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Blindness And Metaphors In Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man

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In the novel Invisible Man, the writer Ralph Ellison uses metaphors, point of view, and symbolism to support his message of identity and culture. Throughout the story, the narrator’s identity is something that he struggles to find out for himself. Themes of blindness and metaphors for racism help convey the struggle this character faces, and how it can be reflected throughout the world. One theme illustrated in the novel is the metaphor for blindness. Ellison insinuates that both the white and black men are blind, because they do not truly know each other. The white man cannot grasp the racial struggle black men are put through, and the black man cannot grasp the oppression the white men are forcing upon them. The two sides are blind when it comes to the others’ motive and reasoning. In the prologue, the narrator refers to a mugging victim as a “Poor fool, poor blind fool..” (5). Although he was referencing a specific person, it can be inferred that Ellison was introducing the metaphor for blindness early on in the storyline. Every character is blinded to an area that is unfamiliar to him or her, just as we are blinded to things in the real world. Ellison uses this metaphor throughout the book because it is something readers can connect to their own lives. On page seven, it states that “The truth is the light and the light is the truth.” We can never really be fully aware of the truths of the world until we …show more content…

Ralph Ellison conveys this message in many forms in the novel. It is possible that the eyes of the narrator did not see the world for what it truly is, but his credibility for telling the story only ties into the metaphor for blindness. This prompts a final thought; can an individual truly understand the struggle of another? Can our identity bar us from opening our eyes to the struggles that may be around

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Ellison shows the reader through his unique characters and structure that we deny ourselves happiness, tranquility, and our own being by the ridicule of other people, and that we must meet our own needs by validating ourselves from within instead of our value being a composite of the society that ridicules our being. Ellison's own struggle and connection to mental intemperance is the one of his great differences in the world to us and to see someone else's struggle puts our own life in context. In Invisible Man a single takeaway of many is that society turns us invisible, a part of its overall machine, but we have to learn not to look through ourselves in times of invisibility and not confuse our own blindness for invisibility as one may lead to the

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With enough time, what's done in the dark comes to light; meaning, eventually a light will bring sight to the person’s true identity. Some take this lesson and apply it to future experiences while others have a harder time understanding their lesson - much like the narrator did. In Ralph Ellison's novel, Invisible Man, the narrator had this unhealthy relationship with his boss, Dr. Bledsoe, which affected future relationships he had; and due to his inability to move on, he had difficulty growing as a person until he realized it was time to break his cycle. While in college, the narrator idealized the principal, Dr. Bledsoe.

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The protagonist in several works of literature is generally plagued by conflicting influences, adding to the overall meaning of the literary work. The Invisible Man’s narrator is the same. As the narrator struggles in pursuit of understanding his invisibility, he finds himself vacillating between influences of Dr. Bledsoe, Brother Jack, and his grandfather. Dr. Bledsoe’s beliefs and actions toward the narrator mark him as invisible, adding to narrator’s inability to advance in life. Dr. Bledsoe explains to the narrator that black people are only able to succeed when they play the white man’s game.

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In Ralph Ellison’s, Invisible Man, he explores the ideas of rebirth succeeding after death. After someone's death, Invisible Man tends to contemplates the meaning of that person and what they represented. In the narrator’s growth through the Brotherhood he is very obedient, yet blind to the organization. Brother Clifton’s death was the primary catalyst for his mental upset and successive actions. His death, caused by the white police, acts as a symbol of racial connections impacts the community more than any of his life's work did.

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