Research Paper on:
Ralph Ellison's Life and Literary Career

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me" (Ellison 1518). This is the famous Prologue to Ralph  Ellisons masterpiece, Invisible Man, but also serves as a fitting description of the authors life, which was a two-fold quest to forge his own individual identity while at the same  time establish for he and his African-American contemporaries their rightful place in American history and culture. In order to understand Ralph Ellison and his journey, one must first consider  where it began, in Oklahomas frontier country on March 1, 1914 (Greene 147). Ralph Waldo Ellison was the second of three sons born to Lewis Alfred Ellison and Ida  Millsap Ellison (Greene 147). His name, in honor of Transcendentalist author Ralph Waldo Emerson, reflects his fathers passionate interest in books and speaks of "his desire that the child  grow up to be a poet and a philosopher" (Greene 147). It was no accident that Ellison was born in Oklahoma. His parents relocated there because it was  one of the few places that was remarkably untainted by racial discrimination and where economic opportunities existed for African Americans (Rogers 12).  However, any hope for a middle-class life died in 1917 with the death of Lewis Ellison (Rogers 12). Nevertheless, the bond that developed between father and son during  those three too brief years would endure and Ida Ellison did everything she could to keep her husbands memory alive for Ralph and his younger brother Herbert (his elder brought  had died during infancy) (Greene 147). Lewis Ellison had run away from his hometown of Abbeville, South Carolina at an early age to escape oppression not unlike the protagonist