Isolation In Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man

Name one of the most influential book of its century of the and, perhaps, the most influential racially themed American novel of the twentieth century. Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, the narrator is conflicted in trying to find his identity leaving him isolated in society and within himself. The narrator is in search for his identity, which he is able to make a connection of identity through social class and race, and by the end of the novel it is very clear that due to the fact that he is a poor African American that has a slavery background he has chosen to be invisible in society. In the prologue that narrator explains that his invisible to the people around him. He states that is invisibility is not exactly a matter of a biochemical accident

Like H. Edward Ransford author of Isolation, Powerlessness, and Violence: A study of Attitudes and Participation in the Watts Riots said “the hypothesis that isolation individuals are more prone to extremism is tested”, this is what the narrator was going to have to do (Ransford 581). Go to the extreme so that he is no longer mistreated and for once treated like a human that has all the rights like any other. The narrator is now convince that he is truly an invisible man, he feels isolated because no understands him leaving him alone with no friends, family or even colleagues. After through all of the terrible things that has happen he finally realizes that he has brought isolation to himself. He even states “I’m an invisible man and it placed me in a hole-or showed me the hole I was in, if you will-and I reluctantly accepted the fact” (Ellison 573-574). Another reason that he himself has become isolated is because after he moved to New York he refuse to have any connections with his family. Leaving him even more isolated, because family should be the number one support that a person should have even through the toughest time that one might pass. Another factor that took into place is that his grandfather on his death bed told him that a Negro should just play the white system and take them for everything they can “overcome’em with yeses, udermine’em with grins, agree’em to death and destruction, let’em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open”(Ellison 16). In his search for his grandfather’s request it has left him alone with nothing to support himself, since he had to leave his family and friends.He also refuse to have any friends because he wanted to focus on his goals in life and without any friends one is left isolated, because frankly without any friends one cannot have any moral support so that they don’t feel left out. Also, now that he has lost his job due to disagreements of what is morally