Published less than fifty years ago, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man
shares with older classic works the odd quality of seeming to have been
in place much longer. It is a novel that encompasses much of the
American scene and character: though told by a single Afro-American
voice and set in the contemporary South and then in modern New York
City, its references are to the First World War, to Reconstruction, to
the Civil War and slavery, to the founding of the American republic, to
Columbus, and to the country's frontier past. In his introduction to
this volume Robert O'Meally discusses Ellison's fictional strategies for
reaching a wide audience while remaining true to his own artistic vision
and voice. Then each of five critical essays explores a different aspect
of this capacious novel. One looks at the novel's protagonist as an
embattled artist-in-training: another focuses on the novel's political
and philosophical backgrounds; a third discusses the style and meaning
of the nameless narrator's speeches; a fourth examines the novel's
modernism in light of its references to jazz and anthropology: and the
final essay considers Invisible Man as a kind of war novel. Written in
an accessible style, these essays represent the best of recent
scholarship and provide students with a useful introduction to this
major novel.
