invisible man coming of age essay

• Invisible Man

Ralph Ellison

• Literature Notes
• About Invisible Man
• Book Summary
• Character List
• Summary and Analysis
• Chapters 3-4
• Chapters 5-6
• Chapters 7-9
• Chapters 10-12
• Chapters 14-16
• Chapters 18-19
• Chapters 20-21
• Character Analysis
• The Narrator
• Dr. A. Hebert Bledsoe
• Rev. Homer A. Barbee
• Jim Trueblood
• Ras the Exhorter
• Brother Tod Clifton
• Brother Jack
• Character Map
• Ralph Ellison Biography
• Critical Essays
• Symbols and Symbolism in Invisible Man
• Wordplay in Invisible Man
• Profiles of Leadership in Invisible Man
• Harlem: City of Dreams
• Full Glossary for Invisible Man
• Essay Questions
• Practice Projects
• Cite this Literature Note

"In our society, it is not unusual for a Negro to experience a sensation that he does not exist in the real world at all. He seems rather to exist in the nightmarish fantasy of the white American mind as a phantom that the white mind seeks unceasingly, by means both crude and subtle, to slay." ("An American Dilemma: A Review," Shadow and Act )

This quote from Ralph Ellison's review of Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal's book An American Dilemma (which explores the roots of prejudice and racism in the U.S.) anticipates the premise of Invisible Man : Racism is a devastating force, possessing the power to render black Americans virtually invisible.

Hailed as a novel that "changed the shape of American literature," Invisible Man traces the nightmarish journey of its unnamed narrator from his high school and college days in the South to his harrowing experiences in the North as a member of the Brotherhood, a powerful organization that purports to fight for justice and equality for all people but in reality exploits blacks and uses them to promote its own political agenda. By describing one man's lifelong struggle to establish a sense of identity as a black man in white America, Ellison illustrates the powerful social and political forces that conspire to keep black Americans "in their place," denying them the "inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" guaranteed to all Americans. (As numerous historians have pointed out, the U.S. Constitution explicitly excludes black Americans, who, until 1865, were perceived not as men, but as property.)

Often described as a bildungsroman , or coming-of-age story, Invisible Man is the tale of a black man's search for identity and visibility in white America. Convinced that his existence depends on gaining the support, recognition, and approval of whites — whom he has been taught to view as powerful, superior beings who control his destiny — the narrator spends nearly 20 years trying to establish his humanity in a society that refuses to see him as a human being. Ultimately, he realizes that he must create his own identity, which rests not on the acceptance of whites, but on his own acceptance of the past. Although Invisible Man received the prestigious National Book Award, some blacks feel that the novel perpetuates black stereotypes. In addition, some black scholars criticized the novel for not being sufficiently "revolutionary" and not accurately depicting "the black experience." Ellison's attitude towards these critics is perhaps best summarized in his classic response to a reporter during a 1973 interview: "I'll be my kind of militant." Black feminists also criticized the novel, pointing to the lack of positive female characters, and noting that the women in the novel are all prostitutes, sex objects, or caregivers. Despite these criticisms, Ellison's novel, regarded as a classic of American literature, enjoyed immense popularity.

Published in 1952, more than a decade before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 declared racial segregation illegal, Invisible Man has been praised for its innovative style and unique treatment of controversial subject matter. The violence and racial tension depicted in Invisible Man foreshadow the violence engendered by the Civil Rights Movement in cities across the U.S. The action of Invisible Man spans approximately 20 years, tracing the narrator's life from his high school graduation in Greenwood, South Carolina, to his involvement in the Harlem Riot of 1943. By tracing the narrator's journey from the rural South to the urban North, the novel emulates the movement of the slave narratives , autobiographies written by formerly enslaved black Africans that trace their escape routes from bondage in the South to freedom in the North. One of the most famous slave narratives is Frederick Douglass' autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass , an American Slave , published in 1845. This fact is important to our understanding of Invisible Man , because Frederick Douglass (like the narrator's grandfather) symbolizes the ghost of slavery alluded to at several critical points in the novel.

The narrator's path also traces the path of thousands of Southern blacks who moved to the North during the 1930s and 40s in search of better jobs and new opportunities during the Great Migration.

Call and response — a concept rooted in the traditional Negro sermons in which the pastor's impassioned call elicits an equally impassioned response from the congregation — is one of the defining elements of African American literature. With this in mind, Invisible Man can be read as a response to Langston Hughes' poem, "Harlem," which poses the question, "What happens to a dream deferred? . . . Does it explode?" According to Ellison, who also explores the myth of the American Dream, the answer is a resounding, "Yes!" In addition to Langston Hughes, the two authors who had the greatest influence on Ellison's writing style were T. S. Eliot and Richard Wright. Ellison was especially intrigued with Eliot's Wasteland , a poem that explores the spiritual wasteland of contemporary society, and with Wright's acclaimed protest novel, Native Son , and his nonfiction work, 12 Million Black Voices , which Ellison felt was even more powerful than Native Son . Ellison was also influenced by H.G. Wells' science fiction novel, The Invisible Man , and Richard Wright's short story, "The Man Who Lived Underground."

A complex, multi-layered novel, Invisible Man can be read as an allegory (a story with both a literal and symbolic meaning that can be read, understood, and interpreted at several levels) that traces the narrator's perilous journey from innocence to experience, and from blind ignorance to enlightened awareness. Invisible Man can also be read as a quest narrative . Like Homer's Odyssey and Dante's Divine Comedy — both of which are alluded to in the novel — Invisible Man involves a symbolic journey to the underworld, where the narrator must meet and defeat various monsters — such as Brother Jack — and overcome seemingly impossible trials in order to return home.

Ellison's use of inverted reality , creating a world that mirrors the reality of the white world, is a key structural element in Invisible Man . In the narrator's world, black is white, up is down, light is darkness, and insanity is sanity. This structural device is used to illustrate that blacks, due to their perceived inferior status in American society, often experience a radically different reality than whites, creating the illusion that blacks and whites live in two different worlds. The white man's American dream is the black man's nightmare, and behavior deemed normal for whites is deemed abnormal (or crazy) for blacks. A key example is the novel's closing scene: The narrator returns to his underground home, the basement (coal cellar) of a whites-only apartment building. Although this can be viewed as a physical move down into darkness and despair, in the narrator's inverted reality, his return to his underground habitat illustrates a psychological move up towards awareness and enlightenment.

Unlike conventional novels that present a series of related sequential events, Invisible Man consists of a series of seemingly unrelated scenes or episodes — often expressed in the form of stories or sermons — linked only by the narrator's comments and observations. In this way, the structure of the novel mirrors the structure of a jazz composition, players stepping forward to perform their impromptu solos, then stepping back to rejoin their group.

The structure also emulates the oral tradition of preliterate societies. Passed down orally from generation to generation, their stories embodied a people's culture and history. In the novel, each character's story can be viewed as a lesson that contributes to the narrator's growth and awareness, bringing him closer to an understanding of his own people's culture and history.

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Invisible Man

Introduction of invisible man.

Ralph Ellison , one of the best authors wrote Invisible Man. It was published in 1952 and set new trends in the American African literature of those times. The novel created a furor, winning the National Book Award in 1953 and creating a niche among the best English fictional works of the previous century. Invisible Man outlines the story of an African American first-person narrator who narrates his college ordeal of the battle royal and the attitude of the white elite of the town toward the African American students. The novel instantly proved a hit and became the best among the 20 th century’s 100 novels and an excellent bildungsroman (a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist coming of age).

Summary of Invisible Man

The storyline presents an anonymous African American young man who happens to live in a basement with stolen electricity from the local grid station. Fed up of the discrimination, he thinks about social invisibility and ways to tackle it. He reflects upon his life as a teenager when living in a Southern town after winning a scholarship for an African American college. However, he has to participate in the battle royal to entertain the white dignitaries in order to receive that scholarship against other African American students.

It happens that he gets admission to that college and takes Mr. Norton, a trustee of that college, to the slave apartments beyond the campus area. By chance, he stops by the cabin owned by some Mr. Jim Trueblood who has already created a brouhaha by impregnating both his wife and daughter in his sleep. Norton shook by this scandalous issue, asks the narrator to find him a drink. The narrator hurriedly drives him to the nearest bar filled with prostitutes and mental patients. When they enter the bar, Mr. Norton confronts mentally unsound people and prostitutes enjoying life. The pandemonium forces him to take assistance from the orderly who, while saving Mr. Norton, is injured due to the melee created by the people. The young man, however, musters up the courage to pull Mr. Norton out of this mess and take him back to the college campus.

When he returns to the college, he finds Dr. Bledsoe, the president, fuming at his home for showing insolence in taking Mr. Norton to that part of the campus. Therefore, he thinks it better to expel the narrator who, though gets many recommendation letters from him to assist him in the job market yet he does not succeed in laying his hands upon anything. Later, he learns that Mr. Bledsoe has rather ruined his entire career in both education and the job market when it was revealed by young Mr. Emerson to the narrator that the so-called recommendation letters contained nothing good about the narrator, also stating that he’s unfit for work and had no intention of re-enrolling him in the college. So, the son of Mr. Emerson suggests he seek work in a paint factory where he works in different departments temporarily.

During that time, he comes across Lucius Brockway, a paranoid chief, in the boiler operating room. He comes to know that Lucius is obsessed with the idea that the young man is after his job. This mistrust widens the chasm between them, leading Brockway to exploit him and framing him in setting an explosion in the boiler section. When he comes to his senses after this episode, he finds himself in the hospital overhearing the doctors’ words that he was a mental patient and subject to shock treatment. mental patient.

When the young man gets out of the hospital he heads for Harlem . While walking on the streets of Harlem he faints and finds himself being taken in by a kind old-fashioned lady Mary Rambo. She cooks for him, nurses him back to health, and adopts him as her surrogate son. After this, he delivers an impassioned speech that incites the crowd to attack the law enforcement officials when an African American couple faces forced eviction. When he flees, the Brotherhood leader, Jack chases him and urges him to join hands with the group to help African Americans. His joining the Brotherhood helps him understand his background. This takes him into the politics of the Brotherhood but he comes to know that it is also a white ploy from Ras the exhorter, though he feels unconvinced. Yet he faces accusations of the same group for being over-ambitious. Again, he faces criticism when the narrator delivers a rousing speech at Tod Clifton’s funeral who went missing and was found selling dancing Sambo dolls on the street. He was killed by the police while resisting the arrest.

Suspecting a chase by the Ras’s men, the narrator disguises by wearing a hat and pair of sunglasses. As a result, he is repeatedly mistaken for a man named Rinehart. Soon unrest takes on Harlem and the riots break out which was detrimental to the Brotherhood to further its own aims. Seeing no way out, he joins the gang of looters to find now Ras, the Destroyer. When the young man sees Ras attacking him and urging others to lynch him, he rather attacks Ras and escapes into an underground coal bin. Although two white men catch and seal him in. Giving him enough time to ponder over the racism he has experienced. During his hibernation inside the coal bin, he states that the reason he is telling his story is that “who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?”. Finally, the narrator realizes that even an invisible man has a socially responsible role to play .

