2. Norton Scientific Reviews
• http://nortonscientificreviews.blogspot.com/
2012 Run The Show Tour: Tribal Seeds, Fortunate Youth and Bimini Rd. 8 p.m. Jammin’ Java, 227
Maple Ave E Vienna. www.jamminjava.com.
#Vienna Photographic Society Meeting. 7:30 p.m. Thoreau Middle School, 2505 Cedar
Lane, Vienna. Chuck Veatch, nature photographer and Chairman of Nature’s Best Publishing, will
show and discuss winning images from this year’s Windland Smith Rice International Photography
Contest. 703-451-7298.
#Great Falls TrailBlazers. 7:30 p.m. Great Falls Library, 9830 Georgetown Pike, Great Falls. How your
neighborhood can be connected to the community via trails. Learn about trail
easements, understand why some trails don't go anywhere and how trails canbenefit a
neighborhood. 703-757-8560.
#Bat White-nose Syndrome: There is a New Fungus Among Us. 7 p.m. USGS Headquarters, 12201
Sunrise Valley Drive, Reston. Dr. David Blehert will discuss the profound impacts white-nose
syndrome may have in the 21st century. Since first discovered in 2007 in New York, white-nose
syndrome has spread to 16 states and four Canadian provinces. The disease is estimated to have
killed over five million hibernating bats. Federal facility, photo Id irequired. Free and open to the
public. Follow this event live @USGSLive. 703-648-7770.
#Friends of the Fairfax County Animal Shelter Fundraiser. 6-8:30 p.m. Whole Foods Market, 143
Maple Ave., Vienna. 5 percent of all sales from the Café Bar will be donated to FFCAS.
www.facebook.com/events/27398201933851/?context=create.
•
3. Norton Scientific: Invisible Man
• Norton Scientific: Invisible Man
•
• Invisible Man is a novel written by Ralph Ellison, and the only one that he
published during his lifetime (his other novels were published
posthumously). It won him the National Book Award in 1953. The novel
addresses many of the social and intellectual issues facing African-
Americans in the early twentieth century, including black nationalism, the
relationship between black identity andMarxism, and the reformist racial
policies of Booker T. Washington, as well as issues of individuality and
personal identity.
• In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Invisible Man nineteenth on its list of
the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.Time magazine
included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923
to 2005.[1]
•
4. • Historical background
•
• In his introduction to the 30th Anniversary Edition of Invisible Man,[2] Ellison says that he started writing the book
in a barn in Waitsfield, Vermont in the summer of 1945 while on sick leave from the Merchant Marine and that
the novel continued to preoccupy him in various parts of New York City. In an interview in The Paris Review
1955,[3] Ellison states that the book took five years to complete with one year off for what he termed an "ill-
conceived short novel." Invisible Man was published as a whole in 1952; however, copyright dates show the initial
publication date as 1947, 1948, indicating that Ellison had published a section of the book prior to full publication.
That section was the famous "Battle Royal" scene, which had been shown to Cyril Connolly, the editor of Horizon
magazine by Frank Taylor, one of Ellison's early supporters.
• Ellison states in his National Book Award acceptance speech that he considered the novel's chief significance
to be its experimental attitude. Rejecting the idea of social protest—as Ellison would later put it—he did not want
to write another protest novel, and also seeing the highly regarded styles of Naturalism and Realism too limiting to
speak to the broader issues of race and America, Ellison created an open style, one that did not restrict his ideas
to a movement but was more free-flowing in its delivery. What Ellison finally settled on was a style based heavily
upon modern symbolism. It was the kind of symbolism that Ellison first encountered in the poem The Waste
Land,[4] by T. S. Eliot. Ellison had read this poem as a freshman at the Tuskegee Institute and was immediately
impressed by The Waste Land's ability to merge his two greatest passions, that of music and literature, for it was
in The Waste Land that he first saw jazz set to words. When asked later what he had learned from the
poem, Ellison responded: imagery, and also improvisation—techniques he had only before seen in jazz.
