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Characters The Narrator-nameless protagonist of the novel; black man in 1930’s; considers himself invisible because people never see his true self because he is a black man; intelligent, deeply introspective, and highly gifted with language Brother Jack-white and blindly loyal leader of the Brotherhood; political organization that professes to defend the rights of the socially oppressed; he initially seems compassionate, intelligent, and kind, and he claims to uphold the rights of the socially oppressed, Brother Jack actually possesses racist viewpoints and is unable to see people as anything other than tools; glass eye and his red hair symbolize his blindness and his communism, respectively Tod Clifton-black member of the Brotherhood and a resident of Harlem; passionate, handsome, articulate, and intelligent; eventually parts ways with the Brotherhood for reasons that are not understood; begins selling Sambo dolls on the street, seemingly both perpetrating and mocking the offensive stereotype of the lazy and servile slave that the dolls represent and then is gun down by white cops Ras the Exhorter-stout, flamboyant, charismatic, angry man with a flair for public agitation; represents the black nationalist movement; used in the book to comment on the black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey; frequently opposes the Brotherhood and the narrator Rinehart-surreal figure who never appears in the book except by reputation; has infinite number of identities; when the narrator wears dark glasses in Harlem he gets mistaken for him a lot; narrator realizes that Rinehart's shape-shifting capacity represents a life of extreme freedom, complexity, and possibility; ecognizes that this capacity fosters a cynical and manipulative in authenticity; Dr. Bledsoe-president at the narrator's college; proves selfish, ambitious, and treacherous; black man who puts on a mask of servility to the whites; driven by desire to maintain status and power Mr. Norton-wealthy white trustees at the narrator's college; narcissistic man who treats the narrator as a tally on his scorecard; liberal minded and philanthropic; Norton's wistful remarks about his daughter add an eerie quality of longing to his fascination with the story of Jim Trueblood's incest Reverend Homer A. Barbee- preacher from Chicago that visit’s the narrator while he is at college; Reverend Barbee's fervent praise of the Founder's “vision” strikes an inadvertently ironic note, because he himself is blind; Barbee's first name is a reference to the Greek philosopher homer another blind orator who praised great heroes in his epic poems; used to satirize the college's desire to transform the Founder into a similarly mythic hero |
Characters Continued Jim Trueblood-uneducated black man who impregnated his own daughter and who lives on the outskirts of the narrator's college campus; people of the college view Jim Trueblood as a disgrace to the black community; to surprise whites have shown an interest in him The Veteran-institutionalized black man who makes bitterly insightful remarks about race relations; Claiming to be a graduate of the narrator's college, the veteran tries to expose the pitfalls of the school's ideology; angers angers both the narrator and Mr. Norton; society has deemed him “shell-shocked” and insane Emerson-son of one of the wealthy white trustees of the college; younger Emerson reads the supposed recommendation from Dr. Bledsoe and reveals Bledsoe's treachery to the narrator and expresses sympathy for the narrator and helps him get a job Mary-serene and motherly black woman with whom the narrator stays after learning that the Men's House has banned him; treats him kindly and even lets him stay for free; nurtures his black identity and urges him to become active in the fight for racial equality Sybil-white woman whom the narrator attempts to use to find out information about the Brotherhood; uses the narrator to act out her fantasy of being raped by a “savage” black man. Time Period History Great depression was going on Discrimination between the races was still a big issue Scottsboro Boys Accused of Rape Amelia Earhardt First Woman to Fly Solo Across the Atlantic Assassination Attempt on FDR WWII ended Themes A theme that is portrayed or that is constantly involved in this book is “racism as an obstacle to individual identity. An example of this in the book is when the narrator of the Invisible Man struggles through the book to arrive at a conception of his own identity but he finds his efforts he makes to be complicated by the fact that he is a black man living in the racist society of the 1930’s in America. Motifs Invisibility is a motif in this story because the narrator decides that he is invisible because the people around him wont take him for who he is, instead they take him for some piece of dirt black man and he calls these people in the book blind and sleepwalkers. |