some of America's most formidable literary lions." Generally, the novel has been analyzed by the former critics in three ways. First is the formalistic way which analyzes the textual feature of the novel. Then is the inter-textual method, a comparative study based on the novel's initiation theme. Third is the application of different theories in it, such as Narrative theory, Archetype and Dialogism etc. Same with the third manner, based on textual study, this thesis decodes both denotative and connotative meaning of Invisible Man in light of Postcolonialism. The protagonist of this novel is a typical victim of the cultural hegemony in which he has been spiritually exploited and alienated, becoming voiceless and invisible. The direct cause of the innumerable devastating reversals suffered by the nameless narrator is the ideological domination, a direct consequence of cultural Hegemony, which justifies the domineering behaviors and classifies the victims as deserving inferiors. Greatly influenced by such a false consciousness, the protagonist encounters many ordeals and embarrassments during his journey of pursuing dreams-being successful through determination and hard work and approbated by the whites. After experiencing so many odd absurdities, he discovers that he has never been seen by others, he is invisible, and he is only a "cog of the machine" used for other's ends. Finally, after his hibernating coal's meditation, he extricates the former ideologies and accepts the outside reality, regaining his selfhood and cultural identity.Based on such theory, this thesis first analyzes the reasons (marginalization under Cultural Hegemony) and manifestations (namelessness and loss of self in ideological domination) of Invisible Man's invisible features in the American society, which cover the fist and second part of this thesis. Then, in the third part, it goes further to the way of the narrator's regaining of self-awareness and cultural identity. According to the author's analysis, three elements are essential in the protagonist's self-recognition:retrospectively writing down his own life story; identifying with his ethnic black cultural traditions, and being aware of indefinite possibilities. Those three deeds have proclaimed his shattering of the ideological fetters moulded by the white superiors and his determination of reentering the society. Eventually, in the coal hole he finishes his initiation journey, and finds a new life to live, a life full of fluidity and possibility. In the conclusion part, it gives a summary of the paper's studies by reinforcing the idea that Ellison is not apolitical as reproved by the former critics but fights against the repressive Eurocentric authority in a more moderate, obscure and intelligent way. In Invisible Man, he subtly and artistically criticizes those rigid ideologies and the hero's passive submission to them, while elaborately designating a proper way for him, for the whole ethnic group or even for the whole modern people to live a free life by revealing the fluid, contradictory and indefinite features of the multicultural America.