Major Themes in Invisible Man

• Invisibility: Invisible Man shows the assumed or real invisibility of the narrator who assumes that he is invisible because people have refused to see him. In the quest to prove his assumptions true, he takes up this unique identity through constant self-denial. Despite belonging to the Southern part, he covers his African heritage through passing in terms of habits and ideological thinking. Later, when he takes Rinehart as his name, he takes another turn in his life, finding that staying invisible has its bonuses. However, his meeting with that person shows him that he can pursue his goals without thinking about invisibility. It is because invisibility has robbed him of his identity that he vows to create.
• Racial Identity: The theme of racial identity emerges in the character of the anonymous narrator, who despite his efforts to stay invisible, wants some type of identity about his race and ethnicity. Wherever he goes, he needs something to make himself a figure to be reckoned with. People expect that he should either follow Booker T. Washington or Southern cultural-rich heritage instead of staying invisible. When he finally comes to terms with life, he feels that he must meet the expectations of the people to show his true Southern heritage.
• Slavery: Slavery and its baggage is another thematic strand that pervades the novel. Although the anonymous narrator demonstrates that by keeping himself invisible, he may escape this curse, it still stays with him as without this he does not have his true identity. The briefcase that he wins in the battle royal becomes a symbol of this heritage that he needs to carry with him. However, he is fed up with this symbolic heritage. He gets rid of it by the end and throws it away in return for some type of his self-identity.
• Racism: Racism and racial discrimination hamper the progress of an individual in a way that it becomes difficult for him to assume an identity. The anonymous narrator stays invisible for some time to see how the people around him react and later joins the Brotherhood to show his heritage and escape this racism. However, each time he finds that it is they, the African Americans, who should learn to behave. Finally, he seems that his attempt for his own definition would earn dividends if he has his self-identity as joining organizations is useless unless the person has his identity.
• Identity: Invisible Man presents the theme of identity that if a person has no self-identity, society disregards his role whether it is invisibility or some tangible role. When the narrator assumes his invisibility, he seems to have been lost in the maze of society but when he starts joining organizations, he sees that all organizations use individuals for their own interests. Even the Brotherhood does not holdup behind. Therefore, he comes to the point that he should have his own identity instead of staying in the assumed invisibility.
• Ideology: The anonymous narrator has shown through his story that organizational ideology cannot represent a multidimensional individual who has his own identity that does not merge in such monolithic entities. He has experienced it it is like him who has been unable to merge in the Brotherhood. Although Booker T. Washington’s ideological background and the relationship with the Brotherhood make it clear to him, he does not take these things at face value and seeks his identity to demonstrate his rich Southern heritage and ideology.
• Power : The novel shows that power lies in organizations, collections, and institutions. When the anonymous narrator stays alone , he thinks that his invisibility will bless him with some advantage yet he sees that the power lies somewhere else at the top. The same goes for the Brotherhood that works for the interests of the elite class, white, while the ideology of Booker T. Washinton, too, has been hijacked. Therefore, he comes to the conclusion that he needs power and for this needs his own identity.
• Stereotyping: Although the thematic strand of the limitations of race is too apparent, the anonymous narrator shows it amply when he could not progress through his invisibility as well as through his participation in the racial-specific organization. However, he soon comes to know that he belongs to the African American heritage and this stereotyping has hampered his progress not only in education but also in the job market, for he is expelled on the same ground on which his progress has been hampered through reference letters.
• Dreams : The anonymous narrator shows harboring several dreams when he vies to join the college, get admission but is expelled on the flimsy ground of taking Mr. Norton to the wrong place. His dreams further face downfall when the reference letters prove another roadblock. When he sees the vision of Armstrong, his slave memory takes it to another level, making him slave to his own past, destroying his dreams.

Major Characters in Invisible Man

• Narrator : The first-person narrator is the protagonist of the novel. He first gives a hint about himself and his invisibility in the Prologue and later narrates the events about his joining and leaving different groups such as the Brotherhood and others on one or the other pretexts. However, due to his African American lineage, he comes to the conclusion about the white supremacist superior structure they have built to keep them subservient, though, he believes in Armstrong and Booker T. Washington’s philosophy, yet he comes across as white conspiracy whatever he does or plans to do. His plan to study on scholarship fails when Mr. Norton creates issues for him after he takes him to the wrong places when taking to the areas beyond college premises . To keep his invisibility unharmed, he takes up different names during this entire process but finally comes to the conclusion that his underground life has not given him any benefit.
• Mr. Norton: This wealthy white trustee of the college, where the narrator gets admission with a scholarship, meets the narrator when he visits the college. The narrator takes him to the college visit driving his vehicle but mistakenly takes him to some places that he does not like despite his supposed kindness for the narrator and his race. Mr. Norton expels the narrator from the college as a part of revenge or disapproval against the narrator. Mr. Norton also demonstrates, his duplicity when he confronts him in the end.
• Ras the Destroyer or the exhorter: This second significant character appears when the narrator joins the Brotherhood. In the beginning, he’s known as Ras the exhorter, who incites race riots and creating hatred among other races with powerful speaking skills. He becomes the narrator’s sworn enemy for not taking part in the violence against the whites. His supporters appear here and there to thrash the opponents and make them submit to their demands of standing up to white superiority and domination. His domination of Harlem takes an upper hand when the Brotherhood retreats from the mainland.
• Dr. Bledsoe: Dr. Bledsoe is a very clever and shrewd president of the college reserved for the African American people. However, he keeps this shrewdness away from his public reputation and demonstrates subservience to his white masters whenever the situation arises. However, when it comes to the narrator, he does not feel any pity or conscience in destroying his future by expelling him after he shows Mr. Norton the reality of life around campus. His letters of reference for future employers prove disastrous for him.
• Grandfather: The Grandfather in the novel often creeps into the narrator’s thoughts, making him think about his last words that remind him about his presence and his place in the world of white domination. However, the narrator does not think his words, reflecting his lifelong wisdom of acquiescing to the demands of the white. He later feels that his Grandfather’s words about him have proven true.
• Jim Trueblood: A poor sharecropper, Jim’s fortune plummet when Mr. Norton visits him with the narrator. His harrowing tale of impregnating his own daughter has made him a notorious character in the vicinity though strangely the whites shower munificence on him after this notoriety.
• Tatlock: Tatlock and the narrator fall out after all the other boys are thrown out of the ring during the fight. As the biggest one, he does not resort to fake punching but does real punching and knocks out the narrator. He proves a symbol of raw force and courage.
• Superintendent: The superintendent in the novel invites the narrator for the speech but does not acknowledge his achievement. However, the narrator does not feel the bad taste, as he presents him a scholarship to the college.
• Mr. Emerson: Mr. Emerson is an important character, as he comes into contact with the narrator when he meets him with reference to the letter. It, however, happens that his son intervenes and points out to the narrator about the intention of Bledsoe by giving him reference letters.
• Reverend Barbee: This mobile speaker is all praise for the college founders and trustees for showing generosity toward the African American community through their donations. A buddha-like figure, he encourages the narrator to love his college despite facing humiliating expulsion.

Writing Style of Invisible Man

Ralph Ellison adopted the jazz style in this novel, proving it could be rendered into fiction . It is, however, based on sights as the narrator goes through the ordeals one by one. He has carefully chosen words, showing mastery of diction by putting the words at appropriate places, creating refrains after every few lines. In fact, this style shifts from the prologue to onward to another style with long and formal sentences and then again to informality and colloquialism of the Southerners. Constant use of wordplay, rhyme , slogan, and paradoxes has created Ellison’s own unique style that is hard to imitate and hard to ignore.

Analysis of Literary Devices in Invisible Man  

• Action: The main action of the novel comprises the anonymous narrator’s narrative about his admission on scholarship, his expulsion, and then invisibility that ends when he learns things about living in reality.
• Anaphora : Invisible Man shows the use of anaphora . For example, i. My hole is warm and full of light. Yes, full of light. I doubt if there is a brighter spot in all New York than this hole of mine, and I do not exclude Broadway. Or the Empire State Building on a photographer’s dream night . But that is taking advantage of you. Those two spots are among the darkest of our whole civilization — pardon me, our whole culture (an important distinction, I’ve heard) — which might sound like a hoax, or a contradiction, but that (by contradiction, I mean) is how the world moves: Not like an arrow, but a boomerang. (Beware of those who speak of the spiral of history; they are preparing a boomerang. Keep a steel helmet handy.) I know; I have been boomeranged across my head so much that I now can see the darkness of lightness. And I love light. Perhaps you’ll think it strange that an invisible man should need light, desire light, love light. But maybe it is exactly because I am invisible. (Prologue) The sentence shows the repetitious use of some phrases and words such as “full of light” “a boomerang” and “light.”
• Antagonist : Invisible Man shows Mr. Norton, Brother Jack, Dr. Bledsoe, and Ras the Exhorter as the antagonists who raise obstacles in the path of the narrator.
• Allusion : There are various examples of allusions given in the novel. i. I am in the great American tradition of tinkers. That makes me kin to Ford, Edison and Franklin. Call me, since I have a theory and a concept, a “thinker-tinker.” (Prologue) ii. I’d like to hear five recordings of Louis Armstrong playing and singing “What Did I Do to Be so Black and Blue” — all at the same time. Sometimes now I listen to Louis while I have my favorite dessert of vanilla ice cream and sloe gin. (Prologue) iii. With Louis Armstrong one half of me says, “Open the window and let the foul air out,” while the other says, “It was good green corn before the harvest.” ( Epilogue ) The first allusion is about the American founding fathers and scientists and the second and the third are about Louis Armstrong.
• Conflict : The are two types of conflicts in the novel . The first one is the external conflict that is going on between the whites and the African American community and the second is between the narrator and his mental thinking about his invisibility.
• Characters: Invisible Man presents both static as well as dynamic characters. The young narrator is a dynamic character as he faces transformation during his growth. However, the rest of the characters do Mr. Norton, Dr. Bledsoe, Rinehart, and Brother Jack.
• Climax : The climax takes place when the anonymous narrator loses his illusion about his success and invisibility.
• Foreshadowing : The novel shows the following examples of foreshadowing : i. I spoke automatically and with such fervor that I did not realize that the men were still talking and laughing until my dry mouth, filling up with blood from the cut, almost strangled me. (Chapter-1) ii. “Out of a sense of my destined role,” Mr. Norton said shakily. “I felt, and I still feel, that your people are in some important manner tied to my destiny.”(Chapter-3) These examples from Invisible Man clearly foreshadow the coming events.
• Hyperbole : Hyperbole or exaggeration occurs in the novel at various places. For example, i. Two men stood directly in front of me, one speaking with intense earnestness. “. . . and Johnson hit Jeffries at an angle of 45 degrees from his lower left lateral incisor, producing an instantaneous blocking of his entire thalamic rine, frosting it over like the freezing unit of a refrigerator, thus shattering his autonomous nervous system and rocking the big brick-laying creampuff with extreme hyperspasmic muscular tremors. (Chapter-3) ii. Now, now, Hester.” “Okay, okay . . . But what y’all doing looking like you at a funeral? Don’t you know this is the Golden Day?” she staggered toward me, belching elegantly and reeling. (Chapter-3) Not only are these sentences hyperbolic, but also they show how the narrator thinks.
• Imagery : Imagery is used to make readers perceive things involving their five senses. For example, i. The wheel felt like an alien thing in my hands as I followed the white line of the highway. Heat rays from the late afternoon sun arose from the gray concrete, shimmering like the weary tones of a distant bugle blown upon still midnight air. (Chapter-4) ii. It was a clear, bright day when I went out, and the sun burned warm upon my eyes. Only a few flecks of snowy cloud hung high in the morning blue sky, and already a woman was hanging wash on a roof. I felt better walking along. A feeling of confidence grew. Far down the island the skyscrapers rose tall and mysterious in the thin, pastel haze. (Chapter-9). iii. The elevator dropped me like a shot and I went out and walked along the street. The sun was very bright now and the people along the walk seemed far away. I stopped before a gray wall where high above me the headstones of a church graveyard arose like the tops of buildings. (Chapter-9) These passages from the novel show that Ellison has used a variety of images such as the image of sound, color, and sight.
• Metaphor : Invisible Man shows good use of various metaphors . For example, i. Nor is my invisibility exactly a matter of a bio-chemical accident to my epidermis. (Prologue) ii. … this barren land after Emancipation,” he intoned, “this land of darkness and sorrow, of ignorance and degradation, where the hand of brother had been turned against brother, father against son, and son against father; where master had turned against slave and slave against master; where all was strife and darkness, an aching land.. (Chapter-5) iii. Booker Washington was resurrected today at a certain eviction in Harlem. He came out from the anonymity of the crowd and spoke to the people. So you see, I don’t joke with you. Or play with words either. There is a scientific explanation for this phenomenon — as our learned brother has graciously reminded me — you’ll learn it in time, but whatever you call it the reality of the world crisis is a fact. ( Chapter-7) The first example compares invisibility with his bodily situation, the second the land with different situations, and the third Booker T. Washington with a phenomenon.
• Mood : The novel presents a usual mood but turns to nightmares and dreams that the anonymous narrator sees but deep down it is tragic and serious.
• Motif : Most important motifs of the novel are invisibility, blindness, and jazz.
• Narrator : The novel is narrated in the first-person point of view and the narrator, who is a protagonist and an anonymous African American young man.
• Protagonist : The anonymous narrator is the protagonist of the novel. The novel starts with his entry into the world and moves forward as he gets admission to the college and then leaves it after his expulsion.
• Rhetorical Questions : The novel shows good use of rhetorical questions at several places. For example, i. ‘The harder we fought the more threatening the men became. And yet, I had begun to worry about my speech again. How would it go? Would they recognize my ability? What would they give me? (Chapter-1) ii. I have never seen, runs with liquid chalk – creating iii. another ambiguity to puzzle my groping mind: Why is a bird-soiled statue more commanding than one that is clean? (Chapter-2) iv. He gave the impression that he understood much and spoke out of knowledge far deeper than appeared on the surface of his words. Perhaps it was only the knowledge that he had escaped by the same route as I. But what had he to fear? I had made the speech, not he. That girl in the apartment had said that the longer I remained unseen the longer I’d be effective, which didn’t make much sense either. But perhaps that was why he had run. He wanted to remain unseen and effective. Effective at what? (Chapter-14) This example shows the use of rhetorical questions posed by different characters not to elicit answers but to stress the underlined idea.
• Setting : The setting of the novel is the American South, the city of New York.
• Simile : The novel shows good use of various similes. For example, i. A tomtom beating like heart-thuds began drowning out the trumpet, filling my ears . (Prologue) ii. About eighty-five years ago they were told that they were free, united with others of our country in everything pertaining to the common good, and, in everything social, separate like the fingers of the hand. (Chapter-1) iii. I remembered the admiration and fear he inspired in everyone on the campus; the pictures in the Negro press captioned “EDUCATOR,” in type that exploded like a rifle shot, his face looking out at you with utmost confidence. (Chapter-6) These are similes as the use of the word “like” shows the comparison between different things.

