Invisible Man
...by Ralph Ellison addressed the many levels of racism that African-Americans encounter in society. However, what Ellison had created was far more than a critique on race. Ellison had attempted to unravel the contradiction that is America, a country founded on high ideals and, at the same time, deception. He did so by sending the unnamed protagonist falling through almost every level of this divided society. The narrator travels from a college in the Deep South to the streets of Harlem, all the while, coming into contact with people who seem to look right through him as a person, white or black, and simply see the stereotypical image. Ellison's tale, though it is focused on an African-American man's search for political and personal freedom, ultimately conjures themes of universal invisibility and alienation.
Because the novel has such universal appeal, it is necessarily one of considerable depth. Ellison himself said "the principal gauge of the intrinsic importance of a novel is the extent that it deals eloquently with its own materialthat is, [it moves] from the specific to the universal.' He insists that there is no reason why a novel about a Negro background, about Negro characters, could not be effective as literature and in its effectiveness transcend its immediate background and speak eloquently for other people'" (McSweeney 11). Shouldn't a society or culture be judged by how it treats it's poor, sick, and disadvantaged? It is said that a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link. Therefore it seems that a society should only be judged by how it treats it's...
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