the contours of physical substance, the black man is left with only his invisible psychological state.
Light being the illumination of self-awareness, throughout the novel, as long as the narrator repeatedly denies his loneliness and alienation, he remains blind to himself and invisible to all others. Invisibility comes from his inability to articulate his suffering. Thus, he remains in the dark concerning his true self, as well as blind to the true nature and motives of others. Bledsoe tells the invisible Man that he, the narrator, does not even know "the difference between the way things are and the way they're supposed to be" (Ellison 139).
So, what is the reality? The Invisible Man's world is initially chaos and catastrophe: "I felt a sudden fit of blind terror. I was unused to darkness" (Ellison 21). Buying into the myth of the American Dream, he tries to deny the chaos in favor of a nonexistent egalitarian design and purpose. Early on, he is forced to fight other blind-folded black men for the amusement of drunken whites, all the while insisting that his main purpose is to deliver a lofty speech proclaiming humility to be the path to success. When such attempts fail him, the narrator retreats into blankness and shuns true illumination.
In portraying this Dantesque journey through the subterranean reaches of black experience, Ellison fuses surreal qualities to painfully real experience. Through a series of misadventures and downward-spiraling encounters, the main character cannot be seen. Who confines him? Who defines his invisibility? Ellison points the finger at the narrator himself, because
...