Invisible Man

by Ralph Ellison

a.b.e-book v3.0 / Notes at EOF

Back Cover:

Winner of the National Book Award for fiction. . . Acclaimed by a 1965 Book

Week poll of 200 prominent authors, critics, and editors as "the most

distinguished single work published in the last twenty years."

Unlike any novel you've ever read, this is a richly comic, deeply

tragic, and profoundly soul-searching story of one young Negro's baffling

experiences on the road to self-discovery.

From the bizarre encounter with the white trustee that results in his

expulsion from a Southern college, to its powerful culmination in New York's

Harlem, his story moves with a relentless drive: — the nightmarish job in a

paint factory — the bitter disillusionment with the "Brotherhood" and its

policy of betrayal — the violent climax when screaming tensions are released

in a terrifying race riot.

This brilliant, monumental novel is a triumph of story-telling. It

reveals profound insight into every man's struggle to find his true self.

"Tough, brutal, sensational. . . it blazes with authentic talent." — New York

Times

"A work of extraordinary intensity — powerfully imagined and written with a

savage, wryly humorous gusto." — The Atlantic Monthly

"A stunning block-buster of a book that will floor and flabbergast some

people, bedevil and intrigue others, and keep everybody reading right through

to its explosive end." — Langston Hughes

"Ellison writes at a white heat, but a heat which he manipulates like a

veteran." — Chicago Sun-Times

TO IDA

COPYRIGHT, 1947, 1948, 1952, BY RALPH ELLISON

All rights reserved under International

and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

For information address Random House, Inc.,

457 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10022.

This is an authorized reprint of a hardcover edition

published by Random House, Inc.

THIRTEENTH PRINTING

SIGNET BOOKS are published by

The New American Library, Inc.,

1301 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10019

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

"You are saved," cried Captain Delano, more and more astonished and pained;

"you are saved: what has cast such a shadow upon you?"

Herman Melville, Benito Cereno

HARRY: I tell you, it is not me you are looking at,

Not me you are grinning at, not me your confidential looks

Incriminate, but that other person, if person,

You thought I was: let your necrophily

Feed upon that carcase. . .

T. S. Eliot, Family Reunion

Prologue

I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted

Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. 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.

Nor is my invisibility exactly a matter of a bio-chemical accident to

my epidermis. That invisibility to which I refer occurs because of a peculiar

disposition of the eyes of those with whom I come in contact. A matter of

the construction of their inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through

their physical eyes upon reality. I am not complaining, nor am I protesting

either. It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often

rather wearing on the nerves. Then too, you're constantly being bumped

against by those of poor vision. Or again, you often doubt if you really exist.

You wonder whether you aren't simply a phantom in other people's minds.

Say, a figure in a nightmare which the sleeper tries with all his strength to

destroy. It's when you feel like this that, out of resentment, you begin to

bump people back. And, let me confess, you feel that way most of the time.

You ache with the need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real

world, that you're a part of all the sound and anguish, and you strike out

with your fists, you curse and you swear to make them recognize you. And,

alas, it's seldom successful.

One night I accidentally bumped into a man, and perhaps because of

the near darkness he saw me and called me an insulting name. I sprang at

him, seized his coat lapels and demanded that he apologize. He was a tall

blond man, and as my face came close to his he looked insolently out of his

blue eyes and cursed me, his breath hot in my face as he struggled. I pulled

his chin down sharp upon the crown of my head, butting him as I had seen

the West Indians do, and I felt his flesh tear and the blood gush out, and I

yelled, "Apologize! Apologize!" But he continued to curse and struggle, and I

butted him again and again until he went down heavily, on his knees,

profusely bleeding. I kicked him repeatedly, in a frenzy because he still

uttered insults though his lips were frothy with blood. Oh yes, I kicked him!

And in my outrage I got out my knife and prepared to slit his throat, right

there beneath the lamplight in the deserted street, holding him by the collar

with one hand, and opening the knife with my teeth — when it occurred to

me that the man had not seen me, actually; that he, as far as he knew, was

in the midst of a walking nightmare! And I stopped the blade, slicing the air

as I pushed him away, letting him fall back to the street. I stared at him

hard as the lights of a car stabbed through the darkness. He lay there,

moaning on the asphalt; a man almost killed by a phantom. It unnerved me.

