Invisible Man Prologue

From very early on I could tell Invisible Man was going to be a very insightful book. The narrator introduces himself as an invisible but unlike the scientists from H.G. Well’s Invisible Man, the narrator of Ellison’s version isn't actually physically transparent. Instead, he is invisible because people “refuse” to see him for who he actually is. I marked this in my book because I think it is important to note that people chooses not to “see” him. One way people do this is that they see him through a stereotype that they think he fits into instead of for him as an individual. As a result they don’t see him, they see the stereotype. They judge him based on his surroundings and they don’t look at him as an individual “it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surrounding, themselves, or figments of their imagination—indeed, everything and anything except me”.   They see what they want to see and not what is in reality there. This brings up the idea of illusion vs reality. People choose the illusion that they want to see and “refuse” the reality of what is there. From the prologue it is apparent that the book will touch on some existentialist ideas.

I thought it was interesting that the narrator doesn’t believe his invisibility to be a bad thing, “I am not complaining, nor am I protesting either. It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves” ,and he even goes on to say later, “I myself, after existing some twenty years, did not become alive until I discovered my invisibility”. So does one want to be invisible? I don’t think the narrator necessarily wants to be invisible, but he accepts that he is invisible. See other people “refuse” to see him; it is there blindness that makes him invisible and not is inability to be seen. He knows that he can’t make himself be seen if others don’t want to see him and as a result he tries to remain invisible “I remember that I am invisible and walk softly so as not to awaken the sleeping ones. Sometimes it is best not awaken them; there are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers”.

My favorite scene in the book so far is when he nearly kills a man that he “bumped” into. The man is like a sleepwalker who the narrator rouses when he bumps into him. However as a sleepwalker, the man is still sleeping/ dreaming and thus still sees the world through the illusion of the dream rather the reality of what’s there.  The narrator realizes this before he is about to slit the man’s throat and he stops himself and lets the man live, “it occurred to me that the man had not seen me, actually; that he as far as he knew, was in the midst of a walking nightmare”.   Here we see the dangers of when reality and illusion mix together.

There is so much more to analyze in the prologue. However I will leave that for another discussion or blog.