Related posts:

• The Invisible Man Quotes
• The Invisible Man Themes
• The Invisible Man Characters
• Ralph Ellison

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Analysis of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on June 1, 2018 • ( 2 )

A masterwork of American pluralism, Ellison’s (March 1, 1913 – April 16, 1994) Invisible Man insists on the integrity of individual vocabulary and racial heritage while encouraging a radically democratic acceptance of diverse experiences. Ellison asserts this vision through the voice of an unnamed first-person narrator who is at once heir to the rich African American oral culture and a self-conscious artist who, like T. S. Eliot and James Joyce , exploits the full potential of his written medium. Intimating the potential cooperation between folk and artistic consciousness, Ellison confronts the pressures that discourage both individual integrity and cultural pluralism.

Invisible Man The narrator of Invisible Man introduces Ellison’s central metaphor for the situation of the individual in Western culture in the first paragraph: “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.” As the novel develops, Ellison extends this metaphor: Just as people can be rendered invisible by the wilful failure of others to acknowledge their presence, so by taking refuge in the seductive but ultimately specious security of socially acceptable roles they can fail to see themselves , fail to define their own identities. Ellison envisions the escape from this dilemma as a multifaceted quest demanding heightened social, psychological, and cultural awareness.

The style of Invisible Man reflects both the complexity of the problem and Ellison’s pluralistic ideal. Drawing on sources such as the blindness motif from King Lear (1605), the underground man motif from Fyodor Dostoevski, and the complex stereotyping of Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940), Ellison carefully balances the realistic and the symbolic dimensions of Invisible Man . In many ways a classic Künstlerroman , the main body of the novel traces the protagonist from his childhood in the deep South through a brief stay at college and then to the North, where he confronts the American economic, political, and racial systems. This movement parallels what Robert B. Stepto in From Behind the Veil (1979) calls the “narrative of ascent,” a constituting pattern of African American culture.With roots in the fugitive slave narratives of the nineteenth century, the narrative of ascent follows its protagonist from physical or psychological bondage in the South through a sequence of symbolic confrontations with social structures to a limited freedom, usually in the North.

This freedom demands from the protagonist a “literacy” that enables him or her to create and understand both written and social experiences in the terms of the dominant Euro-American culture. Merging the narrative of ascent with the Künstlerroman , which also culminates with the hero’s mastery of literacy (seen in creative terms), Invisible Man focuses on writing as an act of both personal and cultural significance. Similarly, Ellison employs what Stepto calls the “narrative of immersion” to stress the realistic sources and implications of his hero’s imaginative development. The narrative of immersion returns the “literate” hero or heroine to an understanding of the culture he or she symbolically left behind during the ascent. Incorporating this pattern in Invisible Man , Ellison emphasizes the protagonist’s links with the African American community and the rich folk traditions that provide him with much of his sensibility and establish his potential as a conscious artist.

The overall structure of Invisible Man , however, involves cyclical as well as directional patterns. Framing the main body with a prologue and epilogue set in an underground burrow, Ellison emphasizes the novel’s symbolic dimension. Safely removed from direct participation in his social environment, the invisible man reassesses the literacy gained through his ascent, ponders his immersion in the cultural art forms of spirituals, blues, and jazz, and finally attempts to forge a pluralistic vision transforming these constitutive elements. The prologue and epilogue also evoke the heroic patterns and archetypal cycles described by Joseph Campbell in Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949). After undergoing tests of his spiritual and physical qualities, the hero of Campbell’s “monomyth”—usually a person of mysterious birth who receives aid from a cryptic helper—gains a reward, usually of a symbolic nature involving the union of opposites. Overcoming forces that would seize the reward, the hero returns to transform the life of the community through application of the knowledge connected with the symbolic reward. To some degree, the narratives of ascent and immersion recast this heroic cycle in specifically African American terms: The protagonist first leaves, then returns to his or her community bearing a knowledge of Euro-American society potentially capable of motivating a group ascent. Although it emphasizes the cyclic nature of the protagonist’s quest, the frame of Invisible Man simultaneously subverts the heroic pattern by removing him from his community. The protagonist promises a return, but the implications of the return for the life of the community remain ambiguous.

This ambiguity superficially connects Ellison’s novel with the classic American romance that Richard Chase characterizes in The American Novel and Its Tradition (1975) as incapable of reconciling symbolic perceptions with social realities. The connection, however, reflects Ellison’s awareness of the problem more than his acceptance of the irresolution. Although the invisible man’s underground burrow recalls the isolation of the heroes of the American romance, he promises a rebirth that is at once mythic, psychological, and social:

The hibernation is over. I must shake off my old skin and come up for breath. . . . And I suppose it’s damn well time. Even hibernations can be overdone, come to think of it. Perhaps that’smy greatest social crime, I’ve overstayed my hibernation, since there’s a possibility that even an invisible man has a socially responsible role to play.

Despite the qualifications typical of Ellison’s style, the invisible man clearly intends to return to the social world rather than light out for the territories of symbolic freedom.

The invisible man’s ultimate conception of the form of this return develops out of two interrelated progressions, one social and the other psychological. The social pattern, essentially that of the narrative of ascent, closely reflects the historical experience of the African American community as it shifts from rural southern to urban northern settings. Starting in the deep South, the invisible man first experiences invisibility as a result of casual but vicious racial oppression. His unwilling participation in the “battle royal” underscores the psychological and physical humiliation visited upon black southerners. Ostensibly present to deliver a speech to a white community group, the invisible man is instead forced to engage in a massive free-for-all with other African Americans, to scramble for money on an electrified rug, and to confront a naked white dancer who, like the boys, has been rendered invisible by the white men’s blindness. Escaping his hometown to attend a black college, the invisible man again experiences humiliation when he violates the unstated rules of the southern system—this time imposed by black people, rather than white people—by showing the college’s liberal northern benefactor, Mr. Norton, the poverty of the black community. As a result, the black college president, Dr. Bledsoe, expels the invisible man. Having experienced invisibility in relation to both black and white people and still essentially illiterate in social terms, the invisible man travels north, following the countless black southerners involved in the “Great Migration.”

Arriving in New York, the invisible man first feels a sense of exhilaration resulting from the absence of overt southern pressures. Ellison reveals the emptiness of this freedom, however, stressing the indirect and insidious nature of social power in the North. The invisible man’s experience at Liberty Paints, clearly intended as a parable of African American involvement in the American economic system, emphasizes the underlying similarity of northern and southern social structures. On arrival at Liberty Paints, the invisible man is assigned to mix a white paint used for government monuments. Labeled “optic white,” the grayish paint turns white only when the invisible man adds a drop of black liquid. The scene suggests the relationship between government and industry, which relies on black labor. More important, however, it points to the underlying source of racial blindness/invisibility: the white need for a black “other” to support a sense of identity. White becomes white only when compared to black.

The symbolic indirection of the scene encourages the reader, like the invisible man, to realize that social oppression in the North operates less directly than that in the South; government buildings replace rednecks at the battle royal. Unable to mix the paint properly, a desirable “failure” intimating his future as a subversive artist, the invisible man discovers that the underlying structure of the economic system differs little from that of slavery. The invisible man’s second job at Liberty Paints is to assist Lucius Brockway, an old man who supervises the operations of the basement machinery on which the factory depends. Essentially a slave to the modern owner/ master Mr. Sparland, Brockway, like the good “darkies” of the Plantation Tradition, takes pride in his master and will fight to maintain his own servitude. Brockway’s hatred of the invisible man, whom he perceives as a threat to his position, leads to a physical struggle culminating in an explosion caused by neglect of the machinery. Ellison’s multifaceted allegory suggests a vicious circle in which black people uphold an economic system that supports the political system that keeps black people fighting to protect their neoslavery. The forms alter but the battle royal continues. The image of the final explosion from the basement warns against passive acceptance of the social structure that sows the seeds of its own destruction.