• Ellison always believed that he would be a musician first and a writer second, and yet even so he had
acknowledged that writing provided him a "growing satisfaction." It was a "covert process," according to Ellison:
"a refusal of his right hand to let his left hand know what it was doing."[5]
5. Plot introduction
• Invisible Man is narrated in the first person by the protagonist, an unnamed
African American man who considers himself socially invisible. His character may
have been inspired by Ellison's own life. The narrator may be conscious of his
audience, writing as a way to make himself visible to mainstream culture; the book
is structured as if it were the narrator's autobiography although it begins in the
middle of his life.
• The story is told from the narrator's present, looking back into his past. Thus, the
narrator has hindsight in how his story is told, as he is already aware of the
outcome.
• In the Prologue, Ellison's narrator tells readers, "I live rent-free in a building rented
strictly to whites, in a section of the basement that was shut off and forgotten
during the nineteenth century." In this secret place, the narrator creates
surroundings that are symbolically illuminated with 1,369 lights. He says, "My hole
is warm and full of light. Yes, full of light. I doubt if there is a brighter spot in all
New York than this hole of mine, and I do not exclude Broadway." The protagonist
explains that light is an intellectual necessity for him since "the truth is the light
and light is the truth." From this underground perspective, the narrator attempts
to make sense out of his life, experiences, and position in American society.
6. Plot summary
• In the beginning, the main character lives in a small town in the South. He
is a model student, even being named his high school's valedictorian.
Having written and delivered an excellent paper about the struggles of the
average black man, he gets to tell his speech to a group of white men, who
force him to participate in a series of degrading events. After finally giving
his speech, he gets a scholarship to an all-black college that is clearly
modeled on the Tuskegee Institute.
Plot smmary
• During his junior year at the college, the narrator takes Mr. Norton, a
visiting rich white trustee, on a drive in the country. He accidentally drives
to the house of Jim Trueblood, a black man living on the college's
outskirts, who impregnated his own daughter. Trueblood, though
disgraced by his fellow blacks, has found greater support from whites.
After hearing Trueblood's story and giving Trueblood a hundred dollar
bill, Mr. Norton faints, then asks for some alcohol to help his
condition, prompting the narrator to take him to a local tavern.
7. • At the Golden Day tavern, Norton passes in and out of
consciousness as World War I veterans being treated at the nearby
mental hospital for various mental health issues occupy the bar and
a fight breaks out among them. One of the veterans claims to be a
doctor and tends to Mr. Norton. The dazed and confused Mr.
Norton is not fully aware of what’s going on, as the veteran doctor
chastises the actions of the trustee and the young black college
student. Through all the chaos, the narrator manages to get the
recovered Mr. Norton back to the campus after a day of unusual
events.
• Upon returning to the school he is fearful of the reaction of the
day's incidents from college president Dr. Bledsoe. At any
rate, insight into Bledsoe's knowledge of the events and the
narrator's future at the campus is somewhat prolonged as an
important visitor arrives.
8. • The narrator views a sermon by the highly respected Reverend Homer A. Barbee.
Barbee, who is blind, delivers a speech about the legacy of the college's
founder, with such passion and resonance that he comes vividly alive to the
narrator; his voice makes up for his blindness. The narrator is so inspired by the
speech that he feels impassioned like never before to contribute to the college's
legacy. However, all his dreams are shattered as a meeting with Bledsoe reveals his
fate. Fearing that the college's funds will be jeopardized by the incidents that
occurred, Bledsoe immediately expels the narrator. While the Invisible Man once
aspired to be like Bledsoe, he realizes that the man has portrayed himself as a
black stereotype in order to succeed in the white-dominated society. This serves as
the first epiphany among many in the narrator realizing his invisibility. This
epiphany is not yet complete when Bledsoe gives him several letters of
recommendation to help him get a job under the assumption that he could return
upon earning enough money for the next semester. Upon arriving in New York, the
narrator distributes the letters with no success. Eventually, the son of one of the
people to whom he sent a letter takes pity on him and shows him an opened copy
of the letter; it reveals that Bledsoe never had any intentions of letting the
narrator return and sent him to New York to get rid of him.
