Rethinking Ralph Ellisons Invisible Man As A Mulatto Tale

“That invisibility to which I refer occurs because of the peculiar disposition of the eyes of those with whom I come into contact. A matter of the construction of their inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality” Prologue, Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison

In 1952, Ralph Ellisons classic tale the Invisible Man was published. A year later in 1953, Ralph Ellison, an African-American, was awarded the National Book Award for Fiction, an annual Award that recognises outstanding works of fiction by US citizens. Described as a “blistering and impassioned first novel that tells the extraordinary story of a man invisible, simply because people refuse to see me”. Ellisons book would become the model for Barack Obamas classic Mulatto tale, “Dreams of My Father” and be recognised as one of the greatest books of all time.

Until the coming of Obama, many writers, critics and commentators had not recognised the Invisible Man as a Mulatto tale. On first reading the book, a while before the coming of Obama, I had imagined it as a mulatto tale. It appeared to me that it encapsulated the mulatto experience of many of the great contributors to black thought such as Washington, Dubois, Newton and X and Fanon whose mulatto heritage was rubbed from their identities. It spoke to the outsider status that many people who have a mulatto identity or status have experienced. When reading the text, I could not help but connect the novel to the stories of Newton and X in particular, individuals that seemed at the end of their lives to have fallen into a pothole never to return after experiencing a similar story to the unnamed protagonist in Ellisons book.

In the journey towards the mulattoisation of America, the story of the Invisible Man is going to be a centrepiece of the dialogue around the psychological and social experiences of the mulatto people of the US who have been forced into a position of denying their very own existence to fit the antiquated racial constructs of Apartheid America.

The Invisible Man has been described as “far more than a race novel, or even a bildungsroman” and as “the quintessential American picaresque of the 20th century.” It is the story of an unnamed African-American man, who recites the story of how he came to be an invisible man not from his own doing, as a phantom or duppy but due to the peculiar disposition of the eyes of those that he came into contact with. A disposition that had caused him to doubt if he even existed and to wonder whether he was just a duppy in other people’s minds.

He tells the audience of his newly found home; a hole in the ground that is warm and full of light where he listens to music. He is neither dead or paralysed he states, he is simply in hibernation as a bear would.

The unnamed protagonist proceeds to tell us his story. A story that traverses two decades, as he comes to discover that he is an invisible man and then arrives at the epiphany that he is nobody but himself.

The story begins with the narrator standing over his Grandfathers death bed just as he is about to graduate from High School in a small Southern US town. On his graduation he makes a speech on the secrets of success lying in humility and humility being the very essential key to progress. He is praised for his speech and invited to deliver a speech in front of leading whites in the town.

On arrival at the gathering of the town’s leading white citizens, he is informed that there is a Battle Royale taking place and he must participate in a collective boxing match of ten boys blindfolded. He reluctantly participates and experiences a bit of beating but at the end of the fight is given $5 dollars.

On completion of the fight battered and bruised, the narrator is called upon to give his speech. In these days he explains he considered himself to be Booker T Washington. His speech makes a reference to those of his race who imagine going to Africa rather than making friends with the Southern whites and calls upon the members of his race to accept social responsibility for their lives which gains much appreciation from the white audience. On completion of his speech the narrator is awarded a scholarship to attend an All-black College and hailed as a potential leader of his race in the future.

One day during his first year, the narrator is given the task of chauffer for a rich white trustee around the old slave quarters near the college. As they stop at the cabin of a controversial man accused of impregnating both his wife and daughter whilst he was asleep. The narrator and the white trustee listen to the story but the white trustee is shocked at the tale and demands that the narrator take him for a strong drink to forget the terrible tale he has just heard.

They go to a bar where there are black prostitutes and mental health patients, the white trustee drinks but they get into a struggle and the trustee is injured. On arrival back at the college, the narrator is confronted and expelled by the President for showing the white trustee the dark side of black life.

He leaves and gets a job with the hope of re-enrolling at a later date. He gets a job at a paint factory where he faces hostility from the black line manager who believes he is after his job. One day he accidentally attends a Union meeting at the factory and is late returning from his break. At the Union meeting he explains that he got there by accident and is attacked verbally by the Unionists as a reactionary. When he arrives back on the job he gets into an altercation with his anti-Union line manager who passionately tells him of his hatred for the Union for encouraging black guys to join. The line manager then tricks him into an accident and he ends up setting off an explosion and gets admitted to hospital where he is given shock treatment and overhears the Doctors describe him as a mental health patient.

