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3.86 AVERAGE
3.86 AVERAGE
i was pleasantly surprised by this book. it was very interesting and brought up many issues that are still relevant to this day.
The messages that Ellison aimed to portray through this novel were impressive. He tackled some fairly important issues that people don't typically enjoy discussing, with the most important being racism. He crafted a main character, the narrator, who was looking for his own space in society in a society who didn't necessarily welcome him. This point alone is relatable for many people in today's society.
The only reason I gave this book 4 rather than 5 stars is because Ellison is rather long-winded. There were many scenes who were not necessary which seemed to make the novel drag at points. This doesn't ruin the novel for me, however. Once you get into the story and discover that it isn't an easy read, it becomes more enjoyable.
I read a few reviews of the novel before I picked it up, most of which were negative. The reviews I read made me dread reading this novel, but it ended up being one of the best books I've read in a novel. As a white female, I can't personally relate to many of the struggles the narrator faces but this novel helped me become more aware of the struggles those around me face. It's easy to get complacent and think you understand how those around you think, but this book showed me just how little I understand. For that, I am grateful.
The only reason I gave this book 4 rather than 5 stars is because Ellison is rather long-winded. There were many scenes who were not necessary which seemed to make the novel drag at points. This doesn't ruin the novel for me, however. Once you get into the story and discover that it isn't an easy read, it becomes more enjoyable.
I read a few reviews of the novel before I picked it up, most of which were negative. The reviews I read made me dread reading this novel, but it ended up being one of the best books I've read in a novel. As a white female, I can't personally relate to many of the struggles the narrator faces but this novel helped me become more aware of the struggles those around me face. It's easy to get complacent and think you understand how those around you think, but this book showed me just how little I understand. For that, I am grateful.
challenging
emotional
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Astounding, virtuosic, electric. I have no idea why it took me so long to read "Invisible Man."
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
challenging
dark
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
Ellison’s chronicle of the making of a Black man in America has a dreamlike, Pilgrim’s Progress quality about it, as the narrator moves through the world in stages, meeting with archetypical characters from whom he draws some new knowledge or understanding — right or wrong — about the world. The modernist, stream of consciousness style signals from the beginning that the events within are not necessarily to be interpreted literally; they are symbols etched on symbols, and stacked on further symbols. But the anguish, dehumanization, and injustice they convey are all too real, and largely unchanged some 70 years on.
Ellison plays with identity, and the construction of the narrator’s identity as a human being, a man, a Black man form his core quest through the book. The narrator is never named; the notion of his invisibility, a discourse on which forms the book’s opening chapter, also carries anonymity. For if you cannot even be seen, for what do you need a name?
When the narrator joins a murky communist social-justice organization called the Brotherhood, he is assigned a new name by the group’s white leader, Brother Jack. We aren’t told what this name is, either, because it doesn’t matter — neither his birth name nor the name given to him by a white man bent on exploiting him reflect or capture who the narrator really is. As Malcolm X (around the same time Invisible Man was being published) renounced the name assigned to his ancestors by their slave-owning white oppressors, the Invisible Man will not be known in the reader’s mind by any such name.
These themes of anonymity and invisibility sound again and again. When the narrator is injured in an explosion at the paint factory where he briefly works (a factory famous for its “Optic White” paint, the whitest white, created by an alchemy whereby a black fixant is stirred into a pot of white paint until it vanishes — really, there is symbolism embedded in every word of this book), he lands in a hospital where white psychiatrists experiment on him and demand to know his name, and his mother’s name. He refuses to answer. Later, the narrator dons dark glasses and a wide-brimmed hat, and is over and over again mistaken for one B.P. Rinehart, signifying the invisibility and fungibility of Black men in society at large (not just in white society, either) — one is as good as another. But even as he leans briefly into the identity of B.P. Rinehart, the narrator learned that this, too, is not a firm identity; Rinehart, it turns out, is a pimp, a numbers-runner, and a preacher — in short, a con man of many identities.
Reading this book today, in the midst of an upswell of racial-justice protest in my country, much of what Ellison conveys is distressingly familiar, distressingly unchanged. An incident in which a Black man is shot and killed by a white police officer harassing him for peddling goods in the street, and the aftermath of that incident, are especially salient. All the boxes are checked: a groundswell of Black rage against the police, a desperate subset of protestors turning to violence and property destruction, people with unclear motives goading this on, paternalism and patronization by liberal whites trying to control Black voices in the guise of liberating them. The tense, bitten-back rage of this book, the depths of frustration it captures, is as terribly comprehensible and relevant as ever.
Ellison plays with identity, and the construction of the narrator’s identity as a human being, a man, a Black man form his core quest through the book. The narrator is never named; the notion of his invisibility, a discourse on which forms the book’s opening chapter, also carries anonymity. For if you cannot even be seen, for what do you need a name?
When the narrator joins a murky communist social-justice organization called the Brotherhood, he is assigned a new name by the group’s white leader, Brother Jack. We aren’t told what this name is, either, because it doesn’t matter — neither his birth name nor the name given to him by a white man bent on exploiting him reflect or capture who the narrator really is. As Malcolm X (around the same time Invisible Man was being published) renounced the name assigned to his ancestors by their slave-owning white oppressors, the Invisible Man will not be known in the reader’s mind by any such name.
These themes of anonymity and invisibility sound again and again. When the narrator is injured in an explosion at the paint factory where he briefly works (a factory famous for its “Optic White” paint, the whitest white, created by an alchemy whereby a black fixant is stirred into a pot of white paint until it vanishes — really, there is symbolism embedded in every word of this book), he lands in a hospital where white psychiatrists experiment on him and demand to know his name, and his mother’s name. He refuses to answer. Later, the narrator dons dark glasses and a wide-brimmed hat, and is over and over again mistaken for one B.P. Rinehart, signifying the invisibility and fungibility of Black men in society at large (not just in white society, either) — one is as good as another. But even as he leans briefly into the identity of B.P. Rinehart, the narrator learned that this, too, is not a firm identity; Rinehart, it turns out, is a pimp, a numbers-runner, and a preacher — in short, a con man of many identities.
Reading this book today, in the midst of an upswell of racial-justice protest in my country, much of what Ellison conveys is distressingly familiar, distressingly unchanged. An incident in which a Black man is shot and killed by a white police officer harassing him for peddling goods in the street, and the aftermath of that incident, are especially salient. All the boxes are checked: a groundswell of Black rage against the police, a desperate subset of protestors turning to violence and property destruction, people with unclear motives goading this on, paternalism and patronization by liberal whites trying to control Black voices in the guise of liberating them. The tense, bitten-back rage of this book, the depths of frustration it captures, is as terribly comprehensible and relevant as ever.
I did not enjoy this novel. It might be because we read it for class and it dragged on and on, but I am not sure. Not sure who to recommend it to. Maybe people who are REALLY interested in the Harlem Renaissance.
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Strong character development:
Yes