Here is the synopsis of our sample research paper on The Meaning of Invisibility in Ellison's "Invisible Man". Have the paper e-mailed to you 24/7/365.
Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A six page paper looking at Ralph Ellison's novel in terms of the way certain classes of people are rendered invisible by a society that refuses to see them as individuals. The paper observes that by the end of the novel, the protagonist has moved from a socially-imposed invisibility that makes him personally inauthentic to a self-imposed invisibility where he can be truly himself. Bibliography lists ten sources.
Page Count:
6 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_KBellisn.doc
Buy This Term Paper »
Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
chemical potion. Wells book was science fiction, of course, but Ellisons story is all too real. Not only is it real, Ellison asserts, but it is a condition shared by
millions of people all over the globe. For Ellisons protagonist isnt really invisible, in the literal sense of the term. Hes simply unnoticed, or more pointedly, actively ignored --
because hes black and growing up in the middle of the twentieth century, when the "racial question" in America was something that society simply preferred to put out of mind.
The only acceptable place for a black man is in the background, and his only acceptable demeanors are submissive, quiet, respectful. As Roger Valade writes, "Shifting between naturalistic, expressionistic, and
surrealistic styles, Ellison combined concerns of European and African-American literature to chronicle a black youths quest to discover his identity" (Valade, 130). The book begins with a prologue, which
explains what the Invisible Man is doing at the conclusion of the book -- the entire rest of the book, except for the prologue, functioning as one long flashback. And
what the Invisible Man is doing is living "rent-free in a building rented strictly to whites, in a section of the basement that was shut off and forgotten during the
nineteenth century" (Ellison, 5). Since his white-dominated culture refuses to recognize him, refuses to acknowledge that he is a person with idiosyncrasies and individuality, he considers himself invisible to them.
Obviously the rest of society agrees with him, including the power company; the Invisible Man has wired his little apartment full of lights, but since the power company does not
recognize that there is an apartment in the little walled-off basement, they cannot comprehend that anyone would be living there, and consequently he does not pay for his electricity. Sometimes
...