I was both disgusted and ashamed. I was like a drunken man myself,

wavering about on weakened legs. Then I was amused. Something in this

man's thick head had sprung out and beaten him within an inch of his life. I

began to laugh at this crazy discovery. Would he have awakened at the point

of death? Would Death himself have freed him for wakeful living? But I

didn't linger. I ran away into the dark, laughing so hard I feared I might

rupture myself. The next day I saw his picture in the Daily News, beneath a

caption stating that he had been "mugged." Poor fool, poor blind fool, I

thought with sincere compassion, mugged by an invisible man!

Most of the time (although I do not choose as I once did to deny

the violence of my days by ignoring it) I am not so overtly violent. I

remember that I am invisible and walk softly so as not to awaken the

sleeping ones. Sometimes it is best not to awaken them; there are few things

in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers. I learned in time though that it is

possible to carry on a fight against them without their realizing it. For

instance, I have been carrying on a fight with Monopolated Light & Power for

some time now. I use their service and pay them nothing at all, and they

don't know it. Oh, they suspect that power is being drained off, but they

don't know where. All they know is that according to the master meter back

there in their power station a hell of a lot of free current is disappearing

somewhere into the jungle of Harlem. The joke, of course, is that I don't live

in Harlem but in a border area. Several years ago (before I discovered the

advantage of being invisible) I went through the routine process of buying

service and paying their outrageous rates. But no more. I gave up all that,

along with my apartment, and my old way of life: That way based upon the

fallacious assumption that I, like other men, was visible. Now, aware of my

invisibility, I live rent-free in a building rented strictly to whites, in a section

of the basement that was shut off and forgotten during the nineteenth

century, which I discovered when I was trying to escape in the night from

Ras the Destroyer. But that's getting too far ahead of the story, almost to the

end, although the end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.

The point now is that I found a home — or a hole in the ground, as

you will. Now don't jump to the conclusion that because I call my home a

"hole" it is damp and cold like a grave; there are cold holes and warm holes.

Mine is a warm hole. And remember, a bear retires to his hole for the winter

and lives until spring; then he comes strolling out like the Easter chick

breaking from its shell. I say all this to assure you that it is incorrect to

assume that, because I'm invisible and live in a hole, I am dead. I am

neither dead nor in a state of suspended animation. Call me Jack-the-Bear,

for I am in a state of hibernation.

My hole is warm and full of light. Yes, full of light. I doubt if there

is a brighter spot in all New York than this hole of mine, and I do not

exclude Broadway. Or the Empire State Building on a photographer's dream

night. But that is taking advantage of you. Those two spots are among the

darkest of our whole civilization — pardon me, our whole culture (an

important distinction, I've heard) — which might sound like a hoax, or a

contradiction, but that (by contradiction, I mean) is how the world moves:

Not like an arrow, but a boomerang. (Beware of those who speak of the

spiral of history; they are preparing a boomerang. Keep a steel helmet handy.)

I know; I have been boomeranged across my head so much that I now can

see the darkness of lightness. And I love light. Perhaps you'll think it strange

that an invisible man should need light, desire light, love light. But maybe it

is exactly because I am invisible. Light confirms my reality, gives birth to my

form. A beautiful girl once told me of a recurring nightmare in which she lay

in the center of a large dark room and felt her face expand until it filled the

whole room, becoming a formless mass while her eyes ran in bilious jelly up

the chimney. And so it is with me. Without light I am not only invisible, but

formless as well; and to be unaware of one's form is to live a death. I

myself, after existing some twenty years, did not become alive until I

discovered my invisibility.

That is why I fight my battle with Monopolated Light & Power. The

deeper reason, I mean: It allows me to feel my vital aliveness. I also fight

them for taking so much of my money before I learned to protect myself. In

my hole in the basement there are exactly 1,369 lights. I've wired the entire

ceiling, every inch of it. And not with fluorescent bulbs, but with the older,

more-expensive-to-operate kind, the filament type. An act of sabotage, you

know. I've already begun to wire the wall. A junk man I know, a man of

vision, has supplied me with wire and sockets. Nothing, storm or flood, must

get in the way of our need for light and ever more and brighter light. The

truth is the light and light is the truth. When I finish all four walls, then I'll

start on the floor. Just how that will go, I don't know. Yet when you have

lived invisible as long as I have you develop a certain ingenuity. I'll solve the

problem. And maybe I'll invent a gadget to place my coffeepot on the fire

while I lie in bed, and even invent a gadget to warm my bed — like the

fellow I saw in one of the picture magazines who made himself a gadget to

warm his shoes! Though invisible, I am in the great American tradition of

tinkers. That makes me kin to Ford, Edison and Franklin. Call me, since I

have a theory and a concept, a "thinker-tinker." Yes, I'll warm my shoes; they

need it, they're usually full of holes. I'll do that and more.

