Rhetorical Devices In Invisible Man

In the novel, “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison, IM, or the narrator, uses his oratory skills to persuade and influence whomever his audience is to convey his ideas. One of his most memorable speeches is his eulogy for Tod Clifton. In this speech, he breaks away from the Brotherhood’s blueprints by speaking with no set framework, going against their orders. By speaking on Clifton’s identity, he acknowledges the truth of his invisibility, and really, the truth of every black man's reality and existence. Black men are constantly overlooked and over-dominated in this white man's world. The sad reality of Clifton’s death is that it was a theft of the black community at the hands of white society. The author uses rhetorical strategies of tone, irony,

On page 454, the tone of the narrator expresses anger when he shouts, "What are you waiting for me to tell you? ... Go home, forget him." The author’s explicit statement of him shouting these words expresses the uncontrollable anger that IM has to feel and the need to raise his voice when speaking about Clifton’s death. The rhetorical question also holds anger and impatience and he insists that they go home and forget him, indicating his frustration and disappointment with the audience’s lack of empathy toward Clifton’s death. However, while there is a great amount of anger in his tone demonstrated throughout the eulogy, we also see a great deal of somberness and mournfulness. This is shown when IM says, "What if I say that this isn’t a funeral, that it’s a holiday celebration, that if you stick around the band will end up playing ‘Damit-the-Hell the Fun’s All Over?" (454). The contrast of the words ``funeral” and “holiday celebration" used together suggest a sense of sadness. He uses this dry humor and sarcasm to deflect his true feelings of

He oversimplifies his death when he describes his death as: “He was standing and he fell. He fell and he kneeled. He kneeled and he bled. He bled and he died” (456). This is ironic because Clifton’s death was not a simple one at all. It was a brutal and violent murder in which he suffered a painful death. One example is when he says, “Can I say in twenty minutes what was building twenty-one years and ended in twenty seconds? What are you waiting for when all I can tell you is his name?” (455). IM knows it’s absurd and acknowledges the impossibility of conveying the full complexity of a man’s life and death in a brief speech. Another example is when he says, “There’s nothing here to pity..” (457). He suggests that the audience shouldn’t feel any strong emotions at a funeral which is when a life is mourned. This also emphasizes that they likely won’t mourn this death because the death of a black man is nothing new to