ralph ellison

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ralph ellison
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Basic Facts

• b. March 1, 1914 Oklahoma City, OK
• Lewis Alfred Ellison
• Ida Millsap
• Named for Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Invisible Man, 1952
• National Book Award 1953
• New York University 1970 1979
• d. April 16, 1994, pancreatic cancer, NYC

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In his own words

• "I have always read a lot, and I began to realize
  I had a certain talent for it. It was not easy to
  be the kind of musician I wanted to be I did not
  have enough money to go to Juilliard school of
  music. So I stuck with what I had.
• "One day I wrote, 'I am an invisible man. I did
  not know what those words represented at the
  start, and I had no thought about what gave me
  the idea.
• "You do not write out of your skin. You write out
  of your ideas and the quality of your mind."

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Cont.

• who wore their everyday clothes on Sunday, and
  those who wore their Sunday clothes every day. I
  wanted to wear Sunday clothes every day. (on
  what he wanted to be)
• tell us about the unity of American experience
  beyond all considerations of class, of race, of
  religion. (task of the writer)
• "I tried to use my ear for dialogue to give an
  impression of just how people sounded. I
  developed a technique of transcribing that
  captured the idiom rather than trying to convey
  the dialect through misspellings."

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Education

• 1933 Tuskegee Institute music scholarship
• Cited The Waste Land as a major influence
• T.S. Eliot (link here)
• NYC sculpture and photography
• Odd jobs book reviews, articles, photography,
  shoe shining
• Hired to cover race riots in Harlem
• Met Richard Wright
• Encouraged him to write fiction
• Merchant Marines WWII
• Idea for first novel black solider in Nazi camp
• Writes 1947 51 publishes IM in 1952

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Invisible Man

• Contrary to other literature of the time
• Intelligent, articulated protagonist
• One day in 1945, Ellison sat at his typewriter in
  Vermont, thinking of an ironic joke he had heard
  from a black face comedian about his family
  becoming so progressively dark in complexion that
  the new baby's mother could not even see her. In
  this vein, he suddenly wrote, "I am an invisible
  man". He nearly rejected the idea but was
  intrigued and decided to give it a try.
• Differences in Northern/Southern racism
• Black nationalism (i.e. Marcus Garvey)
• Opposed to multiculturalism
• Redefinition of indigenous identity

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IM cont.

• Parallel to Marxism
• Struggle
• Actions and institutions are economically
  installed
• Are you in control of your destiny? Caste
  systems?
• Experimental attitude style
• Contrary to Realism and naturalism
• Bildungsroman a novel of education
• Symbolism see The Waste Land
• Jazz
• Structure
• Riffs? Parts? Melodies? Content?

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Major Themes

• Openness of anonymity
• Armor of invisibility
• Equality of men
• Invention of culture
• What else?

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Symbols

• Liberty Paint
• Pure White vs. Optic White
• Brockman
• Jacks glass eye
• Coin bank at Marys

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Motifs

• Lights
• Darkness
• Blindness
• Visions
• Dreams
• Jazz