Black Consciousness in the Twentieth Century Essay

Ralph Ellison began his 1952 novel with the sentence I am an inconspicuous bit. (Ellison 3) These five words summed up the way in which the majority of scorch Americans felt ab disclose their side in shopliftership at the time. The polished Rights Movement was still years away, and the caste of American society had displace the Black American near the bottom. The intelligence is in the freshman individual narrative, narrated by a man who considers himself by societys insure point to be undetectable because of his flow. The self-awareness of the Black American was limited to notwithstanding what the white establishment would all(prenominal)ow and in the majority of the country, that was very little. However, the pith for the change that would occur had already been born. The wake, in the late 1950s, of the Black American would take place in religion, politics, self-awareness and literature. This would become exemplified by the manner in which women in the desolate communities were treated. The rise of domestic violence was an issue, even in 1950s America and in both the homes of downhearteds and whites. There would be, though, differences in which this awakening would manifest itself. For some, like those who would march with Martin Luther King, non-violence and pacifism would be the dominate peckerwood to their awakening. For others, the awakening would come in the form of a religious rebirth, and salutary assertion of their place in society.There was a responsibility universe neglected in the role of the black male to uphold his place of caregiver to his wife and family as well as to the community as a whole. This was an important issue to realize, as the teachings of Islam would tell. The white man wants black men to stay immoral, unclean, an ignorant. (223).During the course of the novel the protagonists lists ways in which he has become unperceivable and the reaction he stirs within society because of his blackness, and as Ellis i llustrates in the prologue of the book, I live rent-free in a building rented strictly to whites, in a section of the root cellar that was shut off and forgotten during the nineteenth century. (Ellis prologue). The narrator goes on to relegate that light is a necessity for him since light to him is equivalent to truth (much as it was in Platos cave so here the reader gains a sense of philosophy and of intelligence from the narrator).Throughout the course of the events that aid in defining the narrator the major first event occurs on his colleges campus. The epiphany that the undetectable man has during this time is that a black man whom he had once aspired to be like (i.e. to leave a legacy for his college) is not at all worthy of his aspiration and instead is save a black man who has disguised himself enough to be capable to survive in the white dominated society. Thus, the invisible man has his first exposure to mis-identities and the almost innate need that black men lookin g they have to become someone else in instal to be a part of white society.In another act of deception in the book, the narrator (after a boiler room accident) is hospitalized during a severalise of consciousness he discovers that he has been experimented upon with shock treatment without his knowledge. This is a feel-threatening breach of his constitutional rights as well as his humanity. Thus, the narrator finds out that he is not considered to be human, or even subhuman further rather a thing, an object, a less than real entity whose presence is a constant element of scorn and fear to the white race (at least through each of the experiences the invisible man has had with white people).Thus, not precisely is he destroyed through the perception of white people but through his own culture and race as Dr. Bledsoe has given the invisible man letters of recommendation whose intent was merely to waylay the invisible man from coming back to college and to not (as the invisible man h ad feeling was their intention) to get him a job. Therefore the invisible man is hoodwinked by a person whom he thought he could trust and this leads him to further epiphanies of himself and his race and eithers misconception.The novel is truly about self-awareness through mark perception. Although the narrator finds brief solace with the Brotherhood and brother Jack (a black organization seeking to unite the black community in newfound York), this soon turns into another form of hate through jealousy. The narrators position is replaced and he travels outside of Harlem only to return and find his friend dead. Despite efforts to try and unite the Brotherhood again, the narrator is soon strained to recognized his grandfathers maxim, over come em with yeses, counteract em with grins, agree em to death and destruction. . . (Ellis).The novel is about a man whose invisibility is plagues by mis-identity, and whose overall undertones of outside prejudices define his life as well as hi s identity up to a point. The yes man that his grandfather advised him to do was a type of camouflage proficiency in which a man can exist wholly without cosmos noticed by being, in essence, no one at all by becoming invisible in order to survive. The sacrifice that the invisible man does is to waylay his hopes and dreams in order to be nothing so that he may survive, not be gunned down by either Brother Jack or by the police. In essence Ellis book contributed greatly to the recognition of the black consciousness and the state of the Civil Rights safari in order for blacks to not be invisible in order to exist.WORKS CITEDEllison, Ralph. The Invisible Man. Random House Inc. New York. 1952.Gates, Henry Louis. The Signifying scallywag A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. New York Oxford UP, 1988.Klein, Marcus. After alienation American Novels in Mid-Century. New York World, 1964.McSweeney, Kerry. Invisible Man Race and Identity. capital of Massachusetts Twayne, 1988.