A review by annalouise
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

4.75

Started reading for a piece on invisibility at the hand of dehumanisation, but I was utterly captivated as I did not expect to be. I definitely got lost at a few points - particularly in a lot of the 'action' scenes, less of a comment on the novel than on my tastes - but the character's inner monologues are the star of this one. The prologue begins with one such monologue, and it does an excellent job at speaking to all those who might pick up the novel, no matter their race, gender, etc. The entire novel is focused on one man's experience of an everyman's issue - the lack of experienced humanity - focusing on a singular experience (a Southern black man who is exiled North). The narrator's invisibility stems from his not being treated as human, and so he feels he is unreal, at times part of a machine (as he becomes through an exchange of labour which is technically fair, yet strips him of his humanity all the same). He has spent so much of his life giving up parts of himself (by yes-manning white people, his superiors and people he calls his peers (brothers)) that he has ceased to feel alive, unable to act for himself and forced into portraying the character which is expected of him - by his white townsfolk, by his school, and by the brotherhood. All claim to have his best interests at heart, yet each situation causes him to fade more and more as those people enact their own self-serving puppetry. Please note that I read this in conjunction with R.D. Laing's The Divided Self, so take this review with a grain of salt.