1. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
AP Literature and Composition

2. Bell Work
Choose three chapters from How to Read Literature Like a Professor and explain how they could aid in the understanding of the novel Invisible Man.

3. Author’s Biographical Information
born in Oklahoma and trained as a musician at Tuskegee Institute from 1933 to 1936.
a visit to New York and a meeting with Richard Wright led to his first attempts at fiction.
Invisible Man won the National Book Award and the Russwurm Award.
taught at many colleges including Bard College, the University of Chicago, and New York University where he was Albert Schweitzer Professor of Humanities from 1970 through 1980.
died in 1994.

4. Historical Information
Complete novel published in 1952
Passage of “Jim Crow” laws by southern states
Great Migration
Booker T. Washington (education=equality)
W.E.B. Dubois (openly fight for rights/career)
Marcus Garvey (“Back to Africa” movement)
Existentialism (sought to define the meaning of individual existence in a seemingly meaningless universe)

5. Characteristics of the Genre
Bildungsroman (individual’s growth and development within the context of a defined social order) Example: Great Expectations
Picaresque (satirical account of a rogue’s progress through society) Example: Huck Finn
Existentialist novel (philosophical system concerned with free will, choice, and personal responsibility) Example: Speak
African-American fiction
Social protest

6. Plot Summary
Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is a first-person novel containing an unnamed narrator who comes from a poor family from the South. The narrator is haunted by his grandfather's deathbed warning against conforming to the wishes of white people because the young man sees that as the way to be successful. One bizarre night, he ends up with a scholarship to a black college, but his misadventures leave him penniless and alone in Harlem.

7. His college president, first employer, and leaders of a political movement all conspire to use and abuse him in ways that range from ridiculous to cruel. However, the narrator manages to emerge strengthened through the process and determined to fight for racial equality.

8. The Prologue: The End is the Beginning
“Light confirms my reality, gives birth to my form…. Without light I am not only invisible but formless as well; and to be unaware of one’s form is to live a death…. The truth is the light and light is the truth.” (pp. 6-7)

9. Chapter 1: The Smoker "(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue“
Lyrics by Andy Razaf Performed by Louis Armstrong
Cold empty bed...springs hurt my head Feels like ole Ned...wished I was dead What did I do...to be so black and blue
Even the mouse...ran from my house They laugh at you...and all that you do What did I do...to be so black and blue
I'm white...inside...but, that don't help my case That's life...can't hide...what is in my face
How would it end...ain't got a friend My only sin...is in my skin What did I do...to be so black and blue (instrumental break)
How would it end...I ain't got a friend My only sin...is in my skin What did I do...to be so black and blue

10. Chapters 2-6: IM in College
Norton & Trueblood
The Golden Day
Barbee
Bledsoe
Lifting the Veil of Ignorance by Charles Keck
Booker T. Washington National Monument at Tuskegee University

11. Chapters 7-9: North for Dignity
Vet
Emerson

12. Chapters 10-11: The World of Work
Liberty Paint
Brockway
Hospital Resurrection

13. Chapters 12-15: Transitions
Mary Rambo
Oration
Brother Jack

14. Chapters 16-24: The Brotherhood
Tod Clifton
Ras the Exhorter
Tarp
Wrestrum
the "Woman Problem”
Funeral
Rinehart
The Sybil

15. Chapter 25: The Riot

16. The Epilogue: The End is the Beginning

17. Author’s Style
Jazz-inspired writing, almost lyrical due to sound devices
“Open” style
Narrator:
1. (p.9)
“And beneath the swiftness of the hot tempo there was a slower tempo and a cave and I entered
it and looked around and heard an old woman singing a spiritual…”
Diction: conversational; moderate vocabulary
Syntax: Stream-of-consciousness (run-ons)

18. Author’s Style Jim Trueblood:
2. (p.52) “We ain’t doing so bad, suh. ’Fore they heard ’bout what happen to us out here I couldn’t git no help from nobody.”
Diction: dialect; illiterate
Syntax: short and simple sentences
Narrator:
3. (p. 111) “Here upon this stage the black rite of Horatio Alger was performed to God’s own acting script, with millionaires come down to portray themselves…”
Diction: formal; elevated vocabulary
Syntax: correct and elegant

19. Author’s Style
Surrealistic—tends to deal with the world of dreams and unconsciousness (Harlem riots)
Naturalistic—faithful to small details of outward reality or nature (College)

20. Significant Quotes "I am an invisible man." (p. 3)
"Live with your head in the lion's mouth. I want you to overcome 'em with yeses, undermine 'em with grins, agree 'em to death and destruction, let 'em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open." (p.16)
"You're hidden right out in the open - that is, you would be only if you realized it." (p. 154)
“Once I thought my grandfather incapable of thoughts about humanity, but I was wrong.” (p. 580)

21. Characters Narrator- unnamed protagonist/Prizefighter/Hero
Mr. Norton- The College Trustee /Benefactor
Jim Trueblood-Incestuous Sharecropper/The True “Brother”
Dr.Bledsoe- College President/The Sellout
Rev. Homer Barbee-Speaker at the last chapel/Blind Orator
Lucius Brockway-Supervisor at Liberty Paints/The Sellout
Mary Rambo-takes the narrator into her home/The “Mother”
Brother Jack-recruits the narrator into the Brotherhood/The White Liberal
Brother Tarp-gives narrator the ankle chain/The true “Brother”
Ras the Exhorter-African Nationalist/Orator

22. Characters
Tod Clifton-Brotherhood member who was killed resisting arrest/The Prizefighter
Sybil-crazy woman who uses a rape fantasy to seduce the narrator/The Taboo White Woman
The Grandfather-The Ancestor (represents the past)
Rinehart-The Trickster (represents a new survival strategy for the future)

23. Setting and Significance
A Black college in the South
New York City, especially Harlem

24. Literary Devices
Motifs: blindness, invisibility, dreams, violence, sex, oratory, music, power, family
Symbols: black Sambo doll, the coin bank, Liberty Paint, the Brotherhood, briefcase, the road to asylum
Similes (p.21): “like a baby or a drunken man,” “like drunken dancers,” “like blind, cautious crabs”

25. Literary Devices Imagery :
Chapter 1—the fight (“blind cautious crabs”)
Chapter 2—description of the landscape and school campus
Hyperbole-Chapter 3— Scene at the Golden Day
Irony: “Keep America Pure with Liberty Paints”
“If It’s Optic White, It’s the Right White”
Personification (p.536) “street’s signs were dead”

26. Allusion
Chapter 1-the Emancipation Proclamation
Chapter 7- story of Jonah from the Old Testament (narrator ‘s arrival in Harlem)
Juxtaposition (Chapter 2)-conversation (Norton, Trueblood,IM)
Anaphora (Chapter 7): The vet’s advice to the narrator—”Play the game…”

27. Polysyndeton (Epilogue)--“take [himself] by the throat and choke [himself] until [his] eyes
bulged and [his] tongue hung out and wagged…” --

28. Possible Themes
Identity
Duplicity
Invisibility
Blindness
Racism
Power