Ellison’s Journey through life trying to figure out who he was as a person is incorporated into his writing by revealing the adventure in life of becoming an individual that one would be proud of and realizing that the world is not perfect and will never be completely fair for everyone in it. In Ralph Ellison’s novels he communicates the influences of his life through the words on the pages. In Invisible Man the narrator of the novel is an African American man who is expelled from college in the south and sent to the north for a job. He gets entangled into a political group known as the Brotherhood and finds himself questioning his individuality and his own identity. Ellison was influenced by many things such as poverty at a young age, the city of New York which changed his life, and finally the influences of racism and how he overcame prejudice. These key elements of Ellison’s life helped him into forming novel’s around the characters in his books, which he so closely relates to himself.
Ralph Ellison’s knowledge of having no hope for becoming anything more than whom he already was as a child is seen through the narrator’s thoughts about himself and his own life. As a kid Ellison remembered “working it out this way: there was a world in which you wore your everyday clothes on Sunday, and there was a world in which you wore your Sunday clothes every day…” (Ellison 6). Ralph Ellison’s world was the world in which a person wore their everyday clothes on Sunday. Much like the author of Invisible Man, the narrator in the novel resembled the life of being unable to have glorious treasures that were expensive and high-class. The narrator recalls being unable to buy his wants over his needs when one day, “as [he] undressed [he] saw [his] outworn clothes…” rather than fancy clothes that he dreams of having (Ellison 315). The process of becoming someone better in life does not just happen to people in an instant. It is something that humans themselves are required to work and strive for so they can earn it fair and square. For Ellison himself, this concept was slightly difficult to understand but in a short time he realized that it was true; though for the narrator of Invisible Man it was a more complicated story. The narrator in Invisible Man has a hard time grasping the fact that he is ultimately supposed to make choices to help his own life and not everyone else’s. He thinks that “everyone seemed to have some plan for [him], and beneath that some more secret plan,” and he was right (Ellison 194). Without the ability to make choices for himself he will never be able to attempt to find his purpose in life. Although Ellison had this same struggle of deciding how he should live his life it came to him a little easier. He found the mysterious idea of fate and destiny to be “the American theme. The nature of our society is such that we are prevented from knowing who we are” and for Ellison, what better theme to incorporate into his book Invisible Man, than the American theme? (Ellison 177). Ellison knew that he had to go out in the world and discover on his own whom he was; it did not just come to him. He went and made himself the man he became. He took control of his life. Ellison seized his understandings of his experiences in which he achieved those things and incorporated them into the narrator’s journey to accomplish that same goal of truly finding out whom he is.
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For Ellison, moving to New York was indirectly the reason that his life ended up the way it did. New York gave him opportunities which helped him turn his life into a new direction and find within himself, the man that he was meant to become. Ellison relates this to the narrator’s life in New York by giving him the option to embrace things that he never knew he desired, which in turn also helps him find his identity, just like in Ellison’s life. When the narrator of Invisible Man heard that Bledsoe, the president of his college, was sending him to New York he got slightly excited. “Deep down [he was] thinking about the freedom [he has] heard about up north…,” and he never thought for a second that he would ever have the chance to go north and have hope for that freedom (Ellison 152). The moral of the story of the narrator’s life is very similar to that of the person that wrote it. Ellison’s life led him to New York as well as his narrator’s, and while Ellison was there his dreams changed. When Ellison went to New York “[He] came up during [his] junior year hoping to work and learn a little about sculpture. And although [he] did study a bit, [he] didn’t get the job through which [he] hoped to earn enough money for [his] school expenses, so [he] remained in New York” (Ellison 14). During his life in New York “he met fellow black writer Richard Wright. Wright helped Ellison begin his writing career” (Britton). Ellison’s happenings in New York are what gave him the opportunity to find his true self and what he loved to do. Ellison creatively shares the same experience with that of the narrator’s quest. While in New York the narrator quickly found that he was once again falling into doing whatever people told him to. Going through that experience gave him the ability to discover who he was and what he agreed and disagreed with. Although his dream of going to the north led him to “the Brotherhood, a group of political radicals,” people that he found he disagreed with, it also essentially led him to discovering that he can be in control of his own life and do things that he himself agreed with (Peck 155). Ellison resembles the outcome of his life due to New York to the same outcome in the narrator’s life in New York. And that outcome is the completion of the adventure of knowing and being content with the person one is in life and knowing what one stands for. Overall New York was the reason that Ralph Ellison learned of his true self as well as the reason that the narrator of Invisible Man learned of his true self. Throughout the experiences of the narrator’s life and Ellison’s life they had been through good and bad, but each of their experiences in New York opened up their eyes and taught them many things about the reality of life. It made them realize, that although they may know their own opinions about something now that may not always be how things will end up.
When Ellison was a young child he “met a white boy…and [they] became friends” (Ellison 4). Ellison spent many years wondering why he had such a different life than some of the other kids who, to him, just so happened to be white and he had found that although some things are just not fair, it doesn’t matter, everyone still serves a purpose on this earth. He incorporates that idea into the narrator’s life in Invisible Man through his mild mental breakdown about how deceitful society can be and then the epiphany he has that fundamentally reassures him that the world is not perfect and it will always have faults. Ellison believes that “true novels, even when most pessimistic and bitter, arise out of an impulse to celebrate human life and therefore are ritualistic and ceremonial at their core” (Ellison 114). Ellison knows that he has to play his own role in society and he believes that his writing can change the world and equally affect all people just the same no matter what race, religion, or gender they are. The narrator of Invisible Man realizes with time that he is living in a world where African Americans are not viewed equally with whites. Just as Ralph Ellison himself had come to realize as he was growing up. At the time of his life that was not something that could be changed for a lot of people. Although both races may have had the same rights they still were not viewed the same. At the end of Invisible Man when the narrator disappears from the world Ralph Ellison hides that same knowledge of a human’s purpose in between the lines of Invisible Man by forcing his own thoughts into the narrator’s head to make him realize that he has “… overstayed [his] hibernation, since there’s a possibility that even an Invisible Man has a socially responsible role to play” (Ellison 581). In Invisible Man the narrator’s life of being invisible is the one thing he wished to change, but he finally understands that the capability to seem invisible is just as much a part of his identity than his physical appearance. It is who he is; it is a part of him. The narrator finally thinks and believes that one’s personal reality is something that can be changed on one’s own, “so after years of trying to adopt the opinions of others [he] finally rebelled” (Ellison 573). Society cannot hide from the bad and we cannot pretend that it does not happen either. One must stand up for what he believes in and be himself; they must play their own role in society. Just as the narrator accomplishes the understanding that no matter how life works out for humans everyone still has their own specific and important role to play. Ellison also learned that lesson in his own life and knew he had to continue to influence people with his writing to play his role in society to help form a better future for the world.
Ellison’s own real life experience of reaching the greatest potential that one can be by being content and confident with who they are as a person is demonstrated not only in his life but also in his work, Invisible Man, where he describes his own thoughts and feelings through his main character’s actions, thoughts on life, and major life changing events. Ellison’s goal in his writing is to relate to his audience so that he can inspire his reader’s lives. He attains this goal by incorporating knowledge acquired during his lifetime into his novels and by creating a realistic theme that often compares to the never-ending attempt by people to have everyone in the world experience the same epiphany as the narrator did in Invisible Man. The epiphany as experienced in Invisible Man is one that will produce a world in which people do not feel the need to judge others and be stereotypical. Ralph Ellison comprises his novels based on the faults in our reality and the hope that everyone feels compelled to overcome these faults as a society, everyone including Ralph Ellison himself.
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