In the Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison, a racist society prevents the narrator from discovering his individual identity and finding his place in the world. He gradually assumes a mask of invisibility in order to rebel against the limitations that society has put on him and the entire black race for that matter. His “invisibility” is used as a way to exist without having to live under the limitations that society puts on him and at the same time, still having a voice in things, but without emerging as an external and quantifiable presence. The narrator’s will to discovering who he is and where he stands in society greatly opposes the will of a white majority to keeping blacks on the bottom of the social pyramid. In other words, the white majority …show more content…
The narrator’s innocence in the beginning of the story prevents him from recognizing the truth behind others’ behavior which leads him to trying to fill their misguided expectations. He is too blind at this time to realize that people are using him to influence/shape him into the person they want him to be. However as the story progresses, his innocence becomes eroded as people’s actions eat away at him and force him to come to the realization that he is being used and shaped into someone he didn’t want to be. The implications that become of him realizing the purpose behind those people (the Brotherhood) are useless because the damage he had caused was already done. He had not only betrayed his heritage by working for a racist group, but he also played an active role in the Brotherhood’s plan to destroy New York’s black community. Unfortunately, he was too late to realize the damage he had already caused by following who they wanted him to be, and because of it, chaos broke out in the streets. The narrator tried to make amends to his black heritage by shouting, “I am no longer their brother…they want a race riot and I am against it…” however it was too late by this time and after being deemed a traitor by the Brotherhood and chased after to be hanged, the riots still commenced and his part in the damage was still present, (Ellison, 557). Overall, the narrator’s innocence, regarding his blindness towards the influences that white people in society had over him and who he was, dwindled as the story progressed, but by the time he realized it, the implications of his association with the Brotherhood were catastrophic for the black community and there was nothing he could do to fix the damage he had