I was almost confused while watching the first part of the documentary on Ralph Ellison. The documentary opened with Ellison's childhood, about how he got to college, and eventually to New York. Yet the part that I found creepy was how closely it paralleled the adolescence of the narrator in Invisible Man. Both Ellison and the narrator were given a scholarship, but only after hard work and events essentially out of their hands. It appeared to be a struggle for both to physically get to college, Ellison had to freighthop and, although not stated in the novel, the narrator probably had to go through some similar hardship to arrive at college. Their time at college was also similar, the documentary practically quoted the novel when it said Ellison had to travel north after his junior year and work to pay for the rest of college. Neither of them returned to college, although for different reasons. Both men continued on somewhat similar paths when they were in New York. Both met important people (or their secretaries in the narrator's case) and eventually end up becoming fairly prominent figures in NYC.
Well, at this point their paths split. Ellison went on writing, traveling around, married, and eventually taught. However, the narrator worked with Liberty Paints, then the Brotherhood, and finally went on a soul searching mission only to discover his invisibility and that he has been played all his life. There is very little doubt in my mind that this crossing of paths was a coincidence. Knowing all of the references Ellison made in Invisible Man leads me to assume that this was planned (although I don't remember the documentary talking about this parallel.)
I wasn't there to watch the first part on Monday, but from what I've seen the past two days and how you've described it here, it makes me wonder if maybe the reason he struggled so much writing his second novel was that he wasn't drawing from these personal experiences? It may be that he was able to relate to "Invisible Man" because he was expressing partly what he felt on his path through college and NYC. Many of the dreamlike scenes could be to depict how he felt like he was jumping through hoops to achieve in his younger years.
ReplyDeleteI made a blog post very similar to the one you made here (you beat me by a day and I didn't even notice!) and I couldn't help but notice that there were also a few thematic parallels between the two as well. One of the biggest to me was how Ellison's peers described him as very elitist and snobbish, and it reflects in the narrator where he decided that the best course of action was to just disassociate himself from society completely in order to discover himself. Another that we talked about in class was where Ellison only referred to himself as a "Negro". I thought this fit into the book where the narrator would assess racism and overall think it's a bad thing, but never truly denounces it.
ReplyDeleteWell, in order to make assumptions and conclusions about the world and his characters, a writer must have valid observations and experiences to base them on. Ellison probably went through a similar process as the narrator did, and came to similar realizations. He drew from his own experiences to create a relateable and realistic character, so it makes sense that a lot of Ellison's own experiences end up existing in parallel to the plot of the novel.
ReplyDeleteAlso if Invisible Man takes a similar course to Ellison's life, then what does Ellison do in society after his experiences? He releases his novel, but doesn't release a completed second novel. He's also pretty neutral and generally inactive when it comes to controversial topics and protests. He stayed secluded in his house writing that final installment that never came. Does that make Invisible Man seem more tragic?
DeleteI see Ellison as drawing on his own experiences in the novel, for settings and for psychological effects, but they're filtered through a fictional lens that distorts, exaggerates, and renders them symbolically laden and even surreal at times. But I see the narrator's own writing in a similar way: he's not aiming for realism, a simple "record" of what happened; the surreal, dreamlike elements can be seen to represent, expressionistically, what it was like for him to go through these experiences. So when he thinks back to the Jim Crow South, it seems like this bizarro carnivalesque scene with cigar-chomping politicians screaming at "black boys" and making them fight each other over fake gold coins. We might imagine Ellison making use of his own experiences in a similar way.
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