Review: Invisible Man

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

First, Joe Morton did an ace job narrating this and this is a big part why I gave it four stars, instead of three. The other reason I gave it more than three is I have to put my own interpretation on the second part, or else I do not like it as much: Either the whole thing is a dream or a Jungian archetype vision or else there is just a deus ex machina that ruins it for me.

The narrator, an unnamed black man, begins by describing his living conditions: an underground room wired with hundreds of electric lights, operated by power stolen from the city's electric grid: how dreamlike is that. He reflects on the various ways in which he has experienced social invisibility during his life and begins to tell his story, returning to his teenage years. This part reminds me much of Manchild in the Promised Land: the story of a Southern African-American confronting racism, temptation, and moral decay in NYC.

The cabin of Jim Trueblood, who has caused a scandal by impregnating both his wife and his daughter in his sleep and delivers an account that horrifies Trustee Mr. Norton so badly is also a nightmare sequence, but still plausible enough for me. The narrator travels to New York and distributes letters supposedly to get him work only to find they are the agencies of his own punishment. After this Sisyphean punishment, the narrator stumbles into a union meeting, and Brockway from his paint factory job attacks the narrator and tricks him into setting off an explosion in the boiler room. The narrator is hospitalized and subjected to shock treatment, overhearing the doctors' discussion of him as a possible mental patient. After leaving the hospital, the narrator faints on the streets of Harlem and at this point I end the first part, the plausible part, and must believe the rest is a dream (if not all of it was) in order to keep it plausible enough for me to enjoy and rate so highly.

After being taken in by Mary Rambo, a kindly old-fashioned woman who reminds him of his relatives in the South., he later happens across the eviction of an elderly black couple and makes an impassioned speech that incites the crowd to attack the law enforcement officials in charge of the proceedings. The narrator escapes over the rooftops and is confronted by Brother Jack, the leader of a group known as "the Brotherhood" that professes its commitment to bettering conditions in Harlem and the rest of the world. These superhuman (considering his prior abilities) of public speaking and parkour are very dream-y to me and The Brotherhood too elaborate and unreal not to be a deus ex machina if it is not a dream. When the narrator returns to Harlem and buys a hat and a pair of sunglasses to elude chasers and so completely has his identity become that of a man named Rinehart, known as a lover, a hipster, a gambler, a briber, and a spiritual leader, I know this must be a dream or else it is a cheap trick to extricate the narrator from sticky situations. . After more narrow escapes, the narrator attacks him with a spear and escapes into an underground coal bin beneath a manhole. Two white men seal him in, leaving him alone to ponder the racism he has experienced in his life. This is the underground realm of the subconscious from which he started and from which he comes to .... awake.

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