"Invisible Man"

Paper Summary:

This paper explores the uses of a variety of symbols in Ralph Ellison's "The Invisible Man", chiefly the use of colors to expose themes and motifs. The paper notes that, with the use of color symbology, Ellison manages to emphasize the modern condition of race conflict in the U.S. while providing a gripping narrative.

From the Paper:

"This incident highlights the transient thread that connects appearance with reality. Nothing can be taken at face value. Likewise, the gold letters emblazoned upon the scholarship he is given imply a grand, lucrative future after he has graduated from college. Instead, he finds himself jobless in New York City after several years of tireless academic labor, sent there by the college administration for mistakenly taking a trustee to the aptly named Golden Day. This action caused a scandal precisely because it replaced appearance with reality for that trustee, Mr. Norton. Our narrator destroyed Norton's stereotypical view of blacks and replaced it with a tiny, non-representative slice of reality."

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