Ralph Ellison’s Influential Life and Works

Ralph Ellison has become one of the most influential American writers of the twentieth century. His most famous novel, “Invisible Man” has be a great influence on many Americans, and continues to grow in popularity. Ellison found inspiration for the book from his own life, which makes it important to learn more about him, to help see the brilliance behind his National Book Award winning novel. Ellison’s life is the source of much of his inspiration, and analyzing the Invisible Man in depth while comparing the novel to his life can show where his brilliance comes from. Who is Ralph Ellison and where did he come from? He was born in Oklahoma City where he was raised by his mother and father, Alfred Ellison and Ida Millsap. (“Ralph (Waldo) Ellison” 1) His father, Alfred Ellison, passed away when he was thirty-nine leaving the Ida, Ellison, and Herbert, Ellison’s brother, alone to fend for themselves. This brought an immense change on Ellison’s life as this left the family with little money and resources to survive.
At 19 years of age Ellison moved away from his home in Oklahoma and enrolled in the Tuskegee Institute, an institute founded by Booker T. Washington, where he studied music for three years. Due to the lack of financial resources, Ellison was never able to graduate from Tuskegee Institute and left after his third year. Hoping to find work and return to school, Ellison moved to New York in 1936 where he continued to live for most of his life. ("An Interview."1-3)
In New York, Ellison met author Richard Wright, who became a great influence on Ralph’s life. Ellison began getting immersed in his writings and was encouraged to write a review for New Challenge, a publication that Richard Wright edited. (“Ralph (Waldo) Ellison” 1) Ellison’s review was entitled “Creative and Cultural Lag” and was published in New Challenge, giving a great start to his very successful writing carrier.
It can be said that Ellison’s greatest achievements were his novels and other works. A critic of Ellison’s work writes “Ralph Ellison set out to write the Great American Novel about race. What he finally produced was more than that,” acknowledging how great this novel truly was ("The Visible Ralph Ellison." 1). Ellison’s most popular and most acclaimed work is the Invisible Man, a story of a man who sees himself as “invisible” because he struggles to answer his own questions of self-definition. The story also shows the struggle of the African American community during the 1930’s and how hard it was for the “invisible man” to push for more in life when society tried to hold him back.
The novel demonstrated Ellison’s strong views of cultural separation, discrimination and showed some of his personal discriminative life experiences through the main character of the story. In the first chapter of the novel, Battle Royal, which was originally published as a short story, Ellison tells the story of how the invisible man is awarded a scholarship to the state college for black youth, but earns it through humiliatingly entertaining the communities “most important,” “lily-white men”(Ellison 16). This is a bit discouraging and the narrator has a dream that he open the brief case and finds an official sealed envelope stating, “To Whom It May Concern . . . Keep This Nigger-Boy Running”(Ellison 33) Ellison was also awarded a scholarship to a black university, showing strong ties between his person life and his novel, and demonstrating his feelings toward the cultural discrimination.
Because the narrator struggles to over come these discouraging experiences, the Invisible Man as been acclaimed for how inspirational it truly is. Later in the novel, the narrator is dismissed from school and has no source of income. He moves to New York to find a job but is set back by deceptive reference letters he believed were meant to help him, but eventually finds a job at a paint company where he is involved in a dangerous fight that lands him in the hospital. When he is released, he delivers a strong speech after witnessing an eviction and subsequently attracts the attention of the leader of a group called the “Brotherhood.” He is then asked to become a representative for the group, signifying the inspirational experiences this character goes through in the novel. The narrator was without a job; set back in many ways, but in the end prevailed and became a representative of a strong group dedicated to social change.
One of the strongest themes in Invisible Man is blindness, or in other words, how people purposely avoid, or choose not to see what they do not wish to be true. From the first page of the novel Ellison writes “I (the narrator) am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me,” presenting one of the main themes of Invisible Man. This theme is reoccurring, as many characters in the novel are “blind” to the truth. For example, when the main character enters the arena to deliver a speech in chapter 16, he recognizes a picture of a fighter on the wall, which had been beaten blind in a crooked fight. This fighter’s blindness to the fact that the fight was crooked made him literally blind. Following this event the narrator is brought to the stage where the narrator says, “the light was so strong I could no longer see the audience,” leaving him blind to his audience. The narrator himself is blind throughout the novel in the sense that he has yet to discover himself. Towards the end of the novel the narrator says “This is as far as I’ve ever gotten, for all like seen from the hole of invisibility is absurd” because he is begin to over come the blindness, he continues to say “I’m coming out” “and I suppose it’s about damn well time.”
The authors own life experiences are seen, although not exact, but present in the novel. The main characters struggles in life just as Ellison did to better themselves and further their education. They both earned a scholarship to an African American university and both moved to New York after three years of education. These obvious real life connections to Ellison’s life make the novel seem Non-fiction and bring a realistic sense to the Invisible Man himself. While Ellison’s art was writing, and the Invisible Mans art was speaking, they both have similar experiences in discovering this. Ellison meets Richard Wright, who pushes him to become a better writer and helps him get published, much like brother Jack helps the Invisible Man become a better speaker and be earn a place to speak for the Brotherhood.
Ralph Ellison is a great American author that has inspired and has written, what Saul Bellow says to be, “a book of the very first order, a superb book.” Ellison’s novel, Invisible Man, has been acclaimed for its inspiring themes of social blindness and racism. Ellison’s own life experiences are seen through out the novel and help bring the story to life, making it seem non-fiction. Ellison is a brilliant writer who has influenced many lives including my own and is truly one of America’s greatest authors.