Why is Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man invisible? All the better for us to see ourselves in him. Ellison's 1952 novel Invisible Man and the title character of this work are designed to help us understand the different ways in which people are socially visible and invisible, about how society grants power to some while shrouding others in political and cultural invisibility. The book follows the travails of its narrator, a young black man whose name we never learn, as he proceeds from one social milieu to another, in every case being met with intolerance, with racism, with cultural narrowness. He is in some fundamental way invisible to everyone he meets because they cannot see him in the same way that they see themselves. He is not human to them. And yet, Ellison's invisible man struggles onward, never admitting defeat, still hopeful that he can through his own efforts force people to see him as a real man rather than as some cipher, rather than simply as a reflection of their own limitations.
The narrator's of the novel is never under the illusion that people see him as fully human: He is always aware of the gap between the way he sees himself and
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