The theme of isolation and alienation pervades Ralph Ellison's novel 'Invisible Man.' The most striking instance occurs in the first chapter just before the Battle Royale, in which as the students are meant to entertain the town's elites by participating in a battle amongst themselves. While it is obvious that out narrator is alienated from his fellow classmates and the elites, in the same scene is a dynamic that reflects America's assumptions and morals to a much higher degree. This dynamic has its focus on the dancing blond and touches every other person in the room. Each instance of alienation, physical and mental, between the students, the white elite men, and the woman is indicative of greater instances of conflict within society.
The reader is first introduced to the dancing woman as the narrator exists the elevator and enters the room with the town's big-shots and is described as a beautiful blonde painted in the nude with an American Flag. And while the Invisible Man is aware of his attraction to the woman, he is nevertheless stuck in his position forced to watch as she dances and satisfies the elites. This symbolism of an American Flag satisfying the elites with the others gazing on powerless allows us to interpret the woman as both a symbol for women
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Their wealth and status, enabled to them by the circumstances of their birth, allows them full control over the woman and receive the benefits that come with it in both the literal sense as well as the correlating symbolism with the American Dream. The elites are able to achieve their position due to their race, and Ellison uses their abuse of the woman to demonstrate and foreshadow their abuse of the power afforded to them. The attempted rape of the woman is meant to speak on the elites own attempted robbery of the American morals and values in those who are not at their level in society's