Now I have one radio-phonograph; I plan to have five. There is a

certain acoustical deadness in my hole, and when I have music I want to feel

its vibration, not only with my ear but with my whole body. I'd like to hear

five recordings of Louis Armstrong playing and singing "What Did I Do to Be

so Black and Blue" — all at the same time. Sometimes now I listen to Louis

while I have my favorite dessert of vanilla ice cream and sloe gin. I pour the

red liquid over the white mound, watching it glisten and the vapor rising as

Louis bends that military instrument into a beam of lyrical sound. Perhaps I

like Louis Armstrong because he's made poetry out of being invisible. I think

it must be because he's unaware that he is invisible. And my own grasp of

invisibility aids me to understand his music. Once when I asked for a

cigarette, some jokers gave me a reefer, which I lighted when I got home and

sat listening to my phonograph. It was a strange evening. Invisibility, let me

explain, gives one a slightly different sense of time, you're never quite on the

beat. Sometimes you're ahead and sometimes behind. Instead of the swift and

imperceptible flowing of time, you are aware of its nodes, those points where

time stands still or from which it leaps ahead. And you slip into the breaks

and look around. That's what you hear vaguely in Louis' music.

Once I saw a prizefighter boxing a yokel. The fighter was swift and

amazingly scientific. His body was one violent flow of rapid rhythmic action.

He hit the yokel a hundred times while the yokel held up his arms in

stunned surprise. But suddenly the yokel, rolling about in the gale of boxing

gloves, struck one blow and knocked science, speed and footwork as cold as a

well-digger's posterior. The smart money hit the canvas. The long shot got the

nod. The yokel had simply stepped inside of his opponent's sense of time. So

under the spell of the reefer I discovered a new analytical way of listening to

music. The unheard sounds came through, and each melodic line existed of

itself, stood out clearly from all the rest, said its piece, and waited patiently

for the other voices to speak. That night I found myself hearing not only in

time, but in space as well. I not only entered the music but descended, like

Dante, into its depths. And beneath the swiftness of the hot tempo there was

a slower tempo and a cave and I entered it and looked around and heard an

old woman singing a spiritual as full of Weltschmerz as flamenco, and

beneath that lay a still lower level on which I saw a beautiful girl the color

of ivory pleading in a voice like my mother's as she stood before a group of

slave owners who bid for her naked body, and below that I found a lower

level and a more rapid tempo and I heard someone shout:

"Brothers and sisters, my text this morning is the 'Blackness of

Blackness.' "

And a congregation of voices answered: "That blackness is most

black, brother, most black . . ."

"In the beginning . . ."

"At the very start," they cried.

". . . there was blackness . . ."

"Preach it . . ."

". . . and the sun . . ."

"The sun, Lawd . . ."

". . . was bloody red . . ."

"Red . . ."

"Now black is . . ." the preacher shouted.

"Bloody . . ."

"I said black is . . ."

"Preach it, brother . . ."

". . . an' black ain't . . "

"Red, Lawd, red: He said it's red!"

"Amen, brother . . ."

"Black will git you . . ."

"Yes, it will . . ."

". . . an' black won't . . ."

"Naw, it won't!"

"It do . . ."

"It do, Lawd . . ."

". . . an' it don't."

"Halleluiah . . ."

". . . It'll put you, glory, glory, Oh my Lawd, in the WHALE'S

BELLY."

"Preach it, dear brother . . ."

". . . an' make you tempt . . ."

"Good God a-mighty!"

"Old Aunt Nelly!"

"Black will make you . . ."

"Black . . ."

". . . or black will un-make you."

"Ain't it the truth, Lawd?"

And at that point a voice of trombone timbre screamed at me, "Git

out of, here, you fool! Is you ready to commit treason?"

And I tore myself away, hearing the old singer of spirituals moaning,

"Go curse your God, boy, and die."

I stopped and questioned her, asked her what was wrong.

"I dearly loved my master, son," she said.

"You should have hated him," I said.

"He gave me several sons," she said, "and because I loved my sons I

learned to love their father though I hated him too."

"I too have become acquainted with ambivalence," I said. "That's why

I'm here."

"What's that?"

"Nothing, a word that doesn't explain it. Why do you moan?"

"I moan this way 'cause he's dead," she said.

"Then tell me, who is that laughing upstairs?"

"Them's my sons. They glad."

"Yes, I can understand that too," I said.

"I laughs too, but I moans too. He promised to set us free but he

never could bring hisself to do it. Still I loved him . . ."

"Loved him? You mean . . ."

