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Essay / The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison - 1000
The novel Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison depicts the journey of a young African-American finding his way in the world during the Harlem Renaissance. The unnamed protagonist encounters many obstacles, such as other people's different ideas, which distort his view of how things are supposed to be in the world. As the protagonist attempts to discover the truth about his identity, his naivety destabilizes him when he is confronted with new ideas that he does not fully understand. This process causes him a lot of upheaval as he constantly turns to others to provide the advice that only he can give himself. Throughout the novel, the protagonist struggles to find his own identity as he wholeheartedly adopts the ideas of others. Ellison uses the journey of the invisible man to highlight the importance of having and the downsides of looking to others for one's own identity. Ellison uses the protagonist's naivety to illustrate the limitations of seeking advice from others to find one's identity. While being forced to participate in the Battle Royal for the pleasure of white men, the narrator believes “that only these men could truly judge [his] abilities” (25). Throughout high school, the protagonist constantly looked to white authorities for validation of what he could do; since he believes that white men have all the answers, he is unable to judge his own work and must look to white people to tell him how good he is. Due to the protagonist's naivety, he does not realize that he is the only one who can judge his abilities and that he should not turn to white men who simply abuse his existence. While the narrator studies at the State College for Negroes, he blindly adopts the Founder's ideology, without realizing what the... middle of paper...... his own way in the world . The narrator's first exposure to puppets is after he is injured while working in a paint factory. He is sent to the factory hospital and wakes up "sitting in a stiff, white, cold chair and a man looking at him with a glowing third eye that shone in the center of [the man's] forehead." (231). At this point, the narrator is a guinea pig for these doctors; they perform whatever experiments they deem appropriate, none of which are relevant to his current injury. Although this particular example does not interfere with the narrator's identity journey, it does trigger a series of times where he is used as a puppet by others. After the narrator joins the Brotherhood in New York, he realizes: “It was Master, the bulldog; and [he] was the child who was afraid to touch him” (338). Works CitedInvisible Man by Ralph Ellison