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How Does Ellison Present Social Issues In Invisible Man

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Throughout anyone’s life, there will be many different people who will either be just another passing face or a face who changes the trajectory of a life. The impact of others can change a person which can lead them down different paths or push them to follow a certain agenda. In the novel, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, there are important topics portrayed in the characters. The narrator of the novel faced people that introduced issues within and outside of the narrator’s life. The narrator was put to test how far he could live before realizing the truth. The truth of his reality. The novel discusses social issues faced by African Americans, like the narrator, in the early 20th century. Elison portrays these issues within the characters of …show more content…

These issues are found in the influential characters which motivated different conflicts within the narrator’s life. The made-up world portrays the real social issues in the real world through Elison’s usage of the different themes.
Power is controlling. Power is obsessive. Power is a weakness. Dr. Bledsoe is the president of an all-black college the narrator attends at the beginning of the novel. The narrator sees Dr. Bledsoe as a role model because Dr. Bledsoe was able to reach a very high level of power in the community. Bledsoe is able to obtain and hold this power through trickery. He manipulates white men into believing he is there to serve and please them but is instead using them in order to act on what he believes is right. When the narrator acts on what he believes is right and calls Dr. Bledsoe out, Bledsoe does not react positively. Bledsoe makes it clear that he holds power and he will not lose that power. With the narrator’s threats of exposing Bledsoe for his true nature, Bledsoe decides to put his skills to use. Bledsoe tells the narrator “‘You’re a nervy little fighter, son,’ he said, ’and the race needs good, smart, disillusioned fighters. Therefore I’m …show more content…

The narrator meets another black member of the Brotherhood, Tod Clifton. At first, he is hesitant but sees Clifton is welcoming to his role in the Brotherhood. Clifton is put to defend the Brotherhood against Ras the Exhorter, the leader of a different group who thinks white and black people cannot work together. After another fight with Ras, Clifton is speaking to the narrator about Ras. The narrator says “‘I suppose sometimes a man has to plunge outside history…’” and continues to say “‘Plunge outside, turn his back…Otherwise he might kill somebody, go nuts.’” (Elison 377). White people had been the oppressors of black people for a great amount of time, and this fueled black people like Ras to act with chaotic and unpredictable motives. Clifton sees these motives as a contradiction to the Brotherhood because of their ideology. If Ras were to keep acting with aggression Clifton implies that it may make history but it would only lead to insanity. After returning from an assignment the narrator was sent to, he is told that Clifton has left and disappeared. When walking around Harlem in hopes of finding Cliftion he discovers him selling Sambo dolls and becomes infuriated. Then when following Clifton the narrator witnesses Clifton being killed by a cop for selling the dolls. Later he is trying to make sense of the scene that occurred and really looks at the Sambo

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The narrator receives an anonymous, unstamped letter telling him not to “go too fast” and to remember that he is still a black man in a white world. He asks another black member of the Brotherhood, Brother Tarp, if anyone in the organization dislikes him. Tarp assures him that he is well liked and says that he doesn’t know who wrote the letter. Tarp asks the narrator if he comes from the South. Tarp then confides in him that he spent nineteen years in a black chain gang for having said “no” to a white man.

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