1 IV 2008
At a first glance, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man reminds me of Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, as both depicts characters who see themselves as outcasts —the narrator from the former as an “invisible man” and the underground man from the latter as a superfluous man. Symbolically, narrator of the Invisible Man lives in a basement that he calls the “hole” in Harlem to characterize his submerged existence. Yet at the same time the narrator is different from Dostoevsky’s underground man, who has “submerged” to the existence of an outcast because he refuses to comply with the progressive ideal of his time and voluntarily chooses such a state out of resignation—he is invisible, underground in the hole only because the social structure of his time does not allow visibility, only “because people refuse to see [him]” (3). Hence, while Dostoevsky’s underground man stays underground permanently, Ellison’s invisible man does so only temporarily in anticipation for future change. To this effect, then, the invisible man contemplates on the difference between formlessness and invisibility to strongly esteem the value of the former. The two are not to be confused: to the narrator “form” constitutes his concrete existence, while invisibility describes his social condition. The latter contributes to the narrator’s esteem of his form—that is to say, the social condition which denies the narrator a perceivable and stable social identity forces him to focus on his personal identity, whose darkness urges him to seek more “light” (7). But inversely, this also suggests that the narrator deeply fears formlessness; as a man whose social condition is denied a functional identity, how much can he hope for personal identity?
However, I think it is exactly this separation between form and visibility that denies the narrator a final triumph from his invisibility; he merely comprehends his social status of invisibility and uses it to realize of his personal existence, i.e. form, but cannot transcend beyond this given condition. Because the narrator understands too well others’ inability to truly perceive his identity, he becomes trapped by the very idea of invisibility—he complies with invisibility so that he can affirm his role as an invisible man. Hence, through his experience as a high school graduate, a college student, a worker, a member of the brotherhood, the narrator allows himself to be perceived by others but not in depth to remain invisible. But he realizes the danger of this approach through his encounter with Rinehart. Rinehart is at once a pimp, a bookie, and a preacher who directly approaches the problem of invisibility. Yet the character remains distant and mysterious; he is known only through reputation and does not make an appearance. In this effect Rinehart is not only invisible, but also formless to the narrator. However, the narrator ultimately denies Rinehart’s invisibility because the combination of formlessness and invisibility suggests, in addition to self-understanding and complexity, in-authenticity and manipulation. The narrator chooses a different path to accept invisibility without rejecting form: he values personal complexity without losing his authenticity.
But does this realization truly create an identity for the narrator? Does he not become yet another underground man? Ellison suggests that this stage is only temporary—
In going underground, I whipped it all except the mind, the mind. And the mind that has conceived a plan of living must never lose sight of the chaos against which that pattern was conceived. That goes for societies as well as for individuals. Thus, having tried to give pattern to the chaos which lives within the pattern of your certainties, I must come out, I must emerge (581).
The solution to the problem is individualistic. The underground only designate the period in which a clear sense of the self is being formed from its self-realization of forms—emancipation from the social visibility that haunts it. Like the French existentialist, Ellison seems to suggest that authenticity defines existence. However, I think that something is missing here: how does the invisible man truly differ from the underground man other than a slightly more positive outlook on life and identity? This compromise of an existence in invisibility only suggests a separation between social reality and individual reality. Or, more abstractly, thought and action. Although form can still be perceived through mind; it is still invisible. I do not think that the narrator can truly achieve a concrete identity as a mere individual. Praxis and social liberation must come as a consequence to unite form and visibility.
