“Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison

Ellison's Invisible Man is framed by a prologue and an epilogue that are set at a time after the completion of the novel's central action. The novel's picaresque story of a young black man's misadventures is presented as a memoir written by an older, more experienced embodiment of the protagonist. The narrator of the prologue and epilogue has withdrawn into a state he calls “hibernation” after surviving the multiple deceptions and betrayals that he recounts in his memoir. As he says, “the end is the beginning and lies far ahead”. (Reilly, 25)

The prologue foreshadows the novel's action. It prepares the reader for the narrator's final condition; focuses the reader's attention on the major themes of truth, responsibility, and freedom; and introduces the reader to the double consciousness that operates in the book. Throughout the novel, the naïve assumptions of the youthful protagonist are counterbalanced by the cynical judgments of his more mature self, creating an ironic double perspective as he says, “Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked”. (Hersey, 63)

The broken narrator to whom the reader is introduced in the prologue is hiding in an underground room, stealing power from the Monopolated Power Company to light the thousands of bulbs he has strung up. An angry and damaged man, he explains his frustration at his invisibility, a quality that prevents others from seeing anything but “surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination.” The narrator experiences a desperate need to convince himself that he does exist in the real world, so he says, “When I discover who I am, I'll be free”. As he listens to Louis Armstrong's recording of “What Did I Do to Be So Black and Blue?” he dreams and then recounts his experiences. So he says, “I am a man ...