Plot Development
The first event in the book where the narrator has the feeling of being "invisible."
What was the fight scene and speech afterward?
The documents from Dr. Bledsoe.
What are letters to give employers that actually said not to hire the narrators?
Name of a caring person who takes the narrator in after he was in psychological experiments and kicked out of school.
Who is Mary?
The newspaper headline our narrator sees in chapter 15
What is a Violent Protest Over Harlem Eviction?
The Vet and Crenshaw were going here on the bus
What is Washington?
"And in this case especially, with this uh...background, I'm not so sure that I don't believe in the effectiveness of simple prayer." The doctor in this case referring to when he says 'background'?
What is the narrator's ethnicity?
Symbolic and special characteristic about the man who spoke in the chapel, Barbee.
What is his blindness?
Mr. Kimbro and Lucius Brockway.
Who were the two men that the narrator worked directly under during his brief time at Liberty Paints?
Narrator said this to get the attention of people listening to his speech after the Battle Royal
What is social equality (responsibility)?
the narrator did this to someone who he thought was Dr. Bledsoe.
What is the narrator was compelled to dump dirty water over a Reverend?
Where the narrator was leaving when he collapsed
What is the subway?
The kind of statue did the narrator break
What is a cast iron coin bank?
The name on the letter the narrator read
Who is Mr. Emerson?
What the narrator really mean when he refers to himself as “invisible”.
What is that no one around him cares about him or sees him for who he truly is?
The veteran on the bus said this advice to the narrator.
What is to “be your own father figure”?
Ras the Extorter does this to Todd Clifton.
What is pull a knife on him and scream at him?
The real character is mentioned within the brotherhood officers but is also the inspiration symbolically for Ras the extorter (destroyer)
Who is "Garvey" (page 367) aka Marcus Garvey?
Acts supportive of our narrator but clues towards treatment of Todd Clifton suggests it may be more complicated.
Who is Brother Jack? (Or even Brother Tarp?)
The lines in the protest before Brother Jack had our narrator speak
What is, "No more dispossessing of the dispossessed?"
This is repeated throughout the novel as a motif that comes up because Ralph Ellison's first love was not writing but this.
What is music?
How our narrator end up working for the brotherhood.
What is give a moving speech about people being evicted?
The brotherhood is symbolic of this political movement.
What is Communism?
Mary possibly is symbolic of considering the doctors are screaming it at the narrator in the previous chapter
What is Mary is a mother figure for the narrator?
Who was in the painting in the narrator's office.
Who is Frederick Douglas?
Page 409 - Who is this person that is referenced and what does he do that is important to the plot symbolically and literally-
Who is Paul Robeson? Said to be the first black movie star, blacklisted in 1950s for having been a communist, and whom expatriated due to racism and being blacklisted.