Invisibility
“I am an invisible man,” the narrator tells us on the very first page of the book (3). Invisibility is a constant, nagging question throughout the story that the narrator explores, from the very first chapters where invisibility is only the nonsensical condemnations of an old war relic (“He’s invisible”), to the end described in the prologue, where the narrator fully realizes and even uses his invisibility (74). The word itself (invisible, invisibility, etc.) comes up over 100 times in the novel. How do we, 13 chapters in, decide what this obscure notion of not being visible really means? Invisible Man isn’t a sci-fi or fantasy novel, despite its elements of surrealism -- we are not following a ghost’s hauntings or a magical man under some spell of invisibility: “No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms” (3). This invisibility is more of the conceptual kind. Our narrator’s life is thrown into disarray by s...