The Plight Of African Americans And Their Salvation

Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man was published in 1952. Upon its publication, Ellison was immediately recognized as a major American author, and the novel was acclaimed not only as the best in the history of African-American writing but as an important contribution to modern American literature.The huge success of the novel is mainly attributed to the profundity of its themeMn this novel, Ellison revealed the invisible situation of American blacks in a society dominated by white people. Meanwhile, he attempted to find out a possible way for his black brother to extricate from such position by self-exploration in the society.In Invisible Man, Ellison created a figure of a young black who was obedient but kept constantly on the run by the pressure from all aspects of the society. By means of the hero's narration of his miserable and absurd experiences, a social realization was exposed that in American society the discrimination against blacks had developed to the invisibility towards them. In order to get access to the society, blacks, no matter which classes they belonged to, had got to abandon their own self consciously or unconsciously. The loss of self eventually led to their "invisible" situation.In the novel, Ellison interpreted the two basic reasons that caused the invisibility of American blacks: social history and cultural value. The authorimputed the invisible situation of black people to their miserable history asslaves and abandonment of their own cultural value.In addition, Ellison explored the way of getting out of the invisible situation for blacks in his works. He came to a belief that the way for Americanblacks to get self-emancipation and self-development neither lay in negro nationalism nor assimilationism, but in construction of a multi-national society, in which every nation had its own feature and could have chances of full development.