“And I stopped the blade, slicing the air as I pushed him away, letting him fall back to the street. I stared at him hard as the lights of a car stabbed through the darkness… a man almost killed by a phantom,” (Ellison, 4)

“My hole is warm and full of light. Yes, full of light. I doubt if there is a brighter spot in all New York than this hole of mine” (Ellison, 6)

The prologue of any literary piece serves primarily as an introduction to the themes and ideas to come in the book. In the case of “Invisible Man”, the prologue introduces many of the themes to follow in Ellison’s book. The narrator of this prologue as we come to find is black. He is invisible to the inner eye of whites because of their preconceived notions of who he is and as a result he is invisible. The narrator is not a true human being in the eyes of their society, and Ellison tries to highlight this struggle African-Americans have in this search for their identity and individuality. The theme of light as seen in these two passages of the prologue is used to try to connect the idea of light to the narrator’s sense of identity. As he states, “The truth is the light and the light is the truth” (Ellison, 7). Just as the narrator is about to kill a blond man, as he calls himself a phantom rather than a man as he is doing so. Then, as a car’s lights shine through the darkness at him, he is given an identity and his reality is reinforced that he is a human being. This idea of light that he fills his new home with that he is stealing from the ‘white’ power source, is associated with knowledge. This idea of light could also be connected to this process of enlightenment the narrator is going through as he is finding his individuality and identity.

The narrator is searching for an identity in a world that puts him in the shadows, and this theme of light is a symbol of his finding individuality in a society that doesn’t see it in him.