“I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids — and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination — indeed, everything and anything except me.”
In “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison, I used the archaeological dig close reading method to analyze the first paragraph of the prologue.
Without giving a name, the narrator introduced himself as an “invisible man.” (Ellison 1) But he told us he is not a ghost or anything supernatural, “No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms.” (Ellison 1) He is an actual human being with “flesh and bone, fiber and liquids.” (Ellison 1) He explains that his ability to be invisible is because people refused to notice him. When the narrator said, “When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination — indeed, everything.” (Ellison 1) This suggests that people are able to see him, but they choose not to acknowledge him.
Taking a closer look into introduction, we can figure out the narrator is a human, a black man. The major theme of “Invisible Man,” is about racism. The metaphor of invisibility demonstrates the effects of racism on the victims. Because the narrator is black, the “white people” refuse to see him as an actual person. Therefore, the narrator characterizes himself as invisible. The narrator struggles with how people perceive him and also how he perceives himself. The word “invisibility” is frequently used because it expresses how victims of racism feel when they are the minority. And the majorities are blind and cannot see the minorities because they can only see the surroundings.
I think you chose a great passage to “dig” into. I agree with you that the major theme is racism, but also the idea of race itself. I feel as though the author confronts the idea of race THROUGH experiencing racism of others, such as degradation. Furthermore, the question becomes whether or not individuals mainly identity themselves via race and what that means to them. The “invisible man” doesn’t just feel invisible to others, but he also feels invisible to himself- lost, confused, and trying to find his place, something that is difficult to do when you can’t see clearly.