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Invisible Man Paperback – March 14, 1995

by Ralph Ellison (Author)

1,576 customer reviews

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Invisible Man is a milestone in American literature, a book that has continued to engage readers since its appearance in 1952. A first novel by an unknown writer, it remained on the bestseller list for sixteen weeks, won the National Book Award for fiction, and established Ralph Ellison as one of the key writers of the century. The nameless narrator of the novel describes growing up in a black community in the South, attending a Negro college from which he is expelled, moving to New York and becoming the chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of "the Brotherhood", and retreating amid violence and confusion to the basement lair of the Invisible Man he imagines himself to be. The book is a passionate and witty tour de force of style, strongly influenced by T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, Joyce, and Dostoevsky.

Invisible Man

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

We rely, in this world, on the visual aspects of humanity as a means of learning who we are. This, Ralph Ellison argues convincingly, is a dangerous habit. A classic from the moment it first appeared in 1952, Invisible Man chronicles the travels of its narrator, a young, nameless black man, as he moves through the hellish levels of American intolerance and cultural blindness. Searching for a context in which to know himself, he exists in a very peculiar state. "I am an invisible man," he says in his prologue. "When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination--indeed, everything and anything except me." But this is hard-won self-knowledge, earned over the course of many years.

As the book gets started, the narrator is expelled from his Southern Negro college for inadvertently showing a white trustee the reality of black life in the south, including an incestuous farmer and a rural whorehouse. The college director chastises him: "Why, the dumbest black bastard in the cotton patch knows that the only way to please a white man is to tell him a lie! What kind of an education are you getting around here?" Mystified, the narrator moves north to New York City, where the truth, at least as he perceives it, is dealt another blow when he learns that his former headmaster's recommendation letters are, in fact, letters of condemnation.

What ensues is a search for what truth actually is, which proves to be supremely elusive. The narrator becomes a spokesman for a mixed-race band of social activists called "The Brotherhood" and believes he is fighting for equality. Once again, he realizes he's been duped into believing what he thought was the truth, when in fact it is only another variation. Of the Brothers, he eventually discerns: "They were blind, bat blind, moving only by the echoed sounds of their voices. And because they were blind they would destroy themselves.... Here I thought they accepted me because they felt that color made no difference, when in reality it made no difference because they didn't see either color or men."

Invisible Man is certainly a book about race in America, and sadly enough, few of the problems it chronicles have disappeared even now. But Ellison's first novel transcends such a narrow definition. It's also a book about the human race stumbling down the path to identity, challenged and successful to varying degrees. None of us can ever be sure of the truth beyond ourselves, and possibly not even there. The world is a tricky place, and no one knows this better than the invisible man, who leaves us with these chilling, provocative words: "And it is this which frightens me: Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?" --Melanie Rehak

From Publishers Weekly

These three volumes have been redesigned and reissued to commemorate the first anniversary of Ellison's death.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product details

Paperback: 581 pages
Publisher: Vintage Books; 2nd edition (March 14, 1995)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0679732764
ISBN-13: 978-0679732761
Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 1 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 1,576 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #612 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Action & Adventure > Men's Adventure
- #4 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Action & Adventure > Classics
- #44 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary

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Trying Hard to See You

ByGregory N. Hullenderon March 11, 2001

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Ellison's African-American hero (appropriately, we never learn his name) wanders through life suffering from people who expect him to be someone he's not. Every time he tries to assert himself, people punish him for failing to conform to their expectations, and since no two people seem to expect the same thing from him - and since he meets so many different people - he suffers a lot. He calls himself the invisible man, then, because no one sees him for himself. The novel tells how he comes to this realization and how he concludes that forcing people to conform is wrong and that diversity is a strength. Surprisingly for a black novel set in the 1950s, only about half of his troubles come from racism, and he seems to have little or no internalized racism. Also, although the novel can be read just on the surface, it has a rich allegorical subtext that rewards careful examination. (E.g. the Liberty Paint Company secretly adds a few drops of black graduate to each bucket of their award-winning white paint.) Finally, the book is almost completely free of modern notions of political correctness, so it should be readable and enjoyable for everyone.

0Comment 3 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

invisible man

ByCathy A. Wethingtonon September 4, 2011

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

i read this book over thirty years ago. though it sits on my shelf, i haven't reread it. i'm afraid of it. this is not one of those books you can't put down. you must put it down. you must rest between chapters. maybe it is due to the way it was first published - in serial form - but every minute is intense, excruciating. it is unrelenting. it is the story of a young black man making his way in the world at the beginnings of the civil rights movement. i am female, white and, when i read it, quite young, yet it still resonates with me. it is about powerlessness. it is about the struggle to become whole in a culture that defines you in a very limited way. i am not speaking as a feminist here. i'm speaking as a member of the working class, as one who doesn't have, and will never have, power. thirty years later, i remember some scenes as if i read them yesterday. this book is attached to my bones, it flows through my being, it is part of what i have become. if you are looking for entertainment, look elsewhere. if you want a book that will not just move you but become part of you, will alter you, this is it.

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Eloquent piece of prose & mean reading.

ByPamela Sicklesteelon June 25, 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

So worth re-reading. My first read of this masterpiece was 45 years ago. I think I appreciate it more in this reading, having experienced more of life. Truth, reality, optimism, disappointment, all unfolds before this vulnerable man. Vulnerable, as we all are on the path to knowing our true selves.

