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Invisible man

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As the book gets started, the narrator is expelled from his Southern Negro college for inadvertently showing a white trustee the reality of black life in the south, including an incestuous farmer and a rural whorehouse. The college director chastises him: "Why, the dumbest black bastard in the cotton patch knows that the only way to please a white man is to tell him a lie! What kind of an education are you getting around here?" Mystified, the narrator moves north to New York City, where the truth, at least as he perceives it, is dealt another blow when he learns that his former headmaster's recommendation letters are, in fact, letters of condemnation. What ensues is a search for what truth actually is, which proves to be supremely elusive. The narrator becomes a spokesman for a mixed-race band of social activists called "The Brotherhood" and believes he is fighting for equality. Once again, he realizes he's been duped into believing what he thought was the truth, when in fact it is only another variation. Of the Brothers, he eventually discerns: "They were blind, bat blind, moving only by the echoed sounds of their voices. And because they were blind they would destroy themselves.... Here I thought they accepted me because they felt that color made no difference, when in reality it made no difference because they didn't see either color or men." Invisible Man is certainly a book about race in America, and sadly enough, few of the problems it chronicles have disappeared even now. But Ellison's first novel transcends such a narrow definition. It's also a book about the human race stumbling down the path to identity, challenged and successful to varying degrees. None of us can ever be sure of the truth beyond ourselves, and possibly not even there. The world is a tricky place, and no one knows this better than the invisible man, who leaves us with these chilling, provocative words: "And it is this which frightens me: Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?"

Homme invisible, pour qui chantes-tu ? is a translation of this work.

看不见的人 is a translation of this work.

Der unsichtbare Mann is a translation of this work.

Uomo invisibile is a translation of this work.

Invisible man is a translation of this work.

Nevidni človek is a translation of this work.

Onzichtbare man is a translation of this work.

El Hombre Invisible is a translation of this work.

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Keywords

  • African American men
  • African Americans
  • Award Winner - National book award
  • Fiction
  • In library
  • Long Now Manual for Civilization
  • National Book Award Winner
  • open_syllabus_project
  • Popular Print Disabled Books
  • Protected DAISY
  • Race relations

Editions

edition cover
Contributors: Ralph Ellison,
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 1952
ISBN: 9780679732761
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edition cover
Title: Invisible Man
Contributors: Ralph Ellison,
Publisher: Penguin Books Limited
Published: 2016-03-31
ISBN: 9780141984063
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edition cover
Title: Invisible Man
Contributors: Ralph Ellison,
Published: 2015-09-25
ISBN: 9784871876353
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edition cover
Title: Invisible Man
Contributors: Ralph Ellison,
Publisher: Viking
Published: 2014-08-14
ISBN: 9780241970560
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edition cover
Title: Invisible Man
Contributors: Ralph Ellison,
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2010-09-29
ISBN: 9780307743992
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edition cover
Title: Invisible Man
Contributors: Ralph Ellison,
Publisher: WWW.Snowballpublishing.com
Published: 2010-05-20
ISBN: 9781607962526
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edition cover
Title: Invisible Man
Contributors: Ralph Ellison,
Published: 2008-10-08
ISBN: 9781439560686
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edition cover
Title: Invisible Man
Contributors: Ralph Ellison,
Published: 1996
ISBN: 9780760703830
OCLC: 36976411
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edition cover
Title: Invisible Man
Contributors: Ralph Waldo Ellison,
Publisher: Turtleback
Published: 1995-03-14
ISBN: 9780808554127
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edition cover
Title: Invisible Man
Contributors: Ralph Waldo Ellison,
Published: 1995-03-01
ISBN: 9780812418163
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edition cover
Title: Invisible Man
Contributors: Ralph Ellison,
Publisher: Vintage International
Published: 1995
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