Although the implications of this allegory in some ways parallel the Marxist analysis of capitalist culture, Ellison creates a much more complex political vision when the invisible man moves to Harlem following his release from the hospital after the explosion. The political alternatives available in Harlem range from the Marxism of the “Brotherhood” (loosely based on the American Communist Party of the late 1930’s) to the black nationalism of Ras the Exhorter (loosely based on Marcus Garvey’s pan-Africanist movement of the 1920’s). The Brotherhood promises complete equality for black people and at first encourages the invisible man to develop the oratorical talent ridiculed at the battle royal. As his effectiveness increases, however, the invisible man finds the Brotherhood demanding that his speeches conformto its “scientific analysis” of the black community’s needs. When he fails to fall in line, the leadership of the Brotherhood orders the invisible man to leave Harlem and turn his attention to the “woman question.” Without the invisible man’s ability to place radical politics in the emotional context of African American culture, the Brotherhood’s Harlem branch flounders. Recalled to Harlem, the invisible man witnesses the death of Tod Clifton, a talented coworker driven to despair by his perception that the Brotherhood amounts to little more than a new version of the power structure underlying both Liberty Paints and the battle royal. Clearly a double for the invisible man, Clifton leaves the organization and dies in a suicidal confrontation with a white policeman. Just before Clifton’s death, the invisible man sees him selling Sambo dolls, a symbolic comment on the fact that black people involved in leftist politics in some sense remain stereotyped slaves dancing at the demand of unseen masters.

Separating himself from the Brotherhood after delivering an extremely unscientific funeral sermon, the invisible man finds few political options. Ras’s black nationalism exploits the emotions the Brotherhood denies. Ultimately, however, Ras demands that his followers submit to an analogous oversimplification of their human reality. Where the Brotherhood elevates the scientific and rational, Ras focuses entirely on the emotional commitment to blackness. Neither alternative recognizes the complexity of either the political situation or the individual psyche; both reinforce the invisible man’s feelings of invisibility by refusing to see basic aspects of his character. As he did in the Liberty Paints scene, Ellison emphasizes the destructive, perhaps apocalyptic, potential of this encompassing blindness. A riot breaks out in Harlem, and the invisible man watches as DuPree, an apolitical Harlem resident recalling a number of African American folk heroes, determines to burn down his own tenement, preferring to start again from scratch rather than even attempt to work for social change within the existing framework. Unable to accept the realistic implications of such an action apart from its symbolic justification, the invisible man, pursued by Ras, who seems intent on destroying the very blackness he praises, tumbles into the underground burrow. Separated from the social structures, which have changed their facade but not their nature, the invisible man begins the arduous process of reconstructing his vision of America while symbolically subverting the social system by stealing electricity to light the 1,369 light bulbs on the walls of the burrow and to power the record players blasting out the pluralistic jazz of Louis Armstrong.

As his frequent allusions to Armstrong indicate, Ellison by no means excludes the positive aspects from his portrayal of the African American social experience. The invisible man reacts strongly to the spirituals he hears at college, the blues story of Trueblood, the singing of Mary Rambro after she takes him in off the streets of Harlem. Similarly, he recognizes the strength wrested from resistance and suffering, a strength asserted by the broken link of chain saved by Brother Tarp.

These figures, however, have relatively little power to alter the encompassing social system. They assume their full significance in relation to the second major progression in Invisible Man , that focusing on the narrator’s psychological development. As he gradually gains an understanding of the social forces that oppress him, the invisible man simultaneously discovers the complexity of his own personality. Throughout the central narrative, he accepts various definitions of himself, mostly from external sources. Ultimately, however, all definitions that demand he repress or deny aspects of himself simply reinforce his sense of invisibility. Only by abandoning limiting definitions altogether, Ellison implies, can the invisible man attain the psychological integrity necessary for any effective social action.

Ellison emphasizes the insufficiency of limiting definitions in the prologue when the invisible man has a dream-vision while listening to an Armstrong record. After descending through four symbolically rich levels of the dream, the invisible man hears a sermon on the “Blackness of Blackness,” which recasts the “Whiteness of the Whale” chapter from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1851). The sermon begins with a cascade of apparent contradictions, forcing the invisible man to question his comfortable assumptions concerning the nature of freedom, hatred, and love. No simple resolution emerges from the sermon, other than an insistence on the essentially ambiguous nature of experience. The dream-vision culminates in the protagonist’s confrontation with the mulatto sons of an old black woman torn between love and hatred for their father. Although their own heritage merges the “opposites” of white and black, the sons act in accord with social definitions and repudiate their white father, an act that unconsciously but unavoidably repudiates a large part of themselves. The hostile sons, the confused old woman, and the preacher who delivers the sermon embody aspects of the narrator’s own complexity. When one of the sons tells the invisible man to stop asking his mother disturbing questions, his words sound a leitmotif for the novel: “Next time you got questions like that ask yourself.”

Before he can ask, or even locate, himself, however, the invisible man must directly experience the problems generated by a fragmented sense of self and a reliance on others. Frequently, he accepts external definitions, internalizing the fragmentation dominating his social context. For example, he accepts a letter of introduction from Bledsoe on the assumption that it testifies to his ability. Instead, it creates an image of him as a slightly dangerous rebel. By delivering the letter to potential employers, the invisible man participates directly in his own oppression. Similarly, he accepts a new name from the Brotherhood, again revealing his willingness to simplify himself in an attempt to gain social acceptance from the educational, economic, and political systems. As long as he accepts external definitions, the invisible man lacks the essential element of literacy: an understanding of the relationship between context and self.

Ellison’s reluctance to reject the external definitions and attain literacy reflects both a tendency to see social experience as more “real” than psychological experience and a fear that the abandonment of definitions will lead to total chaos. The invisible man’s meeting with Trueblood, a sharecropper and blues singer who has fathered a child by his own daughter, highlights this fear. Watching Mr. Norton’s fascination with Trueblood, the invisible man perceives that even the dominant members of the Euro-American society feel stifled by the restrictions of “respectability.” Ellison refuses to abandon all social codes, portraying Trueblood in part as a hustler whose behavior reinforces white stereotypes concerning black immorality. If Trueblood’s acceptance of his situation (and of his human complexity) seems in part heroic, it is a heroism grounded in victimization. Nevertheless, the invisible man eventually experiments with repudiation of all strict definitions when, after his disillusionment with the Brotherhood, he adopts the identity of Rinehart, a protean street figure who combines the roles of pimp and preacher, shifting identities with context. After a brief period of exhilaration, the invisible man discovers that “Rinehart’s” very fluidity guarantees that he will remain locked within social definitions. Far from increasing his freedom at any moment, his multiplicity forces him to act in whatever role his “audience” casts him. Ellison stresses the serious consequences of this lack of center when the invisible man nearly becomes involved in a knife fight with Brother Maceo, a friend who sees only the Rinehartian exterior. The persona of “Rinehart,” then, helps increase the invisible man’s sense of possibility, but lacks the internal coherence necessary for psychological, and perhaps even physical, survival.

Ellison rejects both acceptance of external definitions and abandonment of all definitions as workable means of attaining literacy. Ultimately, he endorses the full recognition and measured acceptance of the experience, historical and personal, that shapes the individual. In addition, he recommends the careful use of masks as a survival strategy in the social world. The crucial problem with this approach, derived in large part from African American folk culture, involves the difficulty of maintaining the distinction between external mask and internal identity. As Bledsoe demonstrates, a protective mask threatens to implicate the wearer in the very system he or she attempts to manipulate.

Before confronting these intricacies, however, the invisible man must accept his African American heritage, the primary imperative of the narrative of immersion. Initially, he attempts to repudiate or to distance himself from the aspects of the heritage associated with stereotyped roles. He shatters and attempts to throw away the “darky bank” he finds in his room at Mary Rambro’s. His failure to lose the pieces of the bank reflects Ellison’s conviction that the stereotypes, major aspects of the African American social experience, cannot simply be ignored or forgotten. As an element shaping individual consciousness, they must be incorporated into, without being allowed to dominate, the integrated individual identity. Symbolically, in a scene in which the invisible man meets a yam vendor shortly after his arrival in Harlem, Ellison warns that one’s racial heritage alone cannot provide a full sense of identity. After first recoiling from yams as a stereotypic southern food, the invisible man eats one, sparking a momentary epiphany of racial pride. When he indulges the feelings and buys another yam, however, he finds it frost-bitten at the center.

The invisible man’s heritage, placed in proper perspective, provides the crucial hints concerning social literacy and psychological identity that allow him to come provisionally to terms with his environment. Speaking on his deathbed, the invisible man’s grandfather offers cryptic advice that lies near the essence of Ellison’s overall vision: “Live with your head in the lion’s mouth. I want you to overcome ‘em with yeses, undermine ‘em with grins, agree ‘em to death and destruction, let ‘em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open.” Similarly, an ostensibly insane veteran echoes the grandfather’s advice, adding an explicit endorsement of the Machiavellian potential of masking:

Play the game, but don’t believe in it—that much you owe yourself. Even if it lands you in a strait jacket or a padded cell. Play the game, but play it your own way—part of the time at least. Play the game, but raise the ante, my boy. Learn how it operates, learn how you operate. . . . that game has been analyzed, put down in books. But down here they’ve forgotten to take care of the books and that’s your opportunity. You’re hidden right out in the open—that is, you would be if you only realized it. They wouldn’t see you because they don’t expect you to know anything.

The vet understands the “game” of Euro-American culture, while the grandfather directly expresses the internally focused wisdom of the African American community.

The invisible man’s quest leads him to a synthesis of these forms of literacy in his ultimate pluralistic vision. Although he at first fails to comprehend the subversive potential of his position, the invisible man gradually learns the rules of the game and accepts the necessity of the indirect action recommended by his grandfather. Following his escape into the underground burrow, he contemplates his grandfather’s advice from a position of increased experience and self-knowledge. Contemplating his own individual situation in relation to the surrounding society, he concludes that his grandfather “ must have meant the principle, that we were to affirm the principle on which the country was built but not the men.” Extending this affirmation to the psychological level, the invisible man embraces the internal complexity he has previously repressed or denied: “So it is that now I denounce and defend, or feel prepared to defend. I condemn and affirm, say no and say yes, say yes and say no. I denounce because though implicated and partially responsible, I have been hurt to the point of abysmal pain, hurt to the point of invisibility. And I defend because in spite of all I find that I love. In order to get some of it down I have to love.”

“Getting some of it down,” then, emerges as the crucial link between Ellison’s social and psychological visions. In order to play a socially responsible role—and to transformthe words “social responsibility” from the segregationist catch phrase used by the man at the battle royal into a term responding to Louis Armstrong’s artistic call for change—the invisible man forges from his complex experience a pluralistic art that subverts the social lion by taking its principles seriously. The artist becomes a revolutionary wearing a mask. Ellison’s revolution seeks to realize a pluralist ideal, a true democracy recognizing the complex experience and human potential of every individual. Far from presenting his protagonist as a member of an intrinsically superior cultural elite, Ellison underscores his shared humanity in the concluding line: “Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?” Manipulating the aesthetic and social rules of the Euro-American “game,” Ellison sticks his head in the lion’s mouth, asserting a blackness of blackness fully as ambiguous, as individual, and as rich as the whiteness of Herman Melville’s whale.

Juneteenth Forty-seven years after the release of Invisible Man , Ellison’s second novel was published. Ellison began working on Juneteenth in 1954, but his constant revisions delayed its publication. Although it was unfinished at the time of his death, only minor edits and revisions were necessary to publish the book.

Juneteenth is about a black minister, Hickman, who takes in and raises a little boy as black, even though the child looks white. The boy soon runs away to New England and later becomes a race-baiting senator. After he is shot on the Senate floor, he sends for Hickman. Their past is revealed through their ensuing conversation.

