Identity in Invisible Man Anonymous 11th Grade

In Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, the nameless narrator is invisible, meaning he is not seen for who he is. He believes that pleasing others and controlling his identity will enable him to succeed, yet it does the opposite and allows individuals and institutions to take advantage of him. Throughout the narrator’s experiences, several hints reveal how he should live in order to be seen. Through repeated confrontation with these hints, he eventually realizes and internalizes their meaning -- that he must not try to fit the box that others put him in, but he can take on his own identity and live authentically.

The narrator is invisible because he does not act as his authentic self. Instead, he behaves according to how he believes others want him to, enabling them to use him as a tool. Being a black man in a white-dominated society, much of this behavior is due to the his grandfather’s advice to “overcome ‘em with yeses… agree ‘em to death,” or to submit to white authority (16). He first manifests this behavior at the battle royal, where he is forced to fight against other black men before delivering a speech. Despite being demeaned and abused by the white men watching the battle royal, he unrelentingly thinks about how he “wanted...