"Oh yes, but 1 loved something else even more."

"What more?"

"Freedom."

"Freedom," I said. "Maybe freedom lies in hating."

"Naw, son, it's in loving. I loved him and give him the poison and

he withered away like a frost-bit apple. Them boys woulda tore him to pieces

with they homemake knives."

"A mistake was made somewhere," I said, "I'm confused." And I

wished to say other things, but the laughter upstairs became too loud and

moan-like for me and I tried to break out of it, but I couldn't. Just as I was

leaving I felt an urgent desire to ask her what freedom was and went back.

She sat with her head in her hands, moaning softly; her leather-brown face

was filled with sadness.

"Old woman, what is this freedom you love so well?" I asked around

a corner of my mind.

She looked surprised, then thoughtful, then baffled. "I done forgot,

son. It's all mixed up. First I think it's one thing, then I think it's another. It

gits my head to spinning. I guess now it ain't nothing but knowing how to

say what I got up in my head. But it's a hard job, son. Too much is done

happen to me in too short a time. Hit's like I have a fever. Ever' time I

starts to walk my head gits to swirling and I falls down. Or if it ain't that,

it's the boys; they gits to laughing and wants to kill up the white folks.

They's bitter, that's what they is . . ."

"But what about freedom?"

"Leave me 'lone, boy; my head aches!"

I left her, feeling dizzy myself. I didn't get far.

Suddenly one of the sons, a big fellow six feet tall, appeared out of

nowhere and struck me with his fist.

"What's the matter, man?" I cried.

"You made Ma cry!"

"But how?" I said, dodging a blow.

"Askin' her them questions, that's how. Git outa here and stay, and

next time you got questions like that, ask yourself!"

He held me in a grip like cold stone, his fingers fastening upon my

windpipe until I thought I would suffocate before he finally allowed me to go.

I stumbled about dazed, the music beating hysterically in my ears. It was

dark. My head cleared and I wandered down a dark narrow passage, thinking

I heard his footsteps hurrying behind me. I was sore, and into my being had

come a profound craving for tranquillity, for peace and quiet, a state I felt I

could never achieve. For one thing, the trumpet was blaring and the rhythm

was too hectic. A tomtom beating like heart-thuds began drowning out the

trumpet, filling my ears. I longed for water and I heard it rushing through

the cold mains my fingers touched as I felt my way, but I couldn't stop to

search because of the footsteps behind me.

"Hey, Ras," I called. "Is it you, Destroyer? Rinehart?"

No answer, only the rhythmic footsteps behind me. Once I tried

crossing the road, but a speeding machine struck me, scraping the skin from

my leg as it roared past.

Then somehow I came out of it, ascending hastily from this

underworld of sound to hear Louis Armstrong innocently asking,

What did I do

To be so black

And blue?

At first I was afraid; this familiar music had demanded action, the

kind of which I was incapable, and yet had I lingered there beneath the

surface I might have attempted to act. Nevertheless, I know now that few

really listen to this music. I sat on the chair's edge in a soaking sweat, as

though each of my 1,369 bulbs had everyone become a klieg light in an

individual setting for a third degree with Ras and Rinehart in charge. It was

exhausting — as though I had held my breath continuously for an hour under

the terrifying serenity that comes from days of intense hunger. And yet, it

was a strangely satisfying experience for an invisible man to hear the silence

of sound. I had discovered unrecognized compulsions of my being — even

though I could not answer "yes" to their promptings. I haven't smoked a

reefer since, however; not because they're illegal, but because to see around

corners is enough (that is not unusual when you are invisible). But to hear

around them is too much; it inhibits action. And despite Brother Jack and all

that sad, lost period of the Brotherhood, I believe in nothing if not in action.

Please, a definition: A hibernation is a covert preparation for a more

overt action.

Besides, the drug destroys one's sense of time completely. If that

happened, I might forget to dodge some bright morning and some cluck

would run me down with an orange and yellow street car, or a bilious bus!

Or I might forget to leave my hole when the moment for action presents

itself.

Meanwhile I enjoy my life with the compliments of Monopolated

Light & Power. Since you never recognize me even when in closest contact

with me, and since, no doubt, you'll hardly believe that I exist, it won't

matter if you know that I tapped a power line leading into the building and

ran it into my hole in the ground. Before that I lived in the darkness into

which I was chased, but now I see. I've illuminated the blackness of my

invisibility — and vice versa. And so I play the invisible music of my

isolation. The last statement doesn't seem just right, does it? But it is; you

hear this music simply because music is heard and seldom seen, except by

musicians. Could this compulsion to put invisibility down in black and white

be thus an urge to make music of invisibility? But I am an orator, a rabble

rouser — Am? I was, and perhaps shall be again. Who knows? All sickness is

not unto death, neither is invisibility.

