Examples Of Marxism In Invisible Man

A classist society, by definition, maintains an innate sense of inequality. One party is always lofted above another, and there can only be one victor. Class is incredibly prevalent within Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, and it stems from the historical time period. This period is one fraught with classist issues and discrimination. In this period, and perhaps still today, race defines class, and to be born black in particular is deeply disadvantageous. The eponymous invisibility of the narrator is due to the drastic imbalance that the author finds in economic classes of this historical period. Ellison’s work takes place in an odd time period, with class-based politics running rampant, an utterly demeaning lack of respect for other races, and

His classist writings constantly portray a deeper symbolism, and perhaps even go so far as to compare it to the state of the real world at the time, or the state Ellison viewed it to be in himself. Ralph Ellison’s view seems very communist, and this is because in fact, “[he] started his career affiliated with the communist left in the 1930s” (537 Mills). This fact makes any reader do a double take upon reading any one of his works because the perspective of the reader is easily swayed upon hearing that such a famous author was simultaneously a communist. Now, although Ellison was, in fact, a Communist, “[he] later claimed that he was only briefly drawn to ‘Marxist political theory’ as a youthful ‘attraction.’” (537 Mills), and although this may be true, this Marxist, communist ideal has sustained itself throughout Ellison’s novels. He constantly addresses class within Invisible Man, by portraying the story of a black man, considered the lowest class, and describes how he sees the futility and unfairness of this caste system. As a southern black man, he truly is the lowest of the low in the eyes of the class system itself, born in the racist south, seen as a “chitterling eater” (204 Ellison), a racist term for southern blacks and deeply a derogatory one at that. The narrator is treated as lower than all the rest for his financial setbacks, perceived or otherwise. This view of a classist society with need for change is deeply socialistic in its nature. Ellison sees the world as a rigid pyramid, with rich whites atop, and he wishes for this pyramid to crumble more than anything, leaving an indistinguishable mass of all different people. Ellison was somewhat afraid of how the public would react to his views, and as such, “[he] participated in [a] project by minimizing his radical past and crafting Invisible Man (1952) as a stock anticommunist indictment of the CPUSA’s