This short summary of Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison gives you only the most important flashpoints in the novel. These are key incidents, characters and settings which must assist you to easily identify what is important for a student of Invisible Man.
Below are the highlights of what to expect in this short summary of Invisible Man by the African-American novelist, Ralph Ellison.
- Theme Summary
- Setting
- Characters
- Plot Summary
- Opening of the Novel
- Flashback
- Early Years – the Narrator’s Teenage Years
- Expelled from College
- Journey to New York
- The Brotherhood Days
- Struggle for Identity and Survival
- Epilogue
- Major Incidents to Watch
- Key themes to watch
Here now comes your short summary of Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Theme Summary
Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man is a novel that explores the issue of social invisibility as it relates to such other themes as racism, black nationalism or the struggle for black liberation. For that matter, the incidents and actions of characters bring to the fore important ideas about black identity, Marxist communism, education for blacks, individuality and personal identity.
Setting
There are many settings of Invisible Man. However, we can identify at least two broad geographical settings of the novel. These are the South and the North of the United States of America.
The South is where the narrator originally comes from. It is a place that is synonymous with slavery, racial segregation and oppression of blacks.
The North, specifically New York, is where the second part of the important incidents in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man take place. All the narrator’s encounters with the Brotherhood, for example, occur in the North or New York and Harlem.
More specific settings include the following
- The All-Black College in the South
- The streets of Harlem
- Mary Rambo’s house
- Liberty Paint Factory
- Inside the Brotherhood
- An underground cabin – where the narrator goes to hide and from where he narrates the events in the novel.
Time Setting
Invisible Man is set in 1950s America. These are the years of deep-seated racial discrimination against the black population.
Atmosphere
It is a period overshadowed by both peaceful and violent struggles of the blacks for the restoration of their freedoms and dignity as human beings.
Characters
Below is a list of the main characters in Invisible Man.
- A Nameless Narrator – He is the protagonist in the novel, a black male in a white dominated society, surrounded by other blacks whose thinking, and attitudes have been damaged by the evils of racism.
- Mr Norton – A visiting rich white man to the narrator’s college
- Jim Trueblood – A scandal-smeared man.
- Dr Bledsoe – The President of the narrator’s all-black college or university.
- Lucius Brockway – an attendant at Liberty Paint Factory
- Mary Rambo – a Landlady
- Ras the Exhorter – A key figure in the Brotherhood
- Brother Jack – Leader of the Brotherhood
- Tod Clifton – Youth Leader in the Brotherhood
Invisible Man – Short Summary
The novel opens with the narrator and protagonist living in an underground room. He describes his unenviable living conditions in a cabin wired with lots and lots of electric lights. The power he uses is stolen from the city’s electric grid.
Flashback
It is from this hidden location that the narrator goes back into time to reflect on the many ways he has experienced social invisibility throughout his life.
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He takes us back to his teenage years, the point where the story of his life of invisibility unfolds.
The narrator lives in a small Southern town. When he graduates from high school, he wins a scholarship to an all-black college.
But he needs to satisfy a strange condition in order to benefit from this scholarship. He must first take part in a brutal, self-humiliating battle. This fight is meant for the entertainment of the town’s rich white people.
Expelled from College – The Scuffle at the Bar
An incident involving one Mr Norton, a rich white man who is a visiting trustee of the narrator’s college will set the stage for a turning point in his life.
Here is what happens.
On one fateful day, during his junior year at the college, the narrator has to drive Mr. Norton out among the old slave-quarters which are beyond the campus.
He stops at the cabin of Jim Trueblood, a man who has caused so much furore in the neighbourhood by impregnating both his wife and his daughter – and it all happens in his sleep.
This Trueblood scandal horrifies Mr. Norton so badly that he asks the narrator to find him a drink. So the narrator drives him to a bar filled with prostitutes and patients from a nearby mental hospital.
The mental patients attack the two. These patients overpower the orderly whose duty it is to keep them under control. In the chaos, Mr. Norton is injured. The narrator hurries Mr. Norton away back to campus.
