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Understanding History Through the Literary Reviews of Invisible Man
By Virginia Brackett, Ph.D Overview Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man
created quite a stir following its 1952 publication. It received reviews by prestigious literary figures and publications. In this post-reading lesson designed for advanced high school or college students, students learn about the social and political climate in which Ellison published his masterpiece through reading critical reviews of his work. Each selection below offers choices for student response.
Curriculum Standards The following standards have been taken from the Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning ( McRel) standards. Students will work in groups to:
- Understand the importance of equality of opportunity and equal protection of the law as a characteristic of American society.
- Understand the important factors that have helped shape American society.
- Know ways in which Americans have attempted to make the values and principles of the U.S. Constitution a reality.
- Understand the significance of fundamental values and principles for the individual and society.
- Know how various individual, social, and political actions have helped to reduce discrepancies between reality and the ideals of American constitutional democracy.
- Know different types of primary and secondary sources and the motives, interests, and biases they express.
- Analyze the values held by specific people who influence history and the role their values played in influencing history.
- Evaluate the validity and credibility of different historical interpretations.
- Use a variety of criteria to evaluate the validity and reliability of primary and secondary source information.
- Use criteria to evaluate own and others' effectiveness in group discussions and formal presentations and evaluate the clarity and accuracy of information.
- Analyze complex elements of plot in specific literary works.
- Understand how themes are used across literary works and genres.
- Understand the effects of an author's style and complex literary devices and techniques on the overall quality of a work.
- Understand the relationships between literature and its historical period, culture, and society.
- Understand inferred and recurring themes in literary works.
- Understand writing techniques used to influence the reader and accomplish an author's purpose.
- Understand the philosophical assumptions and basic beliefs underlying an author's work.
Time Required One class period to introduce the activity. One period of discussion following the writing portion. Materials Needed
- Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man
- Internet connection
The Lesson 1. After finishing the novel, Invisible Man, and reading the biography on Ellison's life below, students will pick from one of the three reviews offered from the links below.
After reading the reviews, they will complete the writing exercise(s) that follows each review. A. Read Irving Howe's review at:
http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/howe-on-ellison.html
Irving Howe published his review in The Nation
on May 10, 1952. In one paragraph that discusses what he sees as negative aspects of the novel, Howe concludes by writing, "the unfortunate fact remains that to define one's individuality is to stumble over social fences that do not allow ... 'infinite possibilites.'"
In an essay, identify the "social fences" that African Americans faced during the Jim Crow era. Then discuss whether you agree that the Invisible Man
could realistically state, "my world has become one of infinite possibilities." If you agree, what are some of those possibilities the novel's hero envisions? In an essay, defend or refute
Howe's statement that Ellison reduces many of his characters to "caricature," even to "clowns." Identify examples in addition to those of the Stalinists that Howe identifies. You might want to argue
that Ellison does draw caricatures, but that he does so on purpose, to co-opt the trend of caricatures of blacks that were so popular to the day. Go to the jimcrowhistory.org image gallery for a look at those caricatures. B. Read Saul Bellow's review at:
http://www.English.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/bellow-on-ellison.html
Saul Bellow's review of Invisible Man, "Man Underground," appeared in Commentary
in June, 1952. Bellow makes the comment, "In our society Man Himself is idolized and publicly worshipped, but the single individual must hide himself underground and try to save his desires, his thoughts, his soul, in invisibility. He must return to himself, learning self-acceptance and rejecting all that threatens to deprive him of his manhood."
In an essay, discuss whether it would have been possible for a black man living during the Jim Crow era to learn such self-acceptance and manage to reject "all that threatens to deprive him of his manhood."
Creative Exercise: Mr. Bellow asks the reader to "suppose that the novel is, as they say, played out." Write an additional chapter to Invisible Man, in which you imagine what the Invisible Man would
do next in his invisible state. How might he use his newly discovered power to fight Jim Crow laws and beliefs? What of those "infinite possibilities" would he realize, and how?
