Violence In Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man

In Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, the main character takes the reader through his violent past to explain how he got to the place he is in life and why he is an invisible man. The invisible man introduces himself and then almost immediately begins to describe a very violent scene. After this, he paints his colorful, bloody past-as he knew life before he was the invisible man. This environment into which the invisible man was thrown is a life of chaos and confusion, and the man eventually decides to accept a new life away from society and into insanity.

Two scenes particularly set the mood for the novel as they are towards the beginning and have great affect on the reader’s view of the narrator himself and his view of life. Given these …show more content…
He, an African American man, was given the opportunity to speak at a meeting of the town’s prominent white citizens. He and his schoolmates were then forced to fight in a “battle royal” for entertainment while a naked woman danced near them. The white men began to reach for the woman and chaos ensued as the men wished to fight the young boys themselves. Then the white men had another plan for entertainment and forced the boys to fight for “gold” coins on an electrified rug. THe invisible man then presents his speech as the white men taunt him, and later they present him with a scholarship to the “state college for Negroes”. This scene of violence and torture gives rise to many struggles in the narrator’s life. Because he was still young and impressionable, his grandfather’s words haunt him, making him feel uncertain of his relationship with white men. The violence of the “battle royal” scene causes damage to the man as well. He struggles with shame and it is hard for him to trust. He struggles with his identity, throwing it away to join the Brotherhood and again to become “invisible”. He also struggles with relationships, and finds it hard to decide who he is and who is worth fighting for. The man realizes that the world never will see him as he sees himself because when they meet him, they have already decided what he is like. This gives rise to the invisible man’s insanity, or rather rational that he is infact Invisible because people refuse to see the real him. This concept is rather depressing as it makes the reader ponder whether anyone in their life truly knows them, or if they are merely labeled and their real selves are “invisible” even in their closest relationships. If this is the case, is the Invisible man in the novel not forever“invisible”, even to those