I can hear you say, "What a horrible, irresponsible bastard!" And

you're right. I leap to agree with you. I am one of the most irresponsible

beings that ever lived. Irresponsibility is part of my invisibility; any way you

face it, it is a denial. But to whom can I be responsible, and why should I

be, when you refuse to see me? And wait until I reveal how truly

irresponsible I am. Responsibility rests upon recognition, and recognition is a

form of agreement. Take the man whom I almost killed: Who was responsible

for that near murder — I? I don't think so, and I refuse it. I won't buy it.

You can't give it to me. He bumped me, he insulted me. Shouldn't he, for his

own personal safety, have recognized my hysteria, my "danger potential"? He,

let us say, was lost in a dream world. But didn't he control that dream world

— which, alas, is only too real! — and didn't he rule me out of it? And if he

had yelled for a policeman, wouldn't I have been taken for the offending one?

Yes, yes, yes! Let me agree with you, I was the irresponsible one; for I

should have used my knife to protect the higher interests of society. Some

day that kind of foolishness will cause us tragic trouble. All dreamers and

sleepwalkers must pay the price, and even the invisible victim is responsible

for the fate of all. But I shirked that responsibility; I became too snarled in

the incompatible notions that buzzed within my brain. I was a coward . . .

But what did I do to be so blue? Bear with me.

Chapter 1

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 na?e. 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!

And yet I am no freak of nature, nor of history. I was in the cards,

other things having been equal (or unequal) eighty-five years ago. I am not

ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of

myself for having at one time been ashamed. About eighty-five years ago they

were told that they were free, united with others of our country in everything

pertaining to the common good, and, in everything social, separate like the

fingers of the hand. And they believed it. They exulted in it. They stayed in

their place, worked hard, and brought up my father to do the same. But my

grandfather is the one. He was an odd old guy, my grandfather, and I am

told I take after him. It was he who caused the trouble. On his deathbed he

called my father to him and said, "Son, after I'm gone I want you to keep up

the good fight. I never told you, but our life is a war and I have been a

traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy's country ever since I give up

my gun back in the Reconstruction. Live with your head in the lion's mouth.

I want you to overcome 'em with yeses, undermine 'em with grins, agree 'em

to death and destruction, let 'em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide

open." They thought the old man had gone out of his mind. He had been the

meekest of men. The younger children were rushed from the room, the

shades drawn and the flame of the lamp turned so low that it sputtered on

the wick like the old man's breathing. "Learn it to the younguns," he

whispered fiercely; then he died.

But my folks were more alarmed over his last words than over his

dying. It was as though he had not died at all, his words caused so much

anxiety. I was warned emphatically to forget what he had said and, indeed,

this is the first time it has been mentioned outside the family circle. It had a

tremendous effect upon me, however. I could never be sure of what he

meant. Grandfather had been a quiet old man who never made any trouble,

yet on his deathbed he had called himself a traitor and a spy, and he had

spoken of his meekness as a dangerous activity. It became a constant puzzle

which lay unanswered in the back of my mind. And whenever things went

well for me I remembered my grandfather and felt guilty and uncomfortable.

It was as though I was carrying out his advice in spite of myself. And to

make it worse, everyone loved me for it. I was praised by the most lily-white

men of the town. I was considered an example of desirable conduct — just as

my grandfather had been. And what puzzled me was that the old man had

defined it as treachery. When I was praised for my conduct I felt a guilt that

in some way I was doing something that was really against the wishes of the

white folks, that if they had understood they would have desired me to act

just the opposite, that I should have been sulky and mean, and that that

really would have been what they wanted, even though they were fooled and

thought they wanted me to act as I did. It made me afraid that some day

they would look upon me as a traitor and I would be lost. Still I was more

afraid to act any other way because they didn't like that at all. The old man's

words were like a curse. On my graduation day I delivered an oration in

which I showed that humility was the secret, indeed, the very essence of

progress. (Not that I believed this — how could I, remembering my

grandfather? — I only believed that it worked.) It was a great success.

Everyone praised me and I was invited to give the speech at a gathering of

the town's leading white citizens. It was a triumph for our whole community.

It was in the main ballroom of the leading hotel. When I got there I

discovered that it was on the occasion of a smoker, and I was told that since

I was to be there anyway I might as well take part in the battle royal to be

fought by some of my school

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