The invisible man

The Invisible Man is a novel by Ralph Ellison , the original Invisible Man , published in 1952 . The book received the National Book Award the following year and has since been considered one of the most important American novels of the post-war period. Time magazine ranks him among the top 100 English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005.

Ellison published short stories and essays, two other novels remained unfinished. They were published posthumously . Invisible Man appeared in German translation in 1954 under the title Invisible by Fischer, in 1984 by March and since 1987 as Invisible. Novel published by Rowohlt-Verlag with author's afterword from November 10, 1981.

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The main character and first-person narrator in The Invisible Man is a man who remains nameless and who considers himself invisible. This invisibility is not a physical, but a social invisibility: as a black man, his fellow men in post-war America will not see him. The story is told in retrospect. The narrator sits in an underground cellar room he occupies in a building that he has rented in pure white and which he has equipped with 1,369 incandescent lamps that are operated with black-tapped electricity. It is from this brightest point in all of New York that the narrator's life is illuminated, starting with his school days.

As a student, one day he has to chauffeur Mr. Norton, the college's rich white philanthropist , a director, scientist and banker. After horrific incidents during that day, which , in the eyes of the principal dr., The reputation of the school (which resembles the Tuskegee Institute that Ellison attended himself) Bledsoe, the protagonist 's scholarship is withdrawn, while he is assured that he will be looked after. He receives letters of recommendation to find a job in New York that will earn him money for the next semester. However, he is unsuccessful in finding a job and finds that Dr. Bledsoe strongly advised companies not to hire him.

The narrator begins to work in a paint factory known for its white paint. His boss, however, fears the competition and gets rid of the narrator by making him detonate part of the heating system for which they are responsible. The protagonist is taken to the hospital, where he is also treated with electric shocks. As an unemployed person in Harlem, he meets a speaker who fascinates the masses, and when he, who is himself a gifted speaker, witnesses a house evacuation, he dares a try and actually manages to inspire the masses.

Jack, a representative of the Brotherhood (actually the CPUSA), finds out about this and recruits him as a member. He even got a leading role in Harlem, but came into conflict with party ideas and was ultimately abandoned by the group completely.

When he was still a speaker for the communist organization, his opponent was the black nationalist Ras der Mahner (actually Marcus Garvey ), who called for a violent uprising against the white oppressors.

Shortly after the narrator is no longer active for the party, violent riots ensue in which the narrator almost dies, but takes refuge in a hole where he has lived and told his story ever since.

The protagonist of the novel concludes that he may soon come to light again and emphasizes that his story could be that of any other person in a similar form and that the fate of invisibility does not only apply to him.

Invisibility and the search for identity

The nameless first-person narrator describes himself as "invisible" in terms of both the discrimination he experiences as an African-American and the problem of finding one's identity.

He tries to find his way around society in different ways, but he is influenced again and again by the people around him, which unsettles him and ultimately leads to withdrawing from society and telling his story to the reader.

In the various episodes of the novel, the protagonist goes through a series of initiations into new identities. In this process of identity search, however, none of the identities to which he has reached or to which he would like to return is proven to be secure. In this way, the situation of "invisible" is similar to that of the title character in Saul Bellow almost two years later, the released and novel The Adventures of Augie March (dt. The Adventures of Augie March , 1956), characterized in that it is obliged continually to constantly redesigning your own identity and correcting it in the confrontation with reality. Just like Augie March, the "invisible" in Ellison's novel endeavors to evade the attempts of others who want to determine him. However, in contrast to Augie March, the “invisible” does not fundamentally evade his social responsibility, even if only temporarily. This variant of the central theme of finding identity, which is presented convincingly in terms of narrative and artistically, characterizes Ellison's novel in a special way.

Reception and criticism

In literary criticism, the established and equal place of Ellison and his novel in the American literary scene of the 20th century is undisputed. However, as Franzbecker explains in detail in his analysis of the reception history of the work, there are diverging directions in the Ellison criticism in interpreting the fundamental message of the novel.

While some of the critics see the work as an expression of a general human fate or a fundamental human distress and see Ellison rooted in the "mainstream" American and beyond Western culture, another part of the critics places the work in the tradition of the black protest novel, in the special social plight of African-Americans in the United States in the 20th century and their experience of discrimination and oppression will be discussed. In this direction of criticism, however, the alleged lack of protest by the protagonist in the novel, who vacillates between conformism and nonconformism , but ultimately comes to terms with his situation and does not try to change it, is also criticized in part.

Finally, the central theme of finding one's identity, which is closely related to “invisibility”, is interpreted differently in the novel, namely as the search for an existential, political-social, racial-cultural or artistic identity.

Despite these different interpretations, the majority of critics agree that Ellison's novel is one of the most important works of the first three post-war decades and not only represents a new approach to the African-American narrative tradition, but also has a fundamental role in the further development of American narrative art in general, which was largely shaped by Faulkner and Hemingway until the mid-1950s .

literature

Rolf Franzbecker (with the collaboration of Peter Bruck and Willi Real): The modern novel of the American negro, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1979, ISBN 3-534-07366-5 , pp. 48-79.
Franz Link: Invisible Man, 1952 . In: Franz Link: American storytellers since 1950 · Topics · Contents · Forms . Schöningh, Paderborn 1993, ISBN 3-506-70822-8 , pp. 180-184.
Monika Plessner : Ralph Ellison. From "Invisible Man" . In: Monika Plessner: I am the darker brother · The literature of black Americans · From the spirituals to James Baldwin. Fischer Verlag Frankfurt a. M. 1979, ISBN 3-596-26454-5 , pp. 273-291.

Individual evidence

↑ See detailed Franz Link: Invisible Man, 1952 . In: Franz Link: American storytellers since 1950 · Topics · Contents · Forms . Schöningh, Paderborn 1993, ISBN 3-506-70822-8 , pp. 180-184, here p. 183 f.
^ Rolf Franzbecker (with the collaboration of Peter Bruck and Willi Real): The modern novel of the American Negro, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1979, p. 53
↑ See more and more detailed: Rolf Franzbecker (with the collaboration of Peter Bruck and Willi Real): The modern novel of the American Negro, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1979, pp. 53–58 and 69.
↑ See more and more detailed: Rolf Franzbecker (with the collaboration of Peter Bruck and Willi Real): The modern novel of the American Negro, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1979, p. 59ff.
↑ See more detailed Franz Link: Invisible Man, 1952 . In: Franz Link: American storytellers since 1950 · Topics · Contents · Forms . Schöningh, Paderborn 1993, ISBN 3-506-70822-8 , pp. 180-184, here pp. 180 f.

[1] See detailed Franz Link: Invisible Man, 1952 . In: Franz Link: American storytellers since 1950 · Topics · Contents · Forms . Schöningh, Paderborn 1993, ISBN 3-506-70822-8 , pp. 180-184, here p. 183 f.

[2] Rolf Franzbecker (with the collaboration of Peter Bruck and Willi Real): The modern novel of the American Negro, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1979, p. 53

[3] See more and more detailed: Rolf Franzbecker (with the collaboration of Peter Bruck and Willi Real): The modern novel of the American Negro, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1979, pp. 53–58 and 69.

[4] See more and more detailed: Rolf Franzbecker (with the collaboration of Peter Bruck and Willi Real): The modern novel of the American Negro, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1979, p. 59ff.

[5] See more detailed Franz Link: Invisible Man, 1952 . In: Franz Link: American storytellers since 1950 · Topics · Contents · Forms . Schöningh, Paderborn 1993, ISBN 3-506-70822-8 , pp. 180-184, here pp. 180 f.