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 some racially-motivated actions that are deceptively meaningless, which butterfly-effect into great misfortunes. We’re not yet halfway through the book, but it certainly seems that Ellison is painting a picture of American systemic racism, and how deep its roots are -- think of Mr Norton, Bledsoe, his late grandfather and the nightmarish paint factory;  the general “Get Out” vibes given off by whoever the narrator meets or wherever he goes.

Yet what does racism have to do with invisibility? Our trusty Oxford English Dictionary defines racism as “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior.” Note the last bit -- the belief of race, a social construct, being tied to superiority -- it explains how racism leads us to attach labels to people based on some made-up system of classification. These labels are a package deal, you see. The label ‘black’ in the 1930’s setting of Invisible Man comes with a host of distasteful traits, while ‘white’ may come with the opposite. Once the label is stuck, it’s stuck, and so are the deluded generalizations that are written on it. A human is no longer someone with an individual personality, with dreams and grievances and love, but is reduced to a living stereotype. 

Someone once told me that children are so lucky. When we are young, we do not yet see the world through categories. While we may see a tree, a child going on their first walk sees something towering and brown, very rough to the touch, wrapped in a swath of verdant green. We stop looking at the tree once we realize it’s a tree; we don’t see the subtleties that make this tree different from every other tree on Earth, and in this way it is ‘invisible.’ Similarly, when you force a human being into a category, they are no longer a human but another statistic; another stereotype or tally on the count. They are effectively invisible.