C. Read Wright Morris's review at:
http://www.nytimes.com/library/books/072098ellison-invisible.html Wright Morris's review of Invisible Man, "A Tale From
Underground," appeared on April 13, 1952. He associates the novel with Dante's Divine Comedy, when the narrator descends into hell. Morris writes that a traveler in hell might view what he observes as
allegory, or symbolism, where the figures represent "force, figures of good and evil, in a large symbolical frame, which makes for order, but diminishes our interest in their predicament as people." He notes
this could be the high price the underground being pays: "We are deprived of uniqueness." In an essay, discuss figures from the novel that you see as symbolic or allegorical figures. Think of
laws and customs inherent to the Jim Crow era to help you identify relationships between characters and ideals of the time. Consult the "Jim Crow Etiquette Guide" and the "Jim Crow Laws" listed at
http://www.ferris.edu/news/jimcrow/menu.htm.2. After the students have finished the writing portion of the assignment, hold a class discussion on the differences in perception between how people receive Ellison's
novel today and how they received it in 1952. Suggested Resources American Collection: American Literature Resources
http://www.ncteamericancollection.org/awg_ellison_ralph.htm
Jimcrowhistory.org Ellison gateway
Ellison, Ralph Waldo: (1914-1994) "I tried to use my ear for dialogue to give an impression of just how people sounded."
Award-winning novelist and widely acclaimed American writer. Born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on March 1, 1914, Ellison heard many stories about the frontier as a child in the Midwest. With so much of the
American frontier still undeveloped, the possibilities for Ellison must have seemed endless. He would later characterize his attitude through the words of his most famous character, the narrator of his 1952 novel
Invisible Man, who spoke of the United States as a place of "infinite possibilities." In his close-knit African-American community, Ellison fell in love with the language and music that were his heritage.
When he enrolled in the Tuskegee Institute in 1933, Ellison intended to study music. However, exposure to literature interested him in writing. In 1936, he left Tuskegee to move to New York City. There he met other
black authors, including Richard Wright, and became involved in the Federal Writers Project. Initiated by President Franklin Roosevelt, the project encouraged writing during the Depression when many authors and
poets had difficulties finding employment. Ellison published short stories in New Challenge and New Masses. As part of his work for the project, he also recorded African-American spoken language,
experimenting with various methods, which greatly affected his later writing of Invisible Man. He wrote of the project, "I tried to use my ear for dialogue to give an impression of just how people sounded. I
developed a technique of transcribing that captured the idiom rather than trying to convey the dialect through misspellings." He later borrowed a phrase from one interview with a Pullman porter to use in his
novel: "I'm in New York, but New York ain't in me." When Ellison's Invisible Man appeared in 1952, reaction was strong, and mainly positive. The work proved
remarkable as one of the first to describe the black experience in the United States from a black writer's viewpoint. Invisible Man won the National Book Award for fiction in 1953. One statement by the awards
committee commented, "Ralph Ellison's impassioned first novel of a Negro rebel in the modern world--Invisible Man-- has a mature literary awareness which the class-conscious novel of the Thirties
often lacked: escaping the conventions of realism, it searches--as the title itself indicates--for a universal statement of man's condition in our time."
Ellison later described his experiences with the Federal Writers Project in his 1964 essay collection, Shadow and Act
. About this collection, George P. Elliott wrote, "the first two-thirds of this book, for the most part quite personal to the writer, says more about being an American Negro, and says it better, than any other
book I know of." Ellison's second and eagerly anticipated novel was destroyed in a fire in 1967--he never completed it. He did
continue to write essays and short stories for publication and lectured often at various universities. From 1970 to 1979, Ellison was honored by an appointment as New York University's Albert Schweitzer Professor
of Humanities. In 1985 he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. An additional essay collection, Going to the Territory, appeared in 1986.
At his death in 1994, Ellison was one of the most celebrated American authors. The following year, the executor of Ellison's literary estate, John F. Callahan, discovered some unpublished stories. In 1996, The New
Yorker magazine published "Boy on a Train," and "I Did Not Learn Their Names." A final collection, Flying Home and Other Stories
appeared in 1997 and contained stories written between 1937 and 1954, including several never-before-published works. Irving Howe published a review of Invisible Man in The Nation
on May 5, 1952. He included the following remarks, which, among others, well express Ellison's legacy:
Some reviewers, from the best of intentions, have assured their readers that this is a good novel and not merely a good Negro novel. But of course Invisible Man is a Negro novel--what white man could
ever have written it? It is drenched in Negro life, talk, music: it tells us how distant even the best of the whites are from the black men that pass them on the streets; and it is written from a particular
compound of emotions that no white man could possibly simulate. To deny that this is a Negro novel is to deprive the Negroes of their one basic right: the right to cry out their difference.
Ralph Ellison spent his life pursuing, tagging, and offering up for public display and evaluation just such differences.
This lesson was submitted by Virginia Brackett, Ph.D., a professor at Triton College.
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