Novel Module 5 : The American Dream Denied— Invisible Man  (in progress / check back for additions)
   


     "I am an invisible man.  No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie extoplasms.  I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids -- and I might even be said to possess a mind.  I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.  Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass.  When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination -- indeed, everything and anything except me." --from "Prologue"  Invisible Man    

What did I do
to be so black
And blue?

    Biblio /Webliography //   printout a one-page chapter summary     //
Identity and Alienation vs. Social Responsibility
As the  nameless narrator (NN or IM) finishes high school and enters the world beyond home, he begins a heuristic education that disabuses him one-by-one of every ideal he has ever been taught about achieving an adult identity as a black man.   Nevertheless, he rejects despising or idealizing either race. And realizing that in America the races are inextricably connected, he opts for a philosophy of possibility and hope through social responsibly.  We will want to discuss this theme in terms of Invisible Man and also later in connection with Fight Club.  
 
Author's Use of Language--Begin to Analyze How Characters Talk (not just what they say, but how the say it)
In addition to identity and alienation vs. social responsibility, let's also discuss language in both novels.  Invisible Man , for example, has a wide range of rich and creative African American vernacular heard in the novel.  The English major is a the study of the "English Language and Literature."   The way the characters use their/our language tells us interesting things about them (and about our American language).   Let's try to analyze this point by looking closely at salient examples in the novels, beginning now with Invisible Man.

Bibliography

Selected Books

Busby, Mark. Ralph Ellison. Boston : Twayne Publishers, 1991.

Callahan, John F. The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison. NY: Modern Library, 1995.

Nadel, Alan. Invisible Criticism: Ralph Ellison and the American Canon . Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1988.

O'Meally, Robert G. The Craft of Ralph Ellison. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1980.

O'Meally, Robert. ed. New Essays on Invisible Man . Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988.

Parr, Susan R, and Panch Savery, eds. Approaches to Teaching Ellison's Invisible Man. NY: Mod. Lang. Assn. of Amer., 1989.

Reilly, John M. Twentieth Century Interpretations of Invisible Man; A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970.

Selected Essays

Baker, Houston A., Jr. "To Move without Moving: An Analysis of Creativity and Commerce in Ralph Ellison's Trueblood Episode." PMLA 98.5 (Oct 1983): 828-845.

Blount, Marcellus. "'A Certain Eloquence': Ralph Ellison and the Afro-American Artist." American Literary History 1.3 (Fall 1989): 675-688.

Brennan, Timothy. "Ellison and Ellison: The Solipsism of Invisible Man." College Language Association Journal 25.2 (Dec 1981): 162-181.

Butler, Robert . "Dante's Inferno and Ellison's Invisible Man: A Study in Literary Continuity." College Language Association Journal 28.1 (Sep 1984): 57-77.

---. "Down from Slavery: Invisible Man's Descent into the City and the Discovery of Self. " American Studies 29.2 (Fall 1988): 57-67.

Butler, Thorpe. "What Is to Be Done? Illusion, Identity, and Action in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man." College Language Association Journal 27.3 (Mar 1984): 315-331.

Callahan, John F. "'Riffing' and Paradigm-Building: The Anomaly of Tradition and Innovation in Invisible Man and The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." Callaloo 10.1 (Wint 1987): 91-102.

Cowan, Michael. "Walkers in the Street: American Writers and the Modern City." Prospects 6 (1981): 281-311.

Fabre, Michel. "The Narrator/Narratee Relationship in Invisible Man ." Callaloo 8.3 (Fall 1985): Fall, 535-543.

German, Norman. "Imagery in the 'Battle Royal' Chapter of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man." College Language Association Journal 31.4 (Jun 1988): 394-399.

Harper, Phillip B. "'To Become One and Yet Many': Psychic Fragmentation and Aesthetic Synthesis in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man." Black American Literature Forum 23.4 (Wint 1989): 681-700.

Kim, Daniel Y. "Invisible Desires: Homoerotic Racism and its Homophobic Critique in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man." Novel 30.3 (Sprg 1997): 309-29.

Lee, A. Robert . "Harlem on My Mind: Fictions of a Black Metropolis." in Clarke Graham. ed. The American City: Literary and Cultural Perspectives . NY: St. Martin's, 1988.

Lyne, William. "The Signifying Modernist: Ralph Ellison and the Limits of the Double Consciousness." PMLA 107.2 (Mar 1992): 319-30.

Marx, Steven. "Beyond Hibernation: Ralph Ellison's 1982 Version of Invisible Man." Black American Literature Forum 23.4 (Wint 1989): 701-721.

Nichols, Charles H. "The Slave Narrators and the Picaresque Mode: Archetypes for Modern Black Personae." in Davis, CharlesT. and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. eds. The Slave's Narrative. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1985.

Webliography

(What Did I Do to be so) Black and Blue

Lyrics by Thomas 'Fats' Waller, Harry Brooks, and Andy Razaf
 Listen:   http://www.princeton.edu/~ats/eng363/black_and_blue
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Cold empty bed...springs hurt my head
Feels like ole Ned...wished I was dead
What did I do...to be so black and blue

  Even the mouse...ran from my house
They laugh at you...and all that you do
What did I do...to be so black and blue

  I'm white...inside...but, that don't help my case
That's life...can't hide...what is in my face

  How would it end...ain't got a friend
My only sin...is in my skin
What did I do...to be so black and blue

  (instrumental break)

  How would it end...I ain't got a friend
My only sin...is in my skin
What did I do...to be so black and blue
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Recorded by Louis Armstrong July 22, 1929 with his Orchestra.
He also recorded the song in 1955 with his All Stars


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