86 pages • 2 hours read
Invisible Man
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Symbols & Motifs
Briefcase
At the beginning of the novel, the school superintendent of the protagonist’s hometown gives the protagonist a briefcase. Inside the case is a certificate granting him admission to a Black college, making the object a highly symbolic item already. The briefcase accompanies the protagonist throughout the novel’s events, and he begins to collect important papers and memorabilia in it. By the end of the novel, when he falls down the manhole into the coal heap, the case is full of papers representing various stages of his journey. To see in the darkness of the underground room, the protagonist is forced to burn several of the items in the briefcase, including his high school diploma, the doll that Clifton was selling, and the threatening note that Jack wrote him. The briefcase is symbolic of the protagonist’s desire to carry these things around with him: His accomplishments, his failures, and his attempts to discover who he is are represented by the papers in the case. By burning them, the protagonist has rejected the influence of such objects and their associations, determined to rely only on himself.
Light and Darkness
Light and darkness are used as symbols in Invisible Man, primarily as devices for enabling or preventing accurate sight. The protagonist, for example, defines himself as “invisible,” meaning that other people cannot see him accurately. Accordingly, the protagonist describes his current state—after the events of the book—as being in darkness and living in holes. However, he lights the dark “hole” he lives in with electric lights, signaling that he is determined to remain “illuminated” by understanding, despite his period of inactivity in social issues. He also learns to use darkness to his own benefit during the race riots, indicating that he is learning to transcend physical sight in favor of a more complex “knowing.” He dons dark sunglasses, but rather than being hindered by the darkness, he disguises himself and tests out his resemblance to the mysterious Rinehart, protecting himself as he does. His revelations about the various roles that Rinehart plays help lead him to his own self-realization. This inversion of the traditional connotations of light and dark implies that the protagonist reinvents the way he moves through the world by rejecting the associations he is “told” to have, just as he rejects the traditional ideologies about race that he has become accustomed to.
Physical Climate of Southern and Northern US Regions
The North and South of the US serve as symbolic settings that affect the protagonist’s ability to define himself. As in the narrative of racial injustice, Ellison defies expectations by contrasting physical and emotional realities. The northern city of New York, for example, enables the protagonist’s awakening to racial justice issues—but it also offers him several disappointments that lead to his journey of self-reflection and definition. The time at which his “first northern winter had set in” (260) coincides with the protagonist’s witnessing of the eviction. The protagonist uses imagery of ice and “hot” anger to describe his emotions around social injustice (259-260), imagery that is ironic because his hot anger is experienced in the physically cold North. He describes his existence in the South as characterized by “ice” and coldness, further adding to the sense of irony. Despite the physically cold surroundings, the protagonist continues to describe anger and unrest as “an inner fever” and “hot inner argument” (261). This imagery and its contrast with the protagonist’s physical surroundings indicate that the protagonist’s journey will defy his expectations as well.
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By Ralph Ellison
