This is an entry of the Modern Library Top 100 Novels. It is number 19.
Invisible Man is a powerful novel about race, humanity and life. The unnamed narrator is a black man struggling to find his way in the confusing racial world around him. It is wonderfully written and draws the reader in with descriptive passages that reveals much to the reader.
It is impossible for me to even try to sum up the novel so I will briefly touch on a few parts that stuck out in my mind. The narrator tries to bring himself up in the world while fighting the racism of his past. Despite his schooling and intellect, he is forced to take fight blindfolded in a Battle Royal, a vicious fight put on for the entertainment of men.
But the blindfold was tight as a thick skin-puckering scab and when I raised my gloved hands to push the layers of white aside a voice yelled, “Oh, no you don’t, black bastard! Leave that alone!”
“Ring the bell before Jackson kills him a coon!” someone boomed in the sudden silence. And I heard the bell clang and the sound of the feet scuffing forward. . .
Blindfolded, I could no longer control my motions. I had no dignity. I stumbled about like a baby or a drunken man. The smoke had become thicker and with each new blow it seemed to sear and further restrict my lungs. My saliva became like hot bitter glue. A glove connected with my head, filling my mouth with warm blood. It was everywhere. I could not tell if the moisture I felt upon my body was sweat or blood. A blow landed hard against the nape of my neck. I felt myself going over, my head hitting the floor. Streaks of blue light filled the black world behind the blindfold. I lay prone, pretending that I was knocked out, but felt myself seized by hands and yanked to my feet. “Get going, black boy! Mix it up!” My arms were like lead, my head smarting from blows. I managed to feel my way to the ropes and held on, trying to catch my breath. A glove landed in my mid-section and I went over again, feeling as though the smoke had become a knife jabbed into my guts. Pushed this way and that by the legs milling around me, I finally pulled erect and discovered that I could see the black, sweat-washed forms weaving in the smoky-blue atmosphere like drunken dancers weaving to the rapid drum-like thuds of blows.
Everyone fought hysterically. It was complete anarchy. Everybody fought everybody else.
It is a powerful scene that propels him forward and shapes his life. He goes to college for a while and due to a mistake ends up in New York. He tries to get a job and then tries to stand up for his community. He believes he is trying to do something right and for the people but finds out he is only being used by others. Despite being in the front and fighting for his community, he is really an invisible man, only there for those using him.
I close now at the beginning. One of the most riveting passages is the opening paragraph of the novel. It begins defining the narrator and sets the stage for how he thinks and his place in life.
It goes a long way back, some twenty years. All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man!