The title of the novel, appropriately, refers to a day of liberation for African Americans. Juneteenth historically represents June 19, 1865, the day Union forces announced emancipation of slaves in Texas; that state considers Juneteenth an official holiday. The title applies to the novel’s themes of evasion and discovery of identity, which Ellison explored so masterfully in Invisible Man .

Major Works Long fiction : Invisible Man , 1952; Juneteenth , 1999 (John F. Callahan, editor). Short fiction : Flying Home, and Other Stories , 1996. Nonfiction : Shadow and Act , 1964; The Writer’s Experience , 1964 (with Karl Shapiro); Going to the Territory , 1986; Conversations with Ralph Ellison , 1995 (Maryemma Graham and Amritjit Singh, editors); The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison , 1995 (John F. Callahan, editor); Trading Twelves: The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray , 2000; Living with Music: Ralph Ellison’s Jazz Writings , 2001 (Robert O’Meally, editor).

Source: Notable American Novelists Revised Edition Volume 1 James Agee — Ernest J. Gaines Edited by Carl Rollyson Salem Press, Inc 2008.

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Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” as a Parable of Our Time

By Clint Smith

In 2012, I was a high-school English teacher in Prince George’s County, Maryland, when Trayvon Martin, a boy who looked like so many of my students, was killed in the suburbs of Florida. Before then, I had envisioned my classroom as a place for my students to escape the world’s harsher realities, but Martin’s death made the dream of such escapism seem impossible and irrelevant. Looking for guidance, I picked up Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel, “Invisible Man,” which had been a fixture of the “next to read” pile on my bookshelf for years. “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me,” Ellison writes in the prologue. The unnamed black protagonist of the novel, set between the South in the nineteen-twenties and Harlem in the nineteen-thirties, wrestles with the cognitive dissonance of opportunity served up alongside indignity. He receives a scholarship to college from a group of white men in his town after engaging in a blindfolded boxing match with other black boys, to the delight of the white spectators. In New York, he is pulled out of poverty and given a prominent position in a communist-inspired “Brotherhood” only to realize that these brothers are using him as a political pawn. This complicated kind of progress seemed to me to accurately reflect how, for the marginalized in America, choices have never been clear or easy. I put the book on my syllabus.

The school was situated inside the beltway of Prince George’s County, and my classroom was filled with almost exclusively black and brown students, many of them undocumented immigrants. While Ellison wrote of invisibility as a black man caught in the discord of early-twentieth-century racism, this particular group of students read the idea of invisibility not as a metaphor but as a necessity, a way of insuring one’s protection. I was expecting that the class would relate the novel to the current climate of violence toward black bodies. But, as they often did, my students presented a compelling case that broadened the scope of the discussion.

Before my time in the classroom, immigration was rarely at the forefront of my consciousness. I did not come from a family of immigrants but from a group of people who had been brought to this country involuntarily, centuries ago. I cannot point to a map and say, “That is the country I came from”; our ancestry lies in the cotton fields of Mississippi and in the swamps of southern Florida. The repercussions of immigration did not feel as concrete to me as they did to the more than eleven million unauthorized immigrants across the country.

The day after Donald Trump was elected, one of my former students, from that same class, sent me a text message. We had not spoken in some time. She wrote, “I know I shouldn’t be, but I’m a little scared. Unsure of what’s going to happen.” She continued, “I know I wasn’t born here, but this has become my country. I’ve been here for so long, with a lot of shame, I don’t even know my own country’s history, but I know plenty of this one.” In his interview with “60 Minutes,” Trump reiterated that he would move immediately to deport or incarcerate two to three million undocumented immigrants. As for the rest, he said, “after everything gets normalized, we’re going to make a determination.” After I listened to the interview, I began looking over the essays from a writing assignment I had given a different group of students, years ago. The students were asked to write their own short memoirs, and many of them used the exercise as an opportunity to write about what it meant to be an undocumented person in the United States. Their stories narrated the weeks-long journeys they had taken as young children to escape violence and poverty in their home countries, crossing the border in the back of pickup trucks, walking across deserts, and wading through rivers in the middle of the night. Others discussed how they did not know that they were undocumented until they attempted to get a driver’s license or to apply to college, only to be told by their parents that they did not have Social Security numbers.

One student stood up in front of the class to read his memoir and said that, every day, coming home from school, he feared that he might find that his parents had disappeared. After that, many students revealed their status, and that of their families, to their classmates for the first time. The essays told of parents who would not drive for fear that being pulled over for a broken taillight would result in deportation; who had never been on an airplane; who were working jobs for below minimum wage in abhorrent conditions, unable to report their employers for fear of being arrested themselves. It was a remarkable scene, to witness young people collectively shatter one another’s sense of social isolation.

“Invisible Man” ends with the protagonist being chased by policemen during a riot in Harlem, and falling into a manhole in the middle of the street. The police put the cover of the manhole back in place, trapping the narrator underground. “I’m an invisible man and it placed me in a hole—or showed me the hole I was in, if you will—and I reluctantly accepted the fact,” he says.

I imagine that if I were to read this book with my students now, our conversation would be different. I wonder if any of my students would ever stand up in class to read their own stories, or if they would instead remain silent. I think of all the young people who, because of DACA , had emerged to be seen by their country as human, as deserving of grace, as deserving of a chance. I think of how they turned over their names, birth dates, addresses to the government in anticipation of a pathway out of the shadows. I revisit the final pages of “Invisible Man” and think of how many things that once existed above ground in our country might now become trapped beneath the surface.

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By Vinson Cunningham

By Dhruv Khullar

By Brendan Loper

Invisible Man

Ralph ellison, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Invisible Man can in many ways be thought of as a coming of age novel, in which an ambitious young man attempts to rise up through a broken system that ultimately rejects him. The novel is structured into a series of hopes and dashed expectations, beginning with the promise of the unnamed university, where the narrator assumes he will model himself after the Founder . Later, in the working world and in the world of the Brotherhood, the narrator similarly invests hope in the goodwill of others, only to find his expectations and ambitious thwarted.

His experience mirrors the whole generation of young black individuals who expected that they could rise up in an increasingly equal society. The ex-doctor from the mental hospital is a reflection of these dashed ambitions. After receiving recognition in France, the ex-doctor learns that he will never be truly respected due to his race. Denied his dignity, the surgeon gives up hope of recognition and ultimately ends up as another nameless member of the asylum. His advice for the narrator is to “Play the game, but don’t believe in it.”

In the Brotherhood, the narrator finally feels as though he is beginning to achieve recognition. However, he quickly begins to discover that the actions of the Brotherhood are designed to keep him in place. Ultimately, the Brotherhood’s betrayal culminates in the race riot at the end of the novel. The narrator realizes that he has been kept out of affairs in order to help incite the riot without his interference. The narrator’s retreat into the hole represents the final stage of the narrator’s disillusionment, though on an ambiguous note.

Completely dissatisfied with all existing institutions and accepted ways of behaving in the world, the narrator says he is in “hibernation,” waiting for the time to come when he can begin to achieve his aims. By secluding himself in his hole, the narrator precludes himself from either ambition or disappointment. However, the narrator acknowledges that this is only a temporary state, one that allows him to narrate his story from a distance, but that he will soon emerge from his hiding.

Ambition and Disillusionment ThemeTracker

Ambition and Disillusionment Quotes in Invisible Man

I am standing puzzled, unable to decide whether the veil is really being lifted, or lowered more fimly in place; whether I am witnessing a revelation or a more efficient blinding.

One moment I believed, I was dedicated, willing to lie on the blazing coals, do anything to attain a position on the campus—then snap! It was done with, finished, through. Now there was only the problem of forgetting it.

And it went so fast and smoothly that it seemed not to happen to me but to someone who actually bore my new name. I almost laughed into the phone when I heard the director of Men's House address me with profound respect. My new name was getting around. It's very strange, I thought, but things are so unreal for them normally that they believe that to call a thing by name is to make it so. And yet I am what they think I am.

I began to accept my past and, as I accepted it, I felt memories welling up within me. It was as though I’d learned suddenly to look around corners; images of past humiliations flickered through my head and I saw that they were more than separate experience. They were me; they defined me.

I looked at Ras on his horse and at their handful of guns and recognized the absurdity of the whole night and of the simple yet confoundingly complex arrangement of hope and desire, fear and hate, that had brought me here still running, and knowing now who I was and where I was and knowing too that I had no longer to run for or from the Jacks and the Emersons and the Bledsoes and Nortons, but only from their confusion, impatience, and refusal to recognize the beautiful absurdity of their American identity and mine.

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Literary Themes Coming Of Age

Coming Of Age

Most scholars agree on a standard definition of the coming-of-age narrative: the coming-of-age narrative: Simply put, it follows the development of a child or adolescent into adulthood. The roots of this narrative theme can be traced back to the bildungsroman, or “formation novel.” Late 18th-century German novels, such as Johann Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (1795), established a narrative pattern that would be followed by several other authors in the forthcoming centuries. This pattern typically features a young protagonist—either male or female—who undergoes a troubled search for an adult identity by process of trials, experiences, and revelations. This theme is prominent in several well-known European and American novels of the 19th and early 20th centuries, such as Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield (1849–50) and Great Expectations (1860–61); Horatio Alger, Jr.’s Ragged Dick; or, Street Life in New York with the Bootblacks (1868); Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (1869); Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884); James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916); and J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1951). The popularity of this narrative has continued into the late 20th and early 21st centuries, as shown in critically acclaimed books such as Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina (1993) and Jon Krakauer’s 1996 account of the life and death of Chris McCandless in Into the Wild, and through popular culture texts, such as J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series.

While there is agreement on a standard working definition of a coming-of-age narrative, there is little agreement among scholars on the constituent elements of these narratives. James Hardin, a theorist of genre studies, argues that there can be no agreement about the elements of a coming-ofage narrative because of the various meanings of the word Bildung in German. While most scholars interpret the word’s meaning as “formation,” Hardin contends that this interpretation is unique to a series of 18th- and 19th-century novels, and to use that term and its meaning for an examination of 20thand 21st-century novels is to take it out of its proper context. Other interpretations of the German word Bildung, such as initiation, education, and building, have served to further complicate understanding of the coming-of-age narrative. In addition to a debate over the origin of the term, other scholars argue over the age group of protagonists coming of age in these texts. Most 18th- and 19th-century protagonists featured in these novels came of age in their midto- late teenage years.

Throughout the 20th century, however, the range in years for a coming-of-age narrative widened from this age group to include protagonists in their early to mid-20s. It is for this reason that the genre studies scholar Barbara White limits the definition of a coming-of-age narrative to focus on protagonists between the ages of 12 and 19. Additionally, in the latter part of the 20th century, the works of anthropologists, such as Arnold van Gennup and Margaret Mead, have added to the debate over the elements of a coming-of-age narrative. Through their research in rites of passage and social development and structure, the works of anthropologists such as van Gennup and Mead allow scholars to examine the sociocultural implications of these narratives. It is the sociocultural implications that cause the most debate among scholars. Indeed, since a coming-of-age narrative is dependent on a quest for an adult identity, this narrative is closely linked to other areas of identity development, such as gender, race, social class, and national identity (see nationalism).

As Kenneth Millard argues, a recurring element of the coming-of-age narrative is the way in which a protagonist’s adult identity is framed by historical events and points of origin and conditioned by social obligations and expectations. Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn serves as an example of this theory. In the novel, a young Huck accompanies Jim, a runaway slave, on a trip down the Mississippi River to reach the free North. The novel’s climax occurs when Jim is caught by slave catchers, and Huck must make a decision between informing Miss Watson, Jim’s owner, about Jim’s location or attempting to free Jim from his bondage. In his decision, Huck must balance the social obligation of returning “property” to its rightful owner and his own conscience—during his trip, Huck has come to see Jim not as a piece of property but as a human. Ironically, Huck makes the decision to “go to hell” by following his conscience, attempting to free Jim from his captivity.

