Major themes

Ellison uses numerous metaphors, images, and allusions to enhance the emotional and intellectual impact of his novel. For instance, Ellison invokes the colors of the American flag with red of sloe gin, the Optic White of Liberty Paints factory, and the blue of "What Did I Do to Be so Black and Blue?" by Louis Armstrong. Ellison also uses the language of music throughout the novel to characterize the deeper meaning of a scene. Armstrong's jazz, the street blues of Peter Wheatstraw (Peetie or Pete Wheatstraw was the stagename of blues singer William Bunch), and a heartfelt solo by a gospel singer all become central metaphors for interpreting the message behind Ellison's meandering and sometimes surreal plot.

Another allusion used by Ellison occurs after the main character discovers he has been deceived by the school master, which subsequently leads him to acquire an interim occupation at Liberty Paints. At his new job, the character is instructed to add ten drops of "stuff" to a can full of jet black paint. After the paint is shaken, the main character peers into the can and beholds a "pure white" paint. This allusion hints at the mindset of Americans at those times, an addition of ten drops of indoctrination to the African-American soul can instill in him the love of white America; or it could illustrate that what is considered "pure white" isn't exclusively white. This is also a vague reference to Jim Crow-era laws that were based on the percentage of "black blood" one had in order for such to apply.

A motif of blindness also runs through the novel, often alongside the metaphor of light as truth and knowledge. For example, the Reverend Homer A. Barbee, a speaker who comes to the Narrator's school, and whose story glorifies Dr. Bledsoe and the purpose to the school (a purpose the Narrator finds to be false and subservient to the white benefactors), is blind. Perhaps his blindness can be seen as an indicator of the school's blindness, or even the blindness of the Narrator before he learned to despise the school. Later in the novel, the Narrator discovers that Brother Jack, whom he had revered and respected as a true visionary, is blind in one eye, thereby losing philosophical respect for the brother who, he comes to learn, used him as a poster-boy to earn the support of Harlem.

The fact that Brother Jack only has one eye can also be seen as a reference to the cyclops in Homer's Odyssey. In fact, Invisible Man contains numerous references to the Odyssey, both cyclopean, and other. For example, during the 'Battle Royal' scene, when the Narrator faces the dancing white woman, she is described as "a fair bird-girl girdled in veils calling to me from the angry surface of some gray and threatening sea." in other words, she is described as a Greek siren, a bird with a woman's head who sings from a rock at sea in order to lure sailors to their deaths. As the title suggests, the importance of invisibility is also a major theme in the text. While the narrator often bemoans his state of invisibility, there are a number of advantages to it as well that allow him to remain undetected and inconspicuous.

Дата добавления: 2014-01-11