Name: Invisible Man
Rating: 3.821428571428572 (182 reviews)

Ralph Ellison

Charles Johnson

An African-American man's search for success and the American dream leads him out of college to Harlem and a growing sense of personal rejection and social invisibility. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Invisible Man

Paige Wanner

Julie <3

I remember that I am invisible and walk softly so as not to awaken the sleeping ones. 

Before that I lived in the darkness into which I was chased, but now I see. I've illuminated the blackness of my invisibility—and vice versa.

what was real, what solid. what more than a pleasant, time-killing dream? For how could it have been real if now I am invisible? If real, why is it that I can recall in all that island of greenness no fountain but one that was broken, corroded and dry? And why does no rain fall through my recollections, sound through my memories, soak through the hard dry crust of the still so recent past? Why do I recall, instead of the odor of seed bursting in springtime, only the yellow contents of the cistern spread over the lawn's dead grass? Why? And how? How and why?

even here in the filtering dusk, here beneath the deep indigo sky, here, alive with looping swifts and darting moths, here in the hereness of the night not yet lighted by the moon that looms blood-red behind the chapel like a fallen sun, its radiance shedding not upon the here-dusk of twittering bats, nor on the there-night of cricket and whippoorwill, but focused short-rayed upon our place of convergence; and we drifting forward with rigid motions, Iimbs stiff and voices now silent, as though on exhibit even in the dark, and the moon a white man's bloodshot eve.

(Loved? Demanded. Sung? An ultimatum accepted and ritualized, an allegiance recited for the peace it imparted, and for that perhaps loved. Loved as the defeated come to love the symbols of their conquerors. A gesture of acceptance, of terms laid down and reluctantly approved.)

And I remember too, how we confronted those others, those who had set me here in this Eden, whom we knew though we didn't know, who were unfamiliar in their familiarity, who trailed their words to us through blood and violence and ridicule and condescension with drawling smiles, and who exhorted and threatened, intimidated with innocent words a they described to us the limitations of our lives and the vast boldness of our aspirations

clara

And I knew that it was better to live out one's own absurdity than to die for that of others

"Old woman, what is this freedom you love so well?" 

She looked surprised, then thoughtful, then baffled. "I done forgot, son. It's all mixed up. First I think it's one thing, then I think it's another. It gits my head to spinning. I guess now it ain't nothing but knowing how to say what I got up in my head.’’

But my world has become one of infinite possibilities. What a phrase - still it's a good phrase and a good view of life, and a man shouldn't accept any other; that much I've learned underground. Until some gang succeeds in putting the world in a strait jacket, its definition is possibility.

I denounce because though implicated and partially responsible, I have been hurt to the point of abysmal pain, hurt to the point of invisibility. And I defend because in spite of it all, I find that I love. In order to get some of it down I have to love. I sell you no phony forgiveness, I'm a desperate man – but too much of your life will be lost, its meaning lost, unless you approach it as much through love as through hate. So I approach it through division so I denounce and I defend and I hate and I love.

Ralph Ellison's impassioned first novel, winner of the prestigious American National Book Award, tells the story of an invisible man simply because people refuse to see me. Yet his powerfully depicted adventures go far beyond the story of one man.

Life altering. Stunning. Perfectly crated.

_linia_

Gavin

Celeste Richardson

“I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids-and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, because people refuse to see me.”

I’m a sucker for good openings. If an author gives me a great opening line or paragraph, I’ll likely stick with the story to the end, even if the magic dissipates after the first few pages. Which is the main reason I finished this book. I understand that I’m in the minority here. Don’t get me wrong, I can see why it’s a classic and I’m glad I can now say that I read it. But, to me, those first few lines were magic that never quite reasserted itself in the rest of Ellison’s work. 

The novel started out strong. Really strong. Our nameless narrator was trying to make the best life for himself that a black man could at that time, and tried to use his powerful oration to help his fellow man. For the first third of the novel, I was engrossed in his life, my heart heavy with sympathy and guilt for the sins of my forefathers. But after (view spoiler)[ the narrator was basically given an electrical lobotomy to erase his memory,  (hide spoiler)] the book started to unravel for me. There were still moments of beauty and moments of heartache. Mary was a wonderful character, and I smiled any time she was in a scene. But the further I read, the more disjointed the book seemed to me. I don’t know if this was purposeful, to show how damaged the narrator was from the spoiler above, or if it was just in how I read, but I lost my connection to the narrator. I felt disconnected from about the middle of the book until the epilogue, where our nameless narrator is once more his present self. Here I reconnected, right before Ellison wrapped up his tale. 

Overall, I am glad that I read Invisible Man. I went into it knowing that it wouldn’t be an enjoyable read. How could it be, given the subject matter? But it was a thought-provoking read. I hate that I couldn’t maintain my involvement with the story all the way through the novel, but I don’t blame Mr. Ellison for that. It was an important story, poetically told.

Elizabeth Dobson

Literally the worst book I've ever read in my life.

Kevin Bertolero

One of the best books I’ve ever read???

Emma

'I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.' Defeated and embittered by a country which treats him as a non-being, the 'invisible man' retreats into an underground cell, where he smokes, drinks, listens to jazz and recounts his search for identity in white society: as an optimistic student in the Deep South, in the north with the black activist group the Brotherhood, and in the Harlem race riots. And explains how he came to be living underground . . . 'An American classic . . . one of the most original voices of Black America.' The Times

Rose Stanley

An uncomfortable read, which, I suppose, is the point, but I also found that aspects of this verged on the grotesque. The parts with the Trueblood family near the beginning and Sybil near the end left a particularly nasty taste in the mouth. Appreciate the message here, but jury is still out re the delivery.

Summer Stanley

Jeni Enjaian

This was an odd book, one of those books that I finish and am not really sure how I feel about it. On one hand, the writing is excellent. The prose flows without hitch from one page to the next, from one topic or event to another. However, that fluidity obscures any definitive point. At the end I am unsure of the author's overall purpose in writing the book. The situations that the purposefully unnamed protagonist finds himself in are utterly absurd and mind-numbing. I'm sure that if I read the book more carefully and studied it as if I had to read it for a class I would understand more. I happen to believe, however, that the best books don't need that level of scrutiny to be understood, at least at a surface level.

Cindy

Oof. This novel is hard to read. Not because it's terribly written, but the ways in which pain and manipulation hit so close and so existentially close to home will spoon out your brain like a melon. Invisible Man feels both real and surreal. The overall result is something crushing and terrific that makes everything around you feel so much heavier.

Daryl Houston

Didn't really know what to expect out of this one. There were some powerful bits especially closer to the end, but on the whole I found it a lot more tedious than some others of a similar bent I've read this year.

Invisible Man

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