Twain’s novel, of course, was published after the institution of slavery was abolished, but it serves as a historical point of reference, as Finn would have grown up in pre-Civil War America. Huck Finn’s adult identity is framed within these racist confines; although African Americans were free, they still were considered as inferior to whites. Thus, the socially acceptable and expected thing for Huck to do would be to turn Jim in to Miss Watson, and it is the deviation from this expectation that Huck believes will condemn his soul. The Huck Finn example also serves as a way to highlight three additional features of the comingof- age narrative. One of these features is the loss of childhood innocence. In Twain’s novel, although Huck naïvely misunderstands the consequences of his decision, his naïveté speaks volumes to readers. The consequence of his decision marks his transition from childhood to adulthood. Prior to the novel’s climax, Huck has been witness to the darker side of the adult world—from his father’s racist diatribe about the voting rights of recently freed slaves to a long and bloody family feud to the con artistry of the Duke and Dauphin. Unbeknownst to Huck—but abundantly clear to the novel’s readers— is the influence that these events have on his decision to attempt to free Jim—the first adult decision of his life. Because of his experiences and this decision, Huck realizes that he may be outcast from his society, as he has deviated from its expected adult norms, and he will no longer be able to go back to live his previous lifestyle of barefooted, pipesmoking truancy.

This deviation from expected norms highlights another feature of the coming-of-age narrative: the realization of social expectations and norms. To once again use the Huck Finn example, Huck fully realizes the implications of his decision: He considers himself damned and acknowledges that he will be unable to fully participate in the adult world because of this violation. As such, he is able to recognize the social, adult world now laid out before him. While this realization further distances Huck from his childhood innocence, it also presents him with a choice: Either accept this adult world and conform to its norms and standards or decide on self-exile. Huckleberry Finn, of course, chooses the latter, as he decides to light out for the territories of the American West rather than conform to the rigid social obligations demanded by pre–Civil War rural Missouri. Huck’s choice to light out for the territories highlights a third feature of the coming-of-age narrative. His decision to leave is rooted in another choice: to accept a socially constructed identity, or to construct a personal sense of identity for oneself. While this idea is one of the oldest and most common themes of literature, when examined through the lens of a coming-of-age narrative, it takes on additional weight. Not all coming-of-age protagonists are as fortunate as Huck Finn, though.

For some, their gender, race, and class serve as impediments to a sense of freedom. As the feminist scholar Rachel Blau DuPlessis observes, most 19th-century female protagonists have two options presented before them when coming of age: marriage, the socially acceptable option for young women; or death, the end result for those young women who deviate from socially expected norms. Indeed, constraining one’s identity to social norms and expectations is the choice for one of 19th-century America’s most wellknown female protagonists, Jo March. In Alcott’s Little Women, the creative and headstrong Jo winds up married by the novel’s end. Race and class also serve as factors in these narratives. The unnamed narrator of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952) comes to realize his situation very early on in the novel. After the narrator, a promising young African-American student, agrees to show a white benefactor the poor living conditions of sharecroppers living around the narrator’s college, he is expelled from school and is forced to decide between accepting society’s roles for an African-American man or developing his own identity. Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild features the real-life story of Chris McCandless, a college graduate from a well-to-do East Coast family. When McCandless realizes the limitations of the options set before him—continued graduate studies, a position in a well-paying job in the business world—he renounces his previous materialistic life and sets off on the roads of America in an attempt to discover who he truly is. National character is also an important factor in coming-of-age narratives. Some preeminent American literature scholars, such as Leslie Fiedler, Ihab Hassan, and R. W. B Lewis, have argued that the coming-of-age narrative is one of the most dominant narratives in American literature. For these scholars, a sense of history, or lack thereof, is key to their view of the importance of the coming-of-age narrative in American literature. At the heart of this contention is the argument that the American national identity shares several key characteristics with the coming-of-age narrative. The first of these characteristics is Lewis’s argument that the American national character is primarily based on renewal and innocence. His theory of the American Adam states that American culture is constantly going back to beginnings and new starts, an attempt to revert to a lost childhood or return to a forgotten Eden. This theory, according to Lewis, is at the center of most American literature—a constant return to youth, with an emphasis on the experiences, revelations, and trials inherent in a coming-of-age narrative.

Thus, in a sense, the focus on coming of age in American literature and in the national character can be argued as an unwillingness to acknowledge history: All events are subject to change and to reinterpretation, a kind of automatic “redo” where each generation must begin its task of the coming of age process. Like Lewis, Ihab Hassan sees the idea of innocence as a conscious denial of American history, but he contends that the denial is also firmly rooted in political ideology. The focus on a wide-eyed, naive innocence of each generation defining itself is not just a literary trope for Hassan; rather, it is deeply enmeshed in an ideology that offers no roots, no genealogies, and no sense of a permanent and static identity. For Leslie Fiedler, this focus on coming-ofage narratives underscores the preoccupation with youth found in American culture. Fiedler argues that this desire to return to a childlike, Edenic state is predicated on the idea that the American national character is constantly fluid and dynamic, youthful and energetic. To allow the national character to grow static and permanent would force American culture to grow old, and perhaps grow up. The coming-of-age narrative is quite simple to define; however, the implications of that definition are numerous and wide-ranging. What began as a way to fictionalize how a child became an adult became complicated throughout the centuries by other issues. Race, class, and gender all play a pivotal role in how a youth is expected to grow into an adult in various societies. Furthermore, the acceptance or rejection of social obligations and duties is another factor in how teens grow into adults. All of these factors expand a relatively benign textbook definition into a wide-ranging, thoroughly complex theme.

See also Anaya, Rudolfo: Bless Me, Ultima; Anderson, Sherwood: Winesburg, Ohio; Austen, Jane: Emm a; Chopin, Kate: Awakening, The; Crane, Stephen: Red Badge of Courage, The; Kincaid, Jamaica: Annie John; Knowles, John: Separate Peace, A; Marshall, Paul Brown Girl, Brownstone; McCarthy, Cormac: All the Pretty Horses; McCullers, Carson: Member of the Wedding, The; Shakespeare, William: Henry IV, Part I; Steinbeck, John: Red Pony, The; Stevenson, Robert Louis: Treasure Island; Tolkien, J. R. R.: Hobbit, The; Updike, John: “A & P.”

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6 thoughts on “ Literary Themes Coming Of Age ”

This is your brain on Jane Austen. Literary reading provides “a truly valuable exercise of people’s brains.” …

I am legit annoyed by the weird religiocentrism of the president’s literary analysis.

definitely 😀

Cirque du Shakespeare

to the author of this article, thank you very much for your insights! I am very appreciative of some of the ides that this piece has enlightened me about, cheers xxx

lovely work! who wrote this? i would like to reference it in an academic essay please. Thanks!

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78 Invisible Man Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best invisible man topic ideas & essay examples, 📌 most interesting invisible man topics to write about, 👍 good research topics about invisible man, ❓ essay questions on invisible man.

• Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison The duality of the conflict between the main character and the world surrounding him is gradually unfolded with every step of the development of the book.
• Race Issues in the ‘Invisible Man’ by Ralph Ellison This young man from the South follows the deathbed warning of his grandfather not to comply with the wishes of white people which destroy the lives of black people. We will write a custom essay specifically for you by our professional experts 808 writers online Learn More
• “Invisible Man” Novel by Ralph Ellison The main protagonist of Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man”, through a gradual transformation through various experiences along his journey of life and the sudden turn of events in the end realizes his true self-identity.
• The Novel “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison Objectification of women, the lack of female names, gender-specific stereotypes, and marginalization of women indicate the gender insensitivity of the creators of this literature.
• Search for the Identity in Ellison’s “Invisible Man” Many critics have generalized the version of the “Invisible Man” as the most influential novel of the Post World War II and the greatest literary work highlighting the extraordinary way the invisible black man strives […]
• “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison: General Idea As he stood beneath the lights of the strident room, the inhabitants beam him and make him replicate himself; an unintentional orientation to parity nearly damages him, but the whole thing terminates well and he […]
• Wall’s “After ‘Invisible Man’” and “The Cave” Images The second image goes under the title “The Cave,” and it appeared in the book The Republic by Plato that dates as far back as 380 B.C. Likewise, the man in the postmodern work is […]
• Racism in “The Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison The “Battle Royal” chapter in the novel brings rather controversial reactions and thoughts, due to its being a blend of relief for the main character, the shame for the abusive white society, and the pain […]
• Comments for Invisible Man The fact that the author never expressly mentions the real name of the narrator, who is the main character in the story, can actually be perceived as a way in which the author portrays the […]
• The “Invisibility” in the Novel by Ralph Ellison Norton is “blind” as he cannot see the real side of the life of the Afro-Americans in the United States. In spite of the fact that Mr.
• The Role of the Narrator in the “The Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison
• The Elusive American Dream in “The Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison
• The Quest for Manhood in “The Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison
• The Central Problem of Balancing Social and Personal Responsibility in “The Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison
• Use of Symbolism in Ralph Ellison’s “The Invisible Man”
• The Theme of Self Knowledge in the Novel “The Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison
• The Symbolic Briefcase in Ralph Ellison’s “The Invisible Man”
• The Oppression of the Black People in “The Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison
• Power and Self-Interest in Ralph Ellison’s “The Invisible Man”
• The Narrator’s Drive and Motivation in “The Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison
• The Meaning of Invisibility in Ellison’s “The Invisible Man”
• Themes of Blindness, Self-Reliance, and Social Responsibility in “The Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison
• The Theme of Maturation in Ralph Ellison’s “The Invisible Man”
• The Black Eperience in America Portrayed in the Novel “The Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison
• The Use of Violence in “The Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison
• The Impact of the Minor Characters in “The Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison
• The Struggle of Change in the “The Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison
• Femininity and the Situation of White Women in Ralph Ellison’s “The Invisible Man”
• The Symbolic Function of the Sambo Doll in Ralph Ellison’s “The Invisible Man”
• True Identity in “The Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison
• The Motifs of Blindness and Invisibility in “The Invisible Man”, a Novel by Ralph Ellison
• The Process of Overcoming Deceptions and Illusions to Reach Truth in “The Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison
• The Symbolism of Mechanics in “The Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison
• The Significance of Mr. Norton and Fate in “The Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison
• White Supremacy and Racial Discrimination in “The Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison
• The Real History in Ralph Ellison’s “The Invisible Man”
• The Nightmarish and Strange Sequence in the Factory Hospital in “The Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison
• The Prevalence of Symbolism in “The Invisible Man”, a Novel by Ralph Ellison
• The Importance of Misunderstanding in “The Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison
• The Experiences and Rich Imagery of “The Invisible Man” by Ellison
• The Different Obstacles in the Final Chapters of “The Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison
• “The Invisible Man” as a Coming of Age Novel by Ralph Ellison
• Ambition and Disillusionment in “The Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison
• The Tone in “The Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison
• The Evolution of the Invisible Man in “The Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison
• Tod Clifton as a Symbol of the Black Plight and Oppression in “The Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison
• The Narrator’s Metamorphosis in Ralph Ellison’s “The Invisible Man”
• An Important Role of Dreams and the Unconscious in Ralph Ellison’s “The Invisible Man”
• How Is Achieving the American Dream Described in “The Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison?
• What Is the Summary of “The Invisible Man”?
• What Are the Gender Stereotypes in “The Invisible Man”?
• What Is Black Existentialism in “The Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison?
• How Is the Identity Crisis Shown in “The Invisible Man”?
• What Is the Connection Between Name and Identity in “The Invisible Man”?
• How Does the Opening Scene in “The Invisible Man” Introduces the Major Themes of the Novel?
• “The Invisible Man”: How to Find a Black Identity in a White World?
• What Are the Values of “The Invisible Man”?
• Who Is the Main Character of “The Invisible Man” Novel?
• What Is the Supremacy of Whites in “The Invisible Man” Novel?
• How Would You Analyze the Symbols in “The Invisible Man”?
• What Are the Phases of Invisibility in “The Invisible Man”?
• How Does the Main Character’s Journey From Illusion to Insight in “The Invisible Man”?
• What Is the Main Message of “The Invisible Man”?
• Why Is “The Invisible Man” Considered to Be More Horror Than Science Fiction?
• What Does the Ending of “The Invisible Man” Mean?
• What Is the Role of the Narrator in “The Invisible Man”?
• Why Is It Called “The Invisible Man”?
• Why Does the Narrator Say He Is Invisible?
• Why Is There an Erasure of Female Characters in “The Invisible Man”?
• How Old Should You Be to Read “The Invisible Man”?
• What Time Period Is “The Invisible Man” Set In?
• What Is the Relationship of the Character of “The Invisible Man” to the Strong Black Leaders of the Time?
• How Does Ellison Convey the Theme of Racism in “The Invisible Man”?
• What Is the Irony in “The Invisible Man”?
• What Does the Invisible Man Realize at the End of the Book?
• What Is the Role of Moral Values in Society in “The Invisible Man”?
• What Does White Symbolize in “The Invisible Man”?
• How Is the Struggle for Power Described in “The Invisible Man”?
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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IvyPanda . "78 Invisible Man Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." December 1, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/invisible-man-essay-examples/.