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A Great American Classic

ByOld Rexon February 10, 2014

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Ellison's book gets inside the enormity of black/ white experience in our country from our founding days. Yes I mean "our" since we are continuing players in this tragic history, as much now as in Mark Twain's Huckelberry Finn times. We were and are and will be in this continuing saga driven by culture, economics, politics and a sense of cultural superiority by whites and a corresponding sense of cultural, economic and political oppression by Afro-Americans. Ellison gets inside the saga, particularly the immediate social psychological, and reminded me of Mark Twain but also Dostoyevsky who ends up in exile in Siberia for his trouble. In the end as in Dostoyevsky in Crime and Punishment it ends with a kind of redemption, unlike Notes from Underground where he ends up in isolation from the intimate social relations that might have been open to him.
This is a world classic and belongs up there in our search for meaning, love and acceptance. If possible try listening to it (Joe Morton/Random House). Just as in Huck Finn, there are at least three dialects--all of them speak loudly and are important powerful voices.

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As good as the Claude Raines film

Byjay arrANGERon May 3, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Having seen the Claude Raines film I always wanted to read the book. Although some of the language is necessarily dated, this is a great and exciting book. You'll enjoy it!

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An Excellent Book

ByAmazon Customeron August 2, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

This book is well-written and I think is much better than the movie. It was an enjoyable read and clearly shows the talent of the author. I highly recommend this book.

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"Literary Jazz"

ByCassieon April 22, 2005

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I have no excuse for not reading INVISIBLE MAN before my final quarter of college. Ralph Ellison's story of racial injustice in America during the 1950s has widely been hailed as a masterpiece of American literature, a book well-received both for its treatment of controversial subject matter and for its brilliant, almost lyrical prose. Critics have called Ellison's writing a form of "literary jazz," a style of writing that is constantly changing and improvising, one minute slow and steady, the next fast-paced, shifting, and distorted. Ellison makes no effort to hide his inspiration, and comparisons between Invisible Man and Dostoevsky's Underground Man, though obvious, are treated with grace and simplicity. INVISIBLE MAN, on all levels, is a relevant, important text.

Published in 1952, at the height of the Civil Rights movement in the South, INVISIBLE MAN chronicles the story of a nameless narrator, struggling to find the truth in a world largely built on deception. The narrator introduces himself merely as "an invisible man" who is invisible "simply because people refuse to see me." At the beginning of the novel, Invisible Man is living underground on the outskirts of Harlem, stealing free electricity from a monopolizing power company...symbolically, of course, the only "power" he can take from the white man.

In the novel, Invisible Man narrates his journey from the segregated South to the cruelly beautiful North as he searches for an identity, a sense of self which he at first attempts to formulate based upon others' opinions of him. Armed with a lesson from his dying grandfather he doesn't yet fully understand and his own perceptions of the roles of blacks and whites, Invisible Man is thrust into the bustling, harsh world of Harlem, a reality far from the Southern college (based on the Tuskegee Institute) from which he came. Throughout his journey, Invisible Man must confront difficult questions about himself, dealing with both racial and self-identity. Although his journey is one of hard-learned lessons about the role of African Americans in society, his story is ultimately one of self-discovery.

With beautiful prose, simplistic brilliance, and images that are hard to read and will break your heart (for me, the Battle Royal scene especially), Ellison has written a masterpiece of fiction that unites all readers--black and white--with a story of the journey to self-discovery, something everyone must go through. Filled with stunning imagery, subtle cultural references, and searing indictments of the racial divide, INVISIBLE MAN is an important text that begs to be interpreted. Readers looking for an exciting read may want to skip this one--much of the novel chronicles everyday, anticlimactic events--but readers searching for a message with relevance that still resounds in today's society will be stunned when they reach INVISIBLE MAN's breathtaking final words.

0Comment One person found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

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Most recent customer reviews

It was a great book, i just loved it

I loved this book and thought it was amazing, the only thing was the end, it kind of made me sad because I was hoping he would finish what he was doing, overall it was a great book

Published 3 days ago by SpaceKitty_1209

Terrible Narration

Could not be more boring. Every character sounds the same and the narrator drones on in a horrible monotone that makes this absolutely worthless.

Published 5 days ago by The Armed Lutheran

Read it for the Message, But...

The overall message here is a needed and relevant one, but the symbolism is just too much at times. Ellison, it feels, treats the reader as if she or he is not capable of getting...Read more

Published 9 days ago by C.B.

Five Stars

Excellent

Published 9 days ago by Hey Girl

didn't like it.

Was for a school assignment, didn't like it.

Published 11 days ago by Allison

Five Stars

GREAT QUALITY

Published 11 days ago by IFEYINWA

Mysterious!

This is a page turner...what will happen next crowds you mind. A classic read that we seldom hear about since Wells' other books overshadow The Invisible Man.

Published 11 days ago by Roger Kenworthy

OUTSTANDING!

For the time that this book was written it is timeless. I have to give it to H G Wells to be a master craftsman

Published 12 days ago by LisaTollard

Joe Morton's reading of this painful, beautiful

Joe Morton's reading of this painful, beautiful, horrifying novel is so so perfect. I wish the themes of this book didn't still resonate quite so much. Listen, and get woke.

Published 16 days ago by BPA

Four Stars

okay

Published 18 days ago by Amazon Customer

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