Year 12 IB Extended Essays 2018

Finally, he is heard, commenting “this was I thought, they’re listening, eager to listen. Nobody laughed.” (pg.265). This quote exemplifies the climax of the narrator’s identity, as he explains how he finally has a crowd that listens to him, and more specifically, the contents of his speech. The narrator also uses an allusion to his speech in the first chapter (after the battle royal), commenting that “nobody laughed” like they did in his last speech. This allusion references his sense of identity finally being established, whereas when people were laughing at his speech, he was anonymous. The Brotherhood is a powerful political organization that professes to defend the rights of the poor and to promote racial equality. When the narrator joins the Brotherhood, he believes that he can fight for racial equality by working within the ideology of the organization, but he then finds that the Brotherhood seeks to use him as a token black man in its abstract project. Ellison cleverly uses the name of ‘Brother Jack’ for the leader of the Brotherhood, as common slang for ‘jack’ is money. The name emphasizes the financial element in the relationship between the narrator and the Brotherhood (Volger, 1970). Ultimately, the narrator’s identity with the Brotherhood is dismantled because it is a mask given to him by the Brotherhood. The narrator believes in the organization’s narrative and ideology with the same zeal of his earlier American idealism and believes he has found a true American identity. “Here was a way to have a part in making the big decisions, of seeing through the mystery of how the country, the world, really operated” (355). Ironically, as Invisible Man is most adamant about finding identity, he is once again fooled into believing a social institution’s illusionary narrative. The irony in the manipulation of the narrator’s identity originates from the narrator believing the Brotherhood would be the salvation to establishing his own identity as an orator. Yet after his speech which is the climax of his self-identity, comes the downfall of this identity. Finally, the narrator recognizes his invisibility in this institution when he realizes that the Brotherhood does not care about individuals, but only about a larger cause, and thus their identity is illusory as well as it is dependent on total commitment to ideology. “Here I had thought they accepted me because they felt that color made no difference, when in reality they didn’t see either color or men” (508). The narrator realizes the Brotherhoods manipulation, and from this point, the narrator’s development of identity ironically plummets. Thus, Ellison’s purpose in displaying the manipulation of the narrator’s identity throughout the course of the novel is an explanation as to why the narrator chooses to be anonymous. The prologue takes place after the events of the novel itself, and thus the events of the novel itself are the reason for anonymity. Using three distinct time frames which have varying levels of confidence in identity, Ellison portrays the ultimate climax and downfall with the Brotherhood’s manipulation of the narrator, with the novel ending shortly after. Thus, after suffering so many defeats when trying to establish his own identity, the narrator is an ‘Invisible Man’, as even for the short time the narrator establishes an identity (after his eviction speech), the narrator ironically loses it by joining an organization which supposedly has the purpose of creating equality and identity for all.

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