9. • Acting upon the son's suggestion, the narrator eventually gets a job in the boiler
room of a paint factory in a company renowned for its white paints. The man in
charge of the boiler room, Lucius Brockway, is extremely paranoid and thinks that
the narrator has come to take his job. He is also extremely loyal to the company's
owner, who once paid him a personal visit. When the narrator tells him about a
union meeting he happened upon, Brockway is outraged, and attacks him. They
fight, and Brockway tricks him into turning a wrong valve and causing a boiler to
explode. Brockway escapes, but the narrator is hospitalized after the blast. While
recovering, the narrator overhears doctors discussing him as a mental health
patient. He learns through their discussion that shock treatment has been
performed on him.
• After the shock treatments, the narrator attempts to return to his residence when
he feels overwhelmed by a certain dizziness and faints on the streets of Harlem.
He is taken to the residence of a kind, old-fashioned woman by the name of Mary.
Mary is down-to-earth and reminds the narrator of his relatives in the South and
friends at the college. Mary somewhat serves as a mother figure for the narrator.
While living there, he happens upon an eviction of an elderly black couple and
makes an impassioned speech decrying the action. Soon, however, police arrive,
and the narrator is forced to escape over several building tops. Upon reaching
safety, he is confronted by a man named Jack who followed him and implores him
to join a group called The Brotherhood that is a thinly veiled version of the
Communist Party and claims to be committed to social change and betterment of
the conditions in Harlem. The narrator agrees.
10. • The narrator is at first happy to be making a difference in the world, "making history," in his new
job. While for the most part his rallies go smoothly, he soon encounters trouble from Ras the
Exhorter, a fanatical black nationalist in the vein of Marcus Garvey who believes that the
Brotherhood is controlled by whites. Ras tells this to the narrator and Tod Clifton, a youth leader of
the Brotherhood, neither of whom seem to be swayed by his words.
• When he returns to Harlem, Tod Clifton has disappeared. When the narrator finds him, he realizes
that Clifton has become disillusioned with the Brotherhood, and has quit. Clifton is selling dancing
Sambo dolls on the street, mocking the organization he once believed in. He soon dies. At Clifton's
funeral, the narrator rallies crowds to win back his former widespread Harlem support and delivers
a rousing speech. However, he is criticized in a clandestine meeting with Brother Jack and other
members for not being scientific in his arguments at the funeral; angered, he begins to argue in
retaliation, causing Jack to lose his temper and accidentally make his glass eye fly out of one of his
sockets. The narrator realizes that the half-blind Jack has never really seen him either.
• He buys sunglasses and a hat as a disguise, and is mistaken for a man named Rinehart in a number
of different scenarios: first, as a lover, then, a hipster, a gambler, a briber, and, finally, as a reverend.
He sees that Rinehart has adapted to white society, at the cost of his own identity.He decides to
take his grandfather's dying advice to "overcome 'em with yeses, undermine 'em with grins, agree
'em to death and destruction. . ." and "yes" the Brotherhood to death, by making it appear that the
Harlem membership is thriving when in reality it is crumbling. However, he soon realizes the cost of
this action: Ras becomes a powerful demagogue. After escaping Ras (by throwing a spear Ras had
acquired through the leader's jaw, permanently sealing it), the narrator is attacked by a couple of
people who trap him inside a coal-filled manhole/basement, sealing him off for the night and
leaving him alone to finally confront the demons of his mind: Bledsoe, Norton, and Jack.
• At the end of the novel, the narrator is ready to resurface because "overt action" has already taken
place. This could be that, in telling us the story, the narrator has already made a political statement
where change could occur. Storytelling, then, and the preservation of history of these invisible
individuals is what causes political change.
