esidence, is one of the brightest spots in all of New York and even though he loves light, "I know; I have been boomeranged across my head so much that I now can see the darkness of lightness" (Ellison 6). In this the narrator is referring to the lightness of Broadway or the Empire State Building, great, light objects that, because they represent and reinforce a white, racist culture as "among the darkest" two spots of "our whole culture" (Ellison 6).
Despite the narrator being invisible to a culture that deems him inferior. He remains aware of his identity and being and his right to embrace and express them. In his description of why an invisible man would need light, we come as close to the narrator's explanation of his spiritual outlook as we get in the novel. As the invisible man explains, "I love light. Perhaps you'll think it strange that an invisible man should need light, desire light, love light. But maybe it is exactly because I am invisible. Light confirms my reality, gives birth to my form" (Ellison 6). Clearly, light represents the spiritual to the narrator, a transcendent force that gives form to all beings and of which he understands he is a valid part. Even in this affirming "lightness;" however, the narrator is ambivalent knowing it also encompasses darkness.
One might think the work would be focused on the narrator's lament over being invisible because of his ethnicity in a racist culture. However, the narrator's ambivalence stems from the fact that he is more conscious about the hypocrisies of his culture exactly because he is invisible. Until he recognized this, he admits he was not aware or fully alive. As the narrator states, "I myself, after existing some twenty years, did not become alive until I discovered my invisibility" (Ellison 7). Ellison's narrator's engages in a humorous fight with Monopolated Light & Power that is a symbol of his desire to remain in the light or life-...