Who said that?
"You might sneer at this, but I know now. I was pulled this way and that for longer than I can remember. And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone's way but my own. I have also been called one thing and then another while no one really wished to hear what I called myself."
Who is the narrator, the Invisible Man?
This character's lost illusions -- beginning as an ambitious and hopeful young man from the South and ending as a disillusioned rebel, hiding underground from his white, and even black, oppressors -- is the arc of the novel.
Who is the narrator, the Invisible Man?
The narrator ducks into this "rowdy" place to get a whiskey to cure what ails Mr. Norton
What is the roadside bar, The Golden Day?
All the narrator wants to do is "deliver (his) speech" at the Gentlemen's club he's been invited to. But, instead, he's forced to do this, suffering blows from Tatlock and the lot.
What is fight in the Battle Royale?
Ralph Ellison was inspired and mentored by this poet and pioneering leader of the Harlem Rennaisance.
"You're nobody, son. You don't exist -- can't you see that? The white folk tell everybody what to think -- except men like me. I tell them; that's my life, telling white folk how to think about the things I know about. Shocks you, doesn't it? Well, that's the way it is. It's a nasty deal and I don't always like it myself. But you listen to me: I didn't make it, and I know that I can't change it. But I've made my place in it and I'll have every Negro in the country hanging on tree limbs by morning if it means staying where I am."
Who is Dr. Bledsoe, the president of the college the narrator attends?
This character sends the narrator north to New York City with six unsealed envelopes. (Letters of Recommendation, he's told.)
Who is Mr. Bledsoe?
Here, there are "exactly 1,369 lights" strung up. After all "The truth is the light and light is the truth."
What is the narrator's basement?
"A rope of bloody saliva forming a shape like an undiscovered continent drooled upon..." this. What was inside made him feel "an importance that I had never dreamed."
What is a "gleaming calfskin brief case" with a scholarship inside?
Invisible Man was published in this decade: Preceding the Civil Rights Movement, proceeding World War II.
What are the 1950's?
"I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy's country ever since I give up my gun back in the Reconstruction. Live with your head in the lion's mouth. I want you to overcome 'em with yeses, undermine 'em with grins, agree 'em to death and destruction, let 'em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open."
Who is the narrator's grandfather?
Mr. Norton is fascinated by this disgraced sharecropper's story, a horrifying and hypnotizing tale of how he raped and impregnated his daughter.
Who is Mr. Trueblood?
Lucius Brockway, an old black man who controls the factory’s boiler room and basement, comes up with the slogan for this company: "'If It's Optic White, It's the Right White,' "
What is Liberty Paints?
After an explosion at Liberty Paints, the narrator wakes up in a glass and metal box. There, factory’s doctors treat the narrator with this. After, the narrator soon forgets his own name.
What is electroshock therapy?
In the end, the narrator runs into this character again. The narrator's suffered and changed tremendously, but he's as ignorant and oblivious as ever.
Who is Mr. Norton?
"So you see, young man, you are involved in my life quite intimately, even though you've never seen me before. You are bound to a great dream and to a beautiful monument. If you become a good farmer, a chef, a preacher, doctor, singer, mechanic -- whatever you become, and even if you fail, you are my fate. And you must write me and tell me the outcome."
Who is Mr. Norton, a trustee of the college the Invisible Man attends?
When the Brotherhood’s policies shift, this person grows disillusioned and drops out of the Brotherhood. The narrator discovers him later selling Sambo dolls on the street, a cynical mocking of the Brotherhood’s high ideals. Immediately after, he is murdered by a police officer.
Who is Tod Clifton?
Here, there is a statue of a "Founder, the cold Father symbol, his hands outstretched in the breathtaking gesture of lifting a veil that flutters in hard, metallic folds above the face of a kneeling slave."
What is the college the narrator attends?
Witnessing this event inspires the narrator to deliver a speech, a history of the black struggle in a post- slavery society. The narrator seizes his opportunity and suddenly finds his calling: when he speaks, the gathered crowd listens. It is moving, but the narrator’s speech has little effect on the marshal, who seeks to enforce his orders at all costs.
What is the eviction of Brother Provo?
The narrator's failure to do this at Tod Clifton's funeral is what causes the Brotherhood to turn on him.
What is to "bring in political issues" that the Brotherhood is motivated by.
"And the boy, this automaton, he was made of the very mud of the region and he sees far less than you. Poor stumblers, neither of you can see the other. To you he is a mark on the score-card of your achievement, a thing and not a man; a child, or even less -- a black amorphous thing. And you, for all your power, are not a man to him, but a God, a force --"
Who is the veteran at the Golden Day who heals Mr. Norton?
This character only appears twice, but the narrator knows him to be quite wise. He "wouldn't have thrown old Bad Air out," wonders "What Did (He) Do to Be so Black and Blue," and is unaware he too is invisible.
Who is Louis Armstrong?
As the narrator enters this place, he is astounded to see so many black people. He is especially impressed when he sees a black police officer directing traffic. He dreams of, here, becoming a rich and powerful man like his idol, Dr. Bledsoe.
What is Harlem and/or New York City?
They give the narrator a sense of security and unity with people of his own race as they all want equality in a white world. But he discovers they don't "give a hoot in hell for how things looked to me. (He) was simply a material, a natural resource to be used. (He) had switched from the arrogant absurdity of Norton and Emerson..." to theirs.
What is the Brotherhood?
In the end, who does the narrator claim to speak for?
Who is "you"?