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The Invisible Man's Quest for Identity

            
             With the publication of his novel Invisible Man in 1952 Ralph Ellison certainly had his masterpiece. It tells the story of a young African American in search for his own identity by struggling with various life experiences.
             For this reason it is indisputable that Invisible Man is - principally - a bildungsroman as the novel "follows the development of the hero [.] through a troubled quest for identity" (Baldick: 24). And since the protagonist of the story also functions as the narrator one can even go further and narrow it down to the genre of a künstlerroman (cf. Baldick: 24).
             However did the author not only mean to create a story limited to a certain individual - even though individuality is a crucial theme in Invisible Man - but also wanted to put emphasis on the universal character that is linked with the novel. According to Ellison the struggling initiation of the main character should be seen as parallelism for the development of the black race - or even further: for all individuals - within the American society (cf. Bishop: 82). This fact is also evident in the last sentence of the novel when the author addresses to the reader stating "that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you" (469).
             Deeply related with this universal appeal of the book is the historical existence of the different options offered to Blacks in the United States by diverse political groups at the time of the setting. The same potential solutions were supplied by the ideologies the invisible man faces during the plot - namely those of Bledsoe and Norton, the Brotherhood, and Ras.
             For being able to investigate the main character's search for identity these different ideologies are examined in order to divide his quest into different developmental stages. As Ellin Horowitz considers it as "a profitable method of dealing with Invisible Man [.] to see the action as a series of initiations in which the hero passes through several stages and groups of identification" (80).


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