Research Paper on:
Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Invisibility

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
place in society. As one author states, "Ellison tells the first-person story of a nameless protagonist on a 20-year journey in search of himself" (Progler invisibl.htm). He is attempting to  better himself and find some righteous endeavor that will give his life meaning. He desires to understand the racial problems and the racial differences. He travels from one portion of  society to another, seeking all these things, but still remaining somewhat ignorant and blind of the realities, thus remaining invisible. And in this blindness, this sense of invisibility, which is  perhaps inherent in all of us, he maintains little in the way of self-reliance and clearly maintains little social responsibility. This is not to say that he does not believe  himself to be socially responsible in some of his actions, for he is delving into reality and at least attempting to see the truth. But it is to say that  in his searching he has not taken true responsibility for his own part of the big picture. This is what makes him invisible and inconsequential. It is a tale of  one opening his eyes to some truths, and therefor a tale of a man learning that he was stumbling around blindly. In the following paper we address how the narrator  went through the novel in blindness, and illustrate how that also incorporates the reality of self-denial and lack of, as well as need for, social responsibility as it relates to  the theme of invisibility. Invisible Man According to many, Ellisons "novel rests on a life-denying concept: social and cultural invisibility" (Rogers ellison.html). In this there is a sense  of blindness as it relates to the social and cultural invisibility. In the very beginning, in the prologue in fact, we see the beginnings of the blindness, as well as