The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
-An African American man lives underground to write his life story
-He believes he is invisible in the social world. Not physicaly but in the sense that no one really sees him for who he is.
-He begins to tell us about his time in the south and how he was humiliated in order to recieve a scholarship to a really good black college.
-At the college he gets a job driving a wealthy white man named Mr. Norton around.
-He takes him to a black bar, then ends up getting kicked out of the school because he showed him a bad version of black life and is apparently blind to racial conflict.
-He is sent to New York to find a job with one of the trustees from the school.
-The son of the trustee helps him get a low paying job at a paint company.
-He got hurt at work and temporarily lost his memory.
-After collapsing on the street.. Mary takes him to her home in Harlem and allows him to stay for free.
-She gives him a sense of his herritage.
-He is offered a job working for the Brotherhood(An organization that works to help oppressed people.)
-He delivers speaches and begins to be a well known person in the multi racial brotherhood.
-After recieving a racist letter from someone in the brotherhood.. problems arise and the narrator is forced to disguise himself in order to avoid being beat up.
-The brotherhood is suspected of selfish intentions and the narrator desides to go against them.
-One night he is called to Harlem and finds a riot where people in the brotherhood wanted to hang him.
-While running from then, and the police, the narrator falls in a manhole where he has stayed ever since.
-He says he is now finally ready to emerge into the world again.
*To me the theme of this book is to stay true to yourself. By following the crowd and trying to fit in and be something you're not.. you become invisible.
-I know a verse that I think really fits the overall theme of this book..
"Don't be conformed to this world: but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is good, and acceptable, and perfect."
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