Dr Bledsoe Expells the Narrator
Dr. Bledsoe, the college president, is upset with the narrator. He reprimands him for exposing Mr. Norton to the underside of black life beyond the campus. Consequently, Dr Bledsoe expels the narrator from the school.
But that is not all. Dr Bledsoe goes further to give several sealed supposedly letters of recommendation to the narrator. In an apparent show of concern, he asks the narrator to show the sealed letters to friends of the college who will then assist him to find a job and, hopefully, re-enroll.
Journey to New York
The narrator therefore travels to New York. On reaching there, he wastes no time in distributing the supposed letters of recommendation. But all his efforts prove futile. Then the son of one recipient opens and shows him the true contents of the letter. In short, it reveals Bledsoe’s decision to never admit the narrator to the college ever again.
A Job at Liberty Paint Factory
Thus, the narrator finds himself in a limbo. He must do something to survive the conditions in New York. The same person who revealed Dr Bledsoe’s true intentions to him suggests that he find a job. And, based on this suggestion, he gets employment at Liberty Paint Factory.
He is assigned first to the shipping department, then to the boiler room.
But, here too, there is another challenge to deal with. It comes in the person of Lucius Brockway, the factory’s paranoid and deeply suspicious chief attendant. Brockway has this feeling that the narrator is actually out to take his job away from him.
Then one day, the narrator chances upon a union meeting. This incident further deepens Lucius Brockway’s suspicions. So he attacks the narrator. He then cleverly tricks the narrator into setting off a dangerous explosion in the boiler room.
As a result, the narrator is hospitalized and subjected to shock treatment. It is during this time that the narrator overhears the doctors speaking of him as a possible mental patient.
Thrown Onto the Streets of Harlem
The narrator faints soon after leaving the hospital. This incident happens on the streets of Harlem.
Luckily, he is taken in by Mary Rambo, a kind and old-fashioned woman. This is despite the fact that he has no money to pay for the rent. Everythng about Mary Rambo reminds the narrator of his own relatives back in the South.
Soon after, an incident involving the eviction of an elderly black couple will, once again, provide another turning point in the life of struggle for the protagonist.
The Speech Against the Eviction of a Black Couple
Enraged by the treatment meted out the the elderly black couple, the narrator makes an impassioned speech to the crowd. In fact, he calls upon the crowd to attack the law enforcement officials in charge of the proceedings.
He then escapes over the rooftops. This is how the narrator comes into contact with the Brotherhood and its leader, Brother Jack.
An Encounter with the Brotherhood
The Brotherhood is a black nationalist movement that professes a commitment to the betterment of the conditions of blacks in Harlem and in the rest of the world.
Brother Jack convinces the narrator to join the Brotherhood. He wants him to utilize his skills in oratory to speak at rallies in order to help spread the group’s message among the black population.
So, for once, the narrator has a job with a salary.
The narrator quickly pays Mary Rambo back the rent he owes her. Then he moves into his new apartment that the Brotherhood has given him.
The Brotherhood Rallies
Thus, the narrator is now a paid public speaker working with the Brotherhood to spread its message.
Initially, the rallies go according to plan. The narrator has also received a good dose of indoctrination on the Brotherhood’s ideology and methods.
But things will get nasty soon after.
The Ras the Exhorter Challenge
Ras the Exhorter happens to be a fanatical black nationalist who is of the opinion that the Brotherhood is under the control of whites. Despite his efforts to sow seeds of discord within the ranks of the Brotherhood, neither the narrator nor Tod Clifton, a youth leader within the Brotherhood, is willing to follow him.
At a meeting of the Brotherhood, the narrator is accused of acting in ways that place his own ambitions above the aspirations of the group. Consequently, he is relieved of his duties and given a new role in another part of the city.
Here, the narrator is tasked to address issues concerning women. It is while he is discharging his new responsibility for the Brotherhood that the narrator is seduced by the wife of a Brotherhood member.
Tod Clifton Disappears
Then Tod Clifton goes missing. The narrator is called back to Harlem to assist in the search for Tod Clifton.
At this point, too, things begin to get pretty bad for the Brotherhood. Its membership and influence among the black community has begun to wane. Clifton’s disappearance might just be a sympton of the decline of the Brotherhood.
