Invisible Man: Overview
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The "battle royal" where the black boys are made to fight with each other symbolizes
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the backwardness of southern blacks as compared with Northern blacks
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The narrator gets his identity in the first quarter of the novel by following the model of
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the founder and Dr. Bledsoe
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Mr. Norton's heart attack is brought on by
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the shock of Jim Trueblood's story
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The veteran berates, or attacks, the narrator's
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ignorance
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In light of the content of his speech, Reverend Barbee's blindness is an example of
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irony
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The narrator is expelled from college because he
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exposed aspects of black life Dr. Bledsoe wanted to keep hidden
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The letters of recommendation that Dr. Bledsoe gives to the narrator really say
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"Keep this ******-Boy Running"
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The narrator's encounter on the street with Peter Wheatstraw
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reminds him that his southern folk heritage is part of his identity
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The narrator's experience at Liberty Paints suggests that
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black labor was the foundation for America's industrial strength
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Mary Rambo's iron minstrel bank, which the narrator breaks, symbolizes
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the Southern ways he can't escape
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The Brotherhood represents
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The Communist party
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Brother Jack's character is symbolized by his
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glass eye
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The member of the Brotherhood most faithful to the narrator and his work in Harlem is
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Brother Tarp
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The Brotherhood is opposed to the narrator's emotional and personal style of speaking because
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it does not reflect their scientific, rational philosophy
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Ras the Exhorter's ultimate goal is to
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keep blacks and whites totally separate
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Ras the Exhorter argues that Tod Clifton and the narrator have
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betrayed their race by allying themselves with whites
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The dancing Sambo dolls being sold by Tod Clifton symbolize
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black people's traditional subservience to white people
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The death of Tod Clifton is
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in part the result of Tod's own despair and disillusion
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The identity of Rinehart
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allows the narrator to survive in a world of chaos and confusion
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The narrator hopes to use Sybil
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as a spy on the Brotherhood
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The turning point at the center of the novel is the narrator'
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witnessing of an eviction of two old people
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The narrator flees into a deserted coal cellar where he
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tries to think through the things in his life that got him there
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The decision of the narrator to leave his cave at the end of the novel symbolizes
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the end of contemplation and the beginning of action
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The character of the protagonist is such that he might be described as a
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naïve narrator
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Ellison's style in the novel
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moves from realism to expressionism to surrealism
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food that IM associated with childhood poverty
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cabbage
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food that IM associated with freedom
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yams
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food IM wanted to see Bledsoe eating
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chitterlings
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food IM resisted as "an act of discipline," showing his experience
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pork chops
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food IM had never heard of or tried
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cheesecake
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wants to be Huck Finn
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Young Emerson
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wants to be the new Booker T. Washington
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Invisible Man
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is called a Brutus, or traitor to the Brotherhood
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Tod Clifton
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wins the "Battle Royale"
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Tatlock
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is wounded in the jaw
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Ras the Exhorter
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refused to laugh at the clowns
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IM's grandfather
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freed slave, with manumission papers
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Primus Provo
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IM's college professor
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Woodridge
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loses his false teeth
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Brockway
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nicknamed "Old Bucket-head"
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Bledose
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advises IM to read Emerson
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Norton
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advises IM to be "his own father"
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Burnside
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offers to teach IM "some good bad habits"
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Peter Wheatsraw
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warns IM about going too fast in the Brotherhood
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Brother Jack
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gives IM his good luck "charm"
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Brother Tarp
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bar frequented by the Brotherhood
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El Toro
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Rinehart's church
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Holy Way Station
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Harlem hotel for young men "on the way up"
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Men's House
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men's college dormitory
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Rabb Hall
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gay nightclub
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Club Calamus
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IM's graduation gift after the smoker
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Briefcase
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clothing worn by the "fraternity of hipsters"
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Zoot Suit
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clothing IM associated with contempt and failure
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Overalls
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hanging from the trees during the riot
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Mannequins
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IM uses to assume Rinehart's identity
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Sunglasses
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poster that Brother Tarp gives IM
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Frederic Douglass
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painting in apartment where IM gets seduced
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Renior nude
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painting in Brotherhood bar
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Bullfighting
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poster featuring Tod Clifton
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Rainbow
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associated with the Founder's grave
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A single rose
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"Son, after I'm gone I want you to keep up the good fight. I have never told you, but our life is a war....Live with your head in the lion's mouth."
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Grandfather
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"Bring up the shines, gentlemen! Bring up the little shines!"
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Superintendent
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"I had a feeling that your people were somehow connected with my destiny. That what happened to you was connected with what would happen to me..."
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Norton
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"You have the build," he said, looking me up and down. "You'd probably make an excellent runner, a sprinter."
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Young Emerson
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"I remembered the start of the train, how it seemed to groan as it started up the steep grade into the mountain...When the train reached the summit of the mountain, he was no longer with us."
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Homer Barbee
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"I was just like a jaybird that the yellow jackets done stung 'til he's paralyzed - but still alive in his eyes and he's watchin' 'em sting his body to death."
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Trueblood
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"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."
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Burnside
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"Boy, you are a fool ...Your white folk didn't teach you anything and your mother-wit has left you cold."
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Bledsoe
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"I'm a seventh son of a seventh son bawn with a caul over both eyes and raised on black catbones highjohn the conqueror and greasy greens -"
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Wheatstraw
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"They got all this machinery, but that ain't everything; we the machines inside the machine ."
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Brockway
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"They can come in you home and do what thewy want to you. Just come stomping and jerk your life up by the roots! But this here's the last straw. They ain't going to bother with my Bible!"
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Mrs. Provo
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"It's you young folks what's going to make the changes. Y'all's the ones. You got to lead and you got to fight and move us all up a little higher."
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Mary Rambo
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"You can do it. It'll be easy for you, beautiful. Threaten to kill me if I don't give in. You know, talk rough to me, beautiful."
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Sybil
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"Nonsense, they chew them up and spit them out. Their leaders are made, not born. Then they're destrpyed. Tell me, where did you find this young hero of the people?"
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Emma
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"No one has told you, Brother, that at times you have tom-toms beating in your voice?"
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Hurbert's Wife
