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Invisible Man Rhetorical Analysis

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Synthesis
*Disclaimer: the views represented in the synthesis essay may not necessarily represent my personal opinions (I won’t write this disclaimer on the AP test). To live a meaningful life is awfully vague, for it can mean a life of happiness, of financial superiority, and of success. But the reason behind why the definition remains vague is clear: we become too obsessed with external factors and often forget ourselves--our character and our individuality. Thus, the prospect of a meaningful life continues to run away from us as we grow jealous of others who have more resources than we. To live a truly meaningful life that embraces both controllable and uncontrollable factors, we must resist trying to please others by avoiding the tendency …show more content…
In the Prologue, the narrator claims that his stealing energy from Monopolated Light & Power “allows [him] to feel [his] vital aliveness” (7). Feeling no direct threat to himself, the narrator takes on resistance rather comfortably in his underground home. However, he is not able to make meaningful change because his efforts to resist the energy company goes largely unnoticed. Later, in the Epilogue, however, having experienced adversity through exploitation and discrimination in college and in New York, the narrator says, “I must come out, I must emerge… I’m shaking off the old skin and I’ll leave it here in the hole” (581). The fact that the narrator chooses to leave his old self in the hole after the Harlem riots demonstrates that adversity can elicit one’s talents--for the narrator, his voice, passion, and capacity to understand his “socially responsible role to play” (581). The narrator’s “old skin” refers to his underground resistance, and his willingness to “emerge” to make a difference highlights that the adverse conditions he experienced truly shaped and brought out his talents. To a degree, the narrator’s desire to create change after seeing Harlem fall is similar to my desire to improve my math grade after seeing my sub-par test score; we are both motivated by the added stress of the given situations and are inspired to act and bring out our dormant talents to change what went

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