Why It's Great: Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

I knew Invisible Man was considered one of the great American novels, but I didn’t really know anything about it before selecting and reading it for The Big Read this winter. I had no preconceptions going into it. Even still, the surreal imagery, the wild plot swings, and the fever dream moments left me surprised and awed in nearly equal measure.

Set in mid-20th-century America, it’s a deeply specific and intimate look at Black life, through the experiences of our unnamed narrator. From college student to laborer to activist, we see his life and mind transform as he wrestles with his identity and starts to find some measure of success. But in each role he plays, this narrator ultimately discovers a variety of nefarious actors — an entire society, really — who just try to take advantage of him and his Blackness.

Like any truly great book, though, Invisible Man also transcends time and place to wrestle with the universal and the evergreen: identity, power, and freedom. The narrator’s transition into invisibility has as much to say about our current era as anything written this century. This stunning paragraph, well worth sharing in full, hit me like a ton of bricks:

“Whence all this passion toward conformity anyway?—diversity is the word. Let man keep his many parts and you'll have no tyrant states. Why, if they follow this conformity business they'll end up by forcing me, an invisible man, to become white, which is not a color but the lack of one. Must I strive toward colorlessness? But seriously, and without snobbery, think of what the world would lose if that should happen. America is woven of many strands; I would recognize them and let it so remain. It's ‘winner take nothing’ that is the great truth of our country or of any country. Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.”

Ellison’s 1952 novel is weirder, more chaotic, and more experimental than I assumed it would be. And yet, it’s also incredibly moving — raw, honest, and containing some of the most powerful sentences and paragraphs I’ve ever encountered.

There are no easy takeaways and I think that’s part of what makes the book so powerful. Ellison refuses to let it be just one thing. It’s political but not dogmatic. It’s about race but also about existence. It has moments of high drama, surreal comedy, and poetic insight. The style is eclectic and the structure is unpredictable.

There’s no denying that it’s a weird book at times — and one that rewards patience. I’m not sure I’ll read it again, but I know it’s going to stay with me. Invisible Man is a novel about race in America that’s ultimately much more than that. It’s about how to be a person in a world determined to define you, which is among the most important things anyone can contemplate in our modern age.