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The Great Read The Modern Love Issue

Online Dating After 50 Can Be Miserable. But It’s Also Liberating.

You know so much more about yourself and your desires when you’re older that dating apps — even with all their frustrations — can bring unanticipated pleasure.

Credit... Illustration by Sophi Miyoko Gullbrants

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By Maggie Jones

Maggie Jones previously wrote a feature about sex after 70 for the magazine. She is herself in the over-50 dating demographic.

• Published April 15, 2024 Updated April 16, 2024

When my marriage collapsed after 23 years, I was devastated and overwhelmed. I was in my 50s, with two jobs, two teenage daughters, one dog. I didn’t consider dating. I had no time, no emotional energy. But then a year passed. One daughter was off at college, the other increasingly independent. After several more months went by, I started to feel a sliver of curiosity about what kind of men were out there and how it would feel to date again. The last time I dated was 25 years ago, and even then, I fell into relationships mostly with guys from high school, college, parties, work. Now every man I knew was either married, too young, too old or otherwise not a good fit.

Listen to this article, read by Gabra Zackman

That meant online dating — the default mode not just for the young but also for people my age. My only exposure had been watching my oldest daughter, home from college one summer as she sat on her bed rapidly swiping through guy after guy — spending no more than a second or two on each. “Wait,” I kept saying. “Slow down. How do you know? What’s wrong with him? Or him?”

Soon enough, I signed onto Match, and then the dating apps Bumble and Hinge. And over the past 18 months, I’ve felt waves of excitement, hope, frustration, boredom, discouragement. I’ve gone on great and not-so-great dates, had relationships and ended them, paused and restarted apps, over and over again.

Online dating is a mixed bag for most people — queer, hetero, nonbinary. Plenty of them do find love, including on their very first match. But many of us have to swim through a dispiriting sea of hundreds of people, most of whom we are unlikely to ever want to date. That includes profiles that are fake, created by scammers to try to lure private information from users. And while most profiles are real, sometimes their photos are not so much: More than one person told me that photos can be so outdated or filtered that they barely recognized their date when they met. And the writing is often littered with clichés. “Looking for a partner in crime.” “I will make you laugh.” “I live life to the fullest.” Then there’s the irritating experience of seeing the people you already declined pop up again and again and again.

As tough as the process can be, older women have it worse than most. They report more negative online-dating experiences compared with men of all ages and younger women, according to a Pew Center for Research study. That may in part be because of their dearth of choices. The pool of men narrows with time: Men’s life expectancy is seven years shorter than women’s.

Then there’s the reality that men tend to date younger women — a desire that online dating makes vividly quantifiable. In a 2018 study, researchers analyzed anonymized message exchanges between more than 186,000 straight men and women from a “public and large” online-dating platform (researchers didn’t name which one). Women get the most attention from men (measured by the number of first messages a person receives) when they are 18. Yes, 18, when they have barely crossed into adulthood, if you consider 18 an adult. (It’s also the first year they are legally allowed to even be on most dating sites.) It’s downhill from there. The study, by Elizabeth Bruch, a sociology professor, and Mark Newman, a physics professor, both at the University of Michigan, didn’t even include people older than 65. Men’s desirability, in contrast, peaks more than three decades later, at around age 50 (when women have become increasingly invisible). And although women prefer men with advanced degrees, men desire women who don’t go beyond college.

But as I learned over the last several months talking to more than three dozen people about online dating among older Americans like me, that's only part of the story. Researchers, along with people I interviewed who have been on the apps, suggested something more complex and nuanced about dating in the older years. By which I mean there may be reason for optimism.

One Wednesday afternoon over Zoom from her living room in Manhattan, the anthropologist Helen Fisher, author of “Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage and Why We Stray,” told me she is hopeful about online dating as you age. “Despite the stereotypes, older women are not desperate.”

Fisher, who studies romantic relationships and dating, is a senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute and chief scientific adviser to Match. For the past 13 years, along with the Kinsey Institute’s executive director, Justin Garcia, she has collaborated with Match to create and analyze annual, nationally representative surveys of roughly 5,000 single people about their romantic lives . When it comes to sexual attraction, Fisher, who is 78, says, “The older you get, the pickier you get.” In one Match survey, people over 60 were more likely than younger people to insist on initial sexual chemistry for a long-term relationship, perhaps in part, Fisher says, because when you don’t have to choose a partner who will be a good parent or help provide a secure home, you can focus on different desires.

There’s also less pressure to marry the second time around. Only 15 percent of previously married women say they want to do it again, according to a Pew study. (The other 85 percent either didn’t want to or weren’t sure.) That’s half the portion of men who want to remarry. Michael Rosenfeld, a sociologist at Stanford University whose research areas include “mating and dating and the internet’s effect on society,” says the discrepancy is partly because, as numerous studies confirm, women tend to be less satisfied in heterosexual marriage. Some women, as he put it, “are just tired of the ups and downs of relationships and have promised themselves they won’t do it again.”

Men, by contrast, have narrower social circles and emotional friendships than women do. Without a partner, they can feel more adrift and remarry quickly. One man I talked to, who asked me to identify him by his middle initial, H., is in his late 50s and divorced and has seen this among men his age. “Men are not confident in their ability to be alone — emotionally, keeping a social calendar, getting meals on the table. A lot of them need to be taken care of.”

That need can be on blatant display in dating apps. It’s what Jennie Young, a professor of English and women and gender studies at University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, calls the “Are you my mother?” problem. In a Facebook post, she used the example of a man answering the online-dating prompt “We’ll get along if ...” by writing, “You feed me” and are “more mature than I ... lol.”

Young, who wrote her dissertation in applied rhetoric, teaches a class for undergraduates called “The Rhetoric of Dating and Intimacy.” She argues that older women are more selective about dating: “Our hormones are shifting, we have zero tolerance, especially those of us who have been on our own and don’t feel we need a man to provide for us.”

Still, Young, who is 53 and divorced herself, wants to improve the dating experience for women and nonbinary people by helping them learn how to interpret dating language. It’s one way older women can catch up to Gen Z women “who are better versed in online rhetoric,” Young says. Older women were already partnered when online dating began and “missed the dating-app revolution.”

Young and I bonded, as I did with other women, over our shared exasperation with so many men’s profiles — filled with selfies at the gym in which they were holding dumbbells and flexing, or in bathroom mirrors, sometimes with urinals behind them (one woman told me about a bathroom pic with a bra dangling from the shower rod). And the fish! So many men holding fish — either because fishing is a favorite hobby or a display of masculinity (or both), who knows.

On Instagram, Young recently posted two common rhetorical approaches: “disciplinary/directive” (“be feminine”; “no baggage”) and “I dare you” (“message me if you think you can handle it”; “I say no 99 percent of the time”). She cited an example in which a man combined the two by saying: “Understand this is a dating site you joined to meet someone, not to text to death lol. If you want to meet me, act like it. I’ll know you are serious when I get your number.”

For Young, trying to figure out how to date better and more efficiently started one night three years ago, when she was feeling “pitiful” about her own experiences online, rife with misogyny and “clichéd nonsense.” She did a Google search for “How do you find a needle in a haystack?” The answer: Burn the haystack to the ground. Only the metal needle will remain.

She decided to try it as a dating method. Instead of widening her filters and her tastes, which some dating advisers suggest, she became choosier about men and their styles of communication. She responded only if they sent her a clear, personalized message. And if she wasn’t interested in a man, she didn’t just swipe left or X out his profile; she “blocked” or “removed” him (which isn’t the same as “reporting” someone for inappropriate behavior). The goal was to prevent further messages and reduce the odds those men would reappear in her feed and waste more of her time.

She also revised her profile to “repel” some men while, she hoped, drawing those who were better matches. To that end, she wrote a Top 10 list of her dating rules, which included no hookups and no messages of “Hey,” “You up?” or “What’s up?” And no 55-year-old man who says he “wants kids someday.” She also posted what she likes to do — bike, hike, write humor (emphasizing that, while it’s common to say a version of “I’m funny” in profiles, she has actually published satire). She ended with: “I can’t be attracted to anyone who doesn’t know their homonyms. I’m sorry.”

She conceded the last line might sound elitist, but it was accurate. In the next five days, while fewer men “liked” her, the ones who did suited her more, including a man named Scott who commented: “Hey (sorry, couldn’t resist). This is hands-down the best profile I have ever read, which, if we’re being honest, probably isn’t saying much considering the majority of the profiles out there, but it’s definitely something.” Scott soon became her partner for more than two years.

Young credited her method for her successful match, and last year she started a Facebook group called the Burned Haystack Dating Method, which now has about 50,000 followers. (She also has an Instagram account where she dispenses advice.) As she wrote in one article about the strategy, “Dating is a numbers game, but the typical goal — to be widely appealing and meet as many men as possible — is wasting women’s time and leaving us frustrated and demoralized.”

At first, she mostly drew followers in their 40s, 50s and older, but increasingly younger women have joined. She advises women to be businesslike in their approach. Check apps no more than twice a day. Make sure your language is specific. No “I love to laugh” — who doesn’t love to laugh? If you want to get married again, she says, don’t be afraid to say so. And no need to play the “cool girl” who pretends she likes whatever men like, has no demands, never gets angry and is up for sex in whatever way a guy wants it.

People in older age tend to be generally freer of expectations in dating and relationships. The assumption that you will merge households declines. If parents or your community pushed you to marry a certain type of person in your 20s — because of religion, socioeconomic status, profession, race, sexuality, gender — that pressure may have dissipated or vanished.

