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Light and Reality in The Invisible Man

            People always refuses to comply with the role that they were bonded due to the misunderstanding of the truth which the true identity is. Sometimes, people assumes that they can receive a better outcome by avoiding the truth intentionally because it betrayal of their own expectations. The narrator tells of one man's realizations of the world under the 1930s time period. By depicting the character of invisibleness, Ellison pointed out that light bulbs that the narrator had used underground to compare with the invisibleness of characters. In contrast between dark and light which refers to black and white, helps us to realize true reason of isolation in the novel.
             The narrator comes to realize through experience of his life what the world is really like which the world with fully isolation. He realizes that there is illusion and there is reality which indicates the isolation, and reality is seen through light. "The truth is the light and light is the truth" (Ellison 7). Ellison uses light as a symbol for isolation, or reality of the world. The comparing between light and dark refers to the isolation between whites and blacks.
             The invisible man first starts to undergo realizations of reality after he finished from the college and his arrival in New York. Here he gains his first employment at Liberty Paints. His job consists of mixing pitch black paint with white paint to form the company. The paint itself provides a symbol for the world in which the invisible man is living. The society tries to .
             assimilate the black culture which indicates black paint into the white culture which indicates the white paint creating in the end an "Optic White" solution where the blacks have conformed to the whites. The narrator notes how the black drops spread out on the white paint saying, "I measured the glistening black drops, seeing them settle upon the surface and become blacker still, spreading suddenly out to the edges" (Ellison 200).


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