Essay on the Genius of Ralph Ellison -- Biography Biographies Essays

The Genius of Ralph Ellison I am an unseeyn man. With these five words, Ralph Ellison ignited the literary world with a work that commanded the respect of scholars everywhere and opened the floodgates for dialogue about the bureau of African-Americans in American society, the blindness that drove the nation to prejudice, and racial pluralism as a forum for recognizing the interconnection between all members of society irrespective of race. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. . . . That invisibility to which I refer occurs because of a peculiar disposition of the eye of those with whom I come in contact. A matter of the construction of their inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality (Ellison, 1). Roughly autobiographic in nature, Ellisons Invisible military personnel is also a chronology constructed to parallel the story of African-Americans, from slavery, Emancipation, subjugation, and a rising consci ousness of injustice perpetrated against them. However, Ellisons literary finesse produced an objet dart that draws in every member of American society. Rather than alienating whites by portraying a man victimized by a racial system, Ellison appeals to the universal needs of humankind to be valued, recognized, and respected. Through his portrayal of an enigmatic, complex, invisible protagonist he makes the reader reflect upon the societal dynamics that interact people and create the unsettling climate that the protagonists needs and feelings may be like to those of the reader. Ellisons life has been called representative of that of African-Americans of his era. Born in 1914 to parents of farming and small moving in backgrounds, he grew up in O... ...s movement, to the current crossroads of affirmative work on and other contemporary race issues. He transformed these issues from being matters of race to matters of humanity. I am an invisible man. The pain of racism and dimi nished humanity rings through the work. Ellisons own life met with many of the same challenges, in so far he made the story one not limited to the African American community. As the last sentence of the book asks, Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you? Bibliography Bloom, Harold. Ed. Modern Critical Interpretations Invisible Man. Philadelphia Chelsea put forward Publishers. 1999. Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. New York Random House. 1952. Ellison, Ralph. Juneteenth. New York Random House. 1999. McSweeny, Kerry. Invisible Man Race and Identity. Boston Twayne Publishers. 1988.