Ralph Ellison displays a multitude of different types of invisibility through multiple characters in Invisible Man. All of these types of invisibility are different and interesting, and important in helping the Narrator’s character arc of realizing his own invisibility.      The first type of invisibility displayed in Invisible Man is shown all the way back in chapter one. The Narrator’s grandfather, on his deathbed, gives the Narrator advice on how to survive peacefully in a white society. He says that the Narrator should “overcome ‘em with yesses, undermine ‘em with grins, agree ‘em to death and destruction, let ‘em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open.” He is basically telling the Narrator to conform to the will of white people and let them control and manipulate him. With this type of invisibility, the Narrator would live without his voice and opinion about racism and social issues never being heard, but in return, would hopefully live a relatively peaceful life.

Throughout Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison likes to use different forms of symbolism to represent what the Narrator is going through. Two of the most recent examples of this are the racist figurine he finds in his room, and the broken chain that is given to him by Brother Tarp. In this blog post, I will basically explain the significance of these physical representations of the Narrator’s current state. (This isn’t going to be an extremely coherent argument about Invisible Man and its symbolism, just me explaining what I think these two items represent.) In Chapter 15, the Narrator wakes up the day after taking his job with the Brotherhood, he wakes up and finds a strange object near his door which he had never noticed before. It’s an Americana coin bank, which was basically a racist depiction of black people that was fairly common during that time period. It is pretty safe to say that the Narrator is Not happy to see this. “Then near the door I saw somethi