Our narrator is an “Invisible Man” for a number of reasons, many of which are already divulged to us by Chapter 4, and I am intrigued by how shifting perspectives in the narrative explore and heighten this invisibility. In Chapter 2, the Invisible Man’s voice is rendered literally invisible as Jim Trueblood’s narrative takes dominance (64-68), replacing our protagonist’s first-person narration. Mr. Norton doesn’t “even look at [him]” (61) as Trueblood speaks, and the cruel irony of how the Invisible Man has been ‘replaced’ in the narrative is compounded by how Norton eventually gives Trueblood a hundred-dollar bill, whereas the Invisible Man had originally hoped Norton would sponsor his education (38). Through shifting the perspective in this chapter to relay a story (one that is separate from the Invisible Man’s own narrative) from Trueblood’s point of view, Ralph Ellison has manufactured our protagonist’s invisibility on a stylistic level. I am interested in seeing how Ellison’s decisions to navigate different perspectives and assign primacy of narrative to other characters will increase or reduce the Invisible Man’s invisibility as the novel progresses, and in doing so shape the ways we feel about and understand the character.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.