Constant Stereotypes In Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison is a novel about an unnamed man who is searching for who he is. He encounters things that hold him back and make him feel like he has no significance, or invisible, but also things that help him find an identity. Dealing with people does not bode well for him, so he resorts to being on his own. Constant stereotypes make the narrator feel insignificant. Through music, Ellison conveys that the individual is responsible for making sense of their existence, since society as a whole can’t help individuals. Music allows the narrator to accept that he is invisible. He listens to Louis Armstrong, a blues and jazz musician, and finds that he relates to him. He claims that his “own grasp of invisibility aids [him] to

In his hole he says “there is a certain acoustical deadness in my hole, and when I have music I want to feel its vibrations, not only in my ear but with my whole body” (Ellison 7). In his hole, he is lifeless and meaningless, but music makes him feel alive. The meaning of music makes him feel less invisible. He understands the history and importance of the music and “not only entered the music but descended, like Dante, into the depths” (Ellison 9). Like Dante’s Inferno he goes deeper into the music and finds the meaning. He understands and is almost inside of this music in a way, but still doesn’t understand himself. When the narrator sets out to deliver one of his letters he meets a man named Peter Wheatstraw. He hears him singing and recognises it as the blues, “remembering the times that I had heard such singing at home” (Ellison 173). Peter is a reference to a blues guitarist who went by the nickname Peetie Wheatstraw. Wheatstraw speaks in a black dialect and recognizes the narrator's black roots. There is an emotional tie between the blues and the memories of his home that he can’t escape. The narrator is trying to run away from his past by going to Harlem and attempting to go to school, but the various encounters with the blues bring that all back. Peter mentions blueprints but he doesn't know what they are for. The narrator is kind of similar to these blueprints, there is a layout but he doesn't quite know how to put it