After many failed attempts at finding Clifton, the narrator eventually discovers him engaged in a rather curious trade. Tod Clifton has turned himself into a street vendor. He is selling dancing Sambo dolls.
Apparently, he has grown disillusioned with the Brotherhood.
Tod Clifton Dies
Soon after, Clifton is shot and killed by a policeman while resisting arrest. At the funeral, the narrator gives a rousing speech. He rallies the crowd to rise up and support the Brotherhood again.
But this happens to be at the dying days of his romance with the Brotherhood.
A Break With the Brotherhood
At yet another emergency meeting, Brother Jack and the other Brotherhood leaders criticize the narrator for his unscientific arguments.
Now the narrator appears to have had enough. He has come to the conclusion that the Brotherhood has no tangible interest in tackling the real challenges facing the black community. The time has come for him to say bye to the internal squabbling that has bedevilled the Brotherhood and move on with his life.
Thus, the narrator returns to Harlem.
Rinehart – Hunted and Undercover
Henceforth, the narrator is trailed by men appointed by Ras the Exhorter. To conceal his identity, and in an effort to elude his trailers, the narrator buys and wears a hat and a pair of sunglasses.
His ploy appears to have worked. Because he is repeatedly mistaken for a man named Rinehart. This man is known for multiple virtues and vices. He is a lover, a hipster, a gambler, a briber, and a spiritual leader.
Anti- Brotherhood Activities
The narrator is clear in his mind that his new “Rinehart identity” has adapted to white society at the cost of his own identity. He resolves to undermine the Brotherhood. He will feed them with false information about the Harlem membership among others.
Then he seduces the wife of one member. His plan is to obtain information about the activities of the Brotherhood. But he is not able to get what he wants. At this same time, riots have broken out in Harlem due to widespread unrest.
The narrator realizes that the Brotherhood has been counting on such an event in order to advance its own interests. In the chaos, he personally gets mixed up with a gang of looters, who burn down a tenement building.
A Second and Final Encounter with Ras
From there, the narrator moves away to find Ras. He is now on horseback, armed with a spear and shield, and calling himself “the Destroyer”.
Ras the Exhorter shouts, calling for the crowd to lynch the narrator. But the narrator attacks him with the spear. He then escapes into an underground coal bin.
Two white men seal the narrator in, leaving him alone to reflect on all the racism he has experienced in his life.
Epilogue
In the epilogue the narrator brings us back to to the present. He asserts that he is ready to return to the world. After all, he has spent enough time hiding from it.
Then he discloses his motive for telling his story of social invisibility in a racist world. He wants to help us see past his own invisibility. His goal is to give a voice to the voiceless masses. Invisivle Man, according to the narrator, is for people with similar sorry circumstances. These are the people he speaks for.
Major Themes
Key themes to note in the Invisible Man include the following.
- Racial segregation (racism, racial discrimination, oppression of minority blacks)
- Political infighting – Like many such liberation movements, the Brotherhood’s undoing turns out to be the internal rivalries, suspicions and acts of betrayal.
- The search for identity – personal and black identity.
- Struggle for liberation (nationalism and resistance against oppression)
- The place of the individual in society.
- Education for blacks
- Employment for blacks
- Violence
- Betrayal
Some Key Incidents to Watch
I’m about to bring to an end this short summary of Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. But before I do that, I just want to remind you of the importance incidents in any serious study of a novel.
Please watch closely the following incidents in Invisible Man. In many cases, a couple of them is all you need to produce an A-GRADE essay.
- The narrator’s college days
- How the narrator got expelled from college
- The event involving Mr Norton and mental patients at the bar
- Narrator’s departure and arrival in New York
- The incident involving the supposed recommendation letters.
- The explosion in the boiler room
- Encounter with Mary Rambo
- Incident of the eviction of the black couple
- The speeches of the narrator
- Joining the Brotherhood
- The search for Tod Clifton
- How Tod Clifton Dies
- The Harlem riots and how the narrator escapes arrest following that incident.
END OF SHORT PLOT SUMMARY OF INVISIBLE MAN BY RALPH ELLISON.
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