Indeed, several women, hetero and queer, told me that while they want love and long-term relationships, they can’t imagine returning to commingling finances or giving up their space — their condo, apartment or house — after years of living on their own. Some are purposefully going slower in love now. “I don’t need to be attached at the hip anymore,” says Louisa Castner, a lesbian, divorced woman, referring to the enmeshment she felt in her previous relationships. Years ago, Helen Fisher briefly dated a man who was smart and interesting and lived across the country from her. “Was I going to move from New York City, away from my friends?” she says. “It wasn’t worth it to me.” She did eventually marry the writer John Tierney three years ago. He is seven years younger than she is. They are in what is known as a “living apart together” relationship. She is in the same Manhattan apartment she has lived in for 28 years. He is in the Bronx. They talk every day and see each other most evenings. Other nights she is typically out with her female friends, whom she has known far longer than her husband. And at the end of those evenings, she climbs into her own bed.

When I first started dating online, it felt as if a fire hydrant had opened — men appearing across my feed from different geographic areas, of different ages, races, professions. Since then, I have gone on dates and been in relationships with men who are smart, kind, funny and irreverent and who have lived in Maine, Boston, New York City, Ohio — which means I never would have met them without the apps. Dating beyond where I live is also possible because I occasionally go on the road for work, no longer have small children and can afford some travel.

H. also started dating, near and far, after his divorce. He was 51, around the peak of men’s online-dating popularity. His feed filled with women: Some were highly educated and others less so; some were his age and plenty two decades younger. They were nurses, teachers, librarians, women with jobs in marketing and P.R., none of whom he ever would have met through friends or work. H. was enamored with the seemingly endless possibilities. During his most intense dating weekends, he would have a couple of brunches, afternoon walks, drinks at 5 p.m. with one woman and drinks with another at 8. He paid for it all, unless he knew there would be no second date and the woman offered to split the bill. Some weeks he had 15 dates. “I was saying yes, yes, yes,” he told me.

After a month, he was overwhelmed, disillusioned, filled with too much coffee, alcohol and scrambled eggs and too many conversations in which he felt no connection. He paused all his apps and regrouped. Attraction mattered, sure, but he wanted women who were educated, successful and enthusiastic, and also women who were mothers (so they could share parenting experiences) and lived reasonably close by. And although he started off dating women who were more than 10 years younger — in a couple of cases more than 15 — too often he had little in common with them and struggled to have substantive conversations. So he narrowed his age window: eight years younger and three years older. Now, at 57, with his own kids in college, he is clear he wants a partner with whom he can share the same life stage, interests and living styles. (Toward the end of my reporting, he restarted a relationship and moved in with a woman he met years ago through online dating, two states away from him. Love doesn’t always stick to our dating rules.)

H. and many people I interviewed said that this time around, they were looking for different qualities in a partner. Some told me they want a person who is more positive and less anxious. Others long for a partner who is less of a workaholic or who cares more about their work. Or, after being married to someone with a very different temperament, they want a person more like them. After years in therapy, they want a partner more emotionally intelligent and sensitive. Or they have chosen a less materialistic life after decades with someone who relished big houses filled with possessions.

When Francine Russo, who has been widowed twice and is now in her late 70s, began online dating (she met her second husband that way and her current partner of eight years), she initially wanted men who had the same level of education and were as financially comfortable as she was. Over time, she realized she would miss out on men who were devoted to artistic careers or who had low-paying but meaningful jobs. “Who cares if he can’t afford the same restaurants you like?” says Russo, who is the author of “Love After 50: How to Find It, Enjoy It and Keep It.” People say, “ ‘I don’t want to settle,’” she told me. “But if you have someone who adores you and wants to hear about your day but doesn’t have a fancy degree or a lot of money, I don’t consider that settling.”

She also argues that older people are better at dealing with dating rejection. “There’s disappointment, but if someone doesn’t want a fourth date with you, you’ve survived far worse than that. A week, a month from now, it won’t matter.” In her book, she quotes a therapist who talks about “catch and release” relationships. We get more skilled at sorting the good fit from the bad fit. And we let people go faster.

John, who is 65 and lives in Western Massachusetts, did a lot of catching and releasing in his late 50s, because he didn’t get to do it when he was younger: By his early 20s, he was living with the woman he eventually married. In his first months of dating, he met women who lived nearby, where he grew up. But he quickly realized he didn’t want the familiar: He knew where they shopped, the books they were reading, where they went to school. In comparison, dating women in more far-flung areas, with backgrounds very different from his, was “totally exotic.”

As a successful painter, he had a flexible schedule, and he had enough money to plan weekend-long trips to Boston and New York City to meet women, setting up multiple dates over a couple of days, something he couldn’t afford to do in his 20s. His method flew in the face of lots of dating advice: He chose women based on photos and paid less attention to what they wrote. “The profile was just a way to sit across from someone and have a conversation,” says John, who approached the entire endeavor with curiosity. “For me it was: Can I learn something here? Is there something new for me?”

Some describe their sex experiences after marriage as the most expansive of their lives.

When he was 61, he sublet an apartment in New York City for a couple of months to make and see art, to date, to be near his adult children. Just before he arrived, he matched with a woman named Elizabeth, who was 57. Unlike John, Elizabeth had a dating system. Like several women and men I talked to, she listed her age as several years younger than she was to widen the dating pool. And she wasn’t interested in anyone beyond Manhattan and Brooklyn. When she matched with someone, she messaged only a few times on the site before suggesting a phone call. She passed on men who hadn’t been married or in long-term relationships. “The guys in their late 50s, with serial girlfriends their whole lives? I mean, come on: No.” Some didn’t make it past the phone call. “I’m sorry,” she would say, “I don’t think we’re a match,” at which point one man started cursing at her and called her a bitch.

Of the roughly two dozen men she did date over two years, most were lawyers or business professionals. But then John “liked” her on an app. She was attracted to him and impressed by his educational background. They talked on the phone and made plans for a drink with, as Elizabeth told him, the possibility of dinner. (They had dinner.) She liked how funny and positive he was. He was taken with her — she was beautiful, successful, strong-willed. “We would have never crossed paths,” Elizabeth says. “No one would have set us up.” The lifelong New Yorker, who didn’t want to get involved with men much beyond her borough, ended up moving to Massachusetts during the pandemic, just months after their first date. They married in September 2021, at an inn not far from where they now live.

For the last several months, I’ve gotten together with a group of friends, women mostly in their 50s and separated or divorced, dating for the first time in decades. When we aren’t talking about work, divorce and kids, some in the group pass around their phones with profiles of men they’re dating or might be interested in (in one case, two people matched with the same guy). We discuss the vicissitudes of dating and relationships — local and long distance — and what and who we want. Always, in some way, the conversation comes around to sex. Some describe their sex experiences after marriage as the most expansive of their lives. After one woman divorced, she set her online age parameters for men down to their 20s and 30s with the intention of having flings. She made sure they lived in a different neighborhood, so she could separate her hookups from the rest of her life. (She is now in a relationship with a man about her age.) Another woman, who has spent several months dating widely, was trying a nonmonogamous relationship for the first time and toying with bisexuality and threeways. She wasn’t clear where she would land, but she was open to possibilities.

Men, too, told me sex and dating post-50 have been an evolving experience. In his 20s, “any sex was good sex,” H. says. But now he aspires to what the sex-advice columnist and podcaster Dan Savage calls “GGG,” or good, giving and game. As Savage puts it: “good in bed, giving of pleasure and game for anything — within reason .” It can be a tricky concept to convey on dating apps (though not on the app Feeld, where talk about sex is expected and GGG is among the desires people can choose). “If you are a guy who puts GGG on your profile, women may think you are a creep,” H. told me. Instead, he waits to talk about sex in person, often broadly broaching the subject during the first date if it’s going well. “I want to convey that I’m looking for someone who is sensual and cares about sex and that I’m the same way.” Other people told me they talk more openly about sex, because bodies change. Men have increased erectile dysfunction; women often need more lubrication or sex toys and sometimes experience pain with intercourse.

“I didn’t know myself,” says a woman named Theresa, referring to her 20s and 30s. “And I definitely didn’t know my body in the same way.” Theresa, who is in her early 50s and lives on the West Coast, never masturbated until late in her marriage. “I got my first dildo at 40 and discovered multiple orgasms. Where has this been all my life?”

Everyone, she says, “does that exchange in dating where they talk about their marriage. I always say I’ve been divorced on paper five years, but longer emotionally and physically.” Within a couple of dates, Theresa, who a friend refers to as an “online dating queen” because she has gone on more than 100 first dates in five years, tells men about her experience with masturbation and orgasms. “It’s part of my story,” she says. She also talks about what she learned from a therapist who counseled her and her ex-husband that sex is more than penetration. “I want to be having intimacy in my 80s,” she says. “It’s also about cuddling naked, skin-to-skin contact.” What she is looking for isn’t novelty but the harder stuff, as she puts it: “being open and vulnerable.”

In one Match survey, single people over 60 reported having more frequent orgasms than younger single people. And they are the least likely age group to fake orgasms. They also tend to be communicative: 57 percent said they feel comfortable asking their partner for exactly what they want in sex. That ease and honesty may be related to the fact that people grow more confident and happy in their 60s, according to multiple studies. Which is not to say everyone wants the same kind of sex — or any sex at all. “I want tenderness,” Deborah, who is in her 60s, told me. “I don’t care how intense sex is. I’m looking for a good person.”

Sophia Chang, who is 58, the author of the memoir “The Baddest Bitch in the Room” and the founder of a professional mentorship program for women of color in New York, definitely wants the intensity. “But I get very little play compared to my friends who are a decade younger than me,” she says of online dating. She assumes if a man from a dating app is texting her, he is doing the same with at least five other women. Plenty have asked her for nude selfies. And she suspects that people who claim to be ethically nonmonogamous are often just cheating on their partners. “I don’t do messy,” she says.

When her relationship with the father of her children ended, she was 43 and felt done with sex. But in her 50s, after a relationship with a man who encouraged her to be more sexually open, Chang felt increasingly libidinous. She also became an empty nester, giving her freedom, including with her sexuality. “Younger men tell me that what they like about older women is they know their bodies and ask for what they want.”

Last year, she joined two dating apps where, when she matches with a man, she moves quickly from texts to phone calls or FaceTime. (When we last talked, she told me that week she had gone from matching with a man on an app, to texting, to FaceTime, to meeting outdoors and then having sex in the space of 12 hours.) On the phone she is frank: “Can you tell me what you like and what you don’t like, and I’ll do same?” Then she details some of her desires and sexual kinks and her boundaries, including no unprotected sex. Sometimes after connecting, men ask to come over immediately to have sex. “Excuse me,” Chang told me she says. “I have a safety accountability practice. I tell them I need to send their photo, full name and phone number to a friend. That is where some men push back hard.”

Until she finds the right matches, she continues to unabashedly audition men who connect with her on dating apps. At her age, she, like many women I spoke to, has a better sense of who she is and what she desires, and sees no point in hiding it. “If I bat my eyes, I could get further. But for what?” There’s no sense in wasting time when life is growing too short.

Maggie Jones is a contributing writer for the magazine and teaches writing at the University of Pittsburgh. She has been a Nieman fellow at Harvard and a senior Ochberg fellow at the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma.

Read by Gabra Zackman

Narration produced by Anna Dimond ,  Emma Kehlbeck and Krish Seenivasan

Engineered by Ted Blaisdell

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