On leaving hospital the narrator feints in the streets of Harlem and is taken in by an elderly woman that reminds him of his Southern roots. Whilst out walking the narrator comes upon a crowd in a dispute over the eviction of an elderly black couple and the narrator intervenes giving a emotional speech to the animated crowd who then proceed to get into an altercation with the law enforcement officers. The narrator escapes but is followed by a white man that runs an organisation dedicated to workers upliftment in Harlem and the world called The Brotherhood. The white man asks the narrator if he would like to become the next Booker T Washington? He recruits the narrator as such to speak at rallies and promote the workers cause amongst the African-America community in Harlem. The narrator becomes a paid employee of The Brotherhood and is indoctrinated in its ideological outlook.

On delivering his first speech he is challenged by an unimpressed member of the Brotherhood, who considers the speech to be not up to standard and in typical Socialist speech to be “reactionary”. It is agreed between the leadership that the narrator needs to undergo training and he is sent for training under the tutelage of the main theoretician of the organisation.

On his return, whilst speaking at a Brotherhood rally to an all black audience, the narrator becomes involved in an altercation with a fanatical Black Nationalist, “Ras”, who turns up at a rally and starts a fight launching an object at the narrators face before starting a fight with a black member of the Brotherhood, that is predominately led by whites. The narrator is struck and called an Uncle Tom by a member of the entourage that accompanies “Ras”. The Brotherhood member is beaten by Ras after a hard struggle and Ras goes to stab him but does not have the stomach to stab his fellow black man.

Ras, the Black Nationalist leader, laments and pleads with the youth leader to leave the whites and join him. He tells him that they are African and should not be amongst whites; that black people must be together but the young Brotherhood member refuses, angrily.

After the altercation, the narrator goes before the leadership of the Brotherhood and is accused of putting his own personal ambitions ahead of the group and sent to another part of New York to work on womens issues.

Whilst there he is seduced by the white wife of one of the Brotherhood members before being called to return to Harlem. He is told that the Brotherhood member, Tod, who had been involved in the altercation at the Harlem rally, had disappeared and Ras and his entourage were gaining popularity and stirring racial agitation in Harlem leading to a loss of popularity for the Brotherhood.

When the narrator arrives back in Harlem, he finds that Tod has left the Brotherhood and then comes to find that he has become a salesman of little black Sambo figurines on the street corner. The narrator comes across him selling the figurines but at that moment Tod is tragically shot by the police after striking a police officer demanding that he move on.

The death of Tod causes a stir in the black community in Harlem. After organising and attending the funeral of Tod, a riot breaks out and the narrator is trailed by Ras and other black nationalists.

Ras and others instigate a riot in Harlem, which the narrator comes to see as a plot, concocted by the Brotherhood to agitate the black masses for confrontation with the state. The narrator becomes mixed up in a group of looters before being confronted by the entourage of the Black Nationalist Ras; who accuses the narrator of being responsible for the death of a young black man at the hands of the police. He is attacked and kicked and punched and forced to flee for his life.

As he flees he falls into a manhole. The hole is covered by some white men and the narrator sits in the hole pondering the racism that he has experienced in his life.

In the epilogue the narrator reflects and finds that he was never more hated than when he tried to be honest and articulate his own truth and never more loved than when he tried to justify the mistaken beliefs of others or tried to give his friends the incorrect, absurd answers that they wished to hear. However, whilst his friends and colleagues felt comforted he often had to choke his words to fit in.

After years of trying to adopt the thoughts of others and being called many things without being asked what he called himself. He rebelled and became the invisible man.

The tale of the Invisible Man is one of the most potent tales ever written. It can be read in many ways but to me and Obama it represents the mulatto story. It represents the story of the many people, like Obama, X and Huey Newton, who have been identified as black whilst having a mulatto story to tell. It represents many of the heroes of black history who have been cut off and forced to deny a significant part of themselves in order to fit into the strict racial stratification that exists in America. It represents the tale of a mulatto President who even in his powerful position as President was forced to create a fabrication of black identity, even though he was raised by a white family.

In the 21st Century, like in the 20th Century; the Invisible Man may still be one of the most important reflections on America, race and identity ever written and be central in illuminating the experience of Mulatto America in the future.

ALT