Identity Lost And Identity Reclaimed

Ralph Ellison (1914-1994), one of the most important American black writers since 1950s, is also an outstanding literary critic, and one of the most significant pioneers of American cultural studies. He made a landmark contribution to both African American literature and American literature, and acted in full sense as a successor and a forerunner in the history of African American literary theory and practice. Invisible Man is Ellison's sole full-length novel. In the protagonist's quest for identity in the odyssey and his monologue in the underground, Ellison demonstrates the protagonist's complex dialogic relationships in the novel. This thesis is a tentative study of the protagonist's dialogic relationships in Invisible Man in the light of Bakhtin's dialogic theory, with a view to showing how the protagonist loses and reclaims his identity successively in these dialogic relationships and revealing that Ellison values equal dialogues and calls upon the blacks to reclaim themselves through equal dialogues.The thesis consists of three parts. The first part is a brief introduction to Ellison and Invisible Man, the studies of Invisible Man at home and abroad, the problem to be studied and the theory to be adopted in the thesis, and the argument and the layout of the thesis. The second part is the body part of the thesis, consisting of three chapters. Chapter One mainly examines the protagonist's dialogues with his readers and himself. As a narrator, the protagonist is a strategist skilled in arousing his readers'sympathy, stimulating their attention and reaching consensus with them in his identity problem. It also comments on the protagonist's dialogues with himself in his transition from passive double-voice discourse to active double-voiced discourse, which reveals how the protagonist gradually becomes mature to get insight into reality and reclaim himself by utilizing others'discourse. Chapter Two explores the protagonist's dialogues with other characters in the dialogic communication with their different ideologies, which reveals how the protagonist gradually achieves the transition from identity disruption to identity awakening. Chapter Three analyzes the protagonist's cultural dialogues in detail; that is, how the protagonist indulges in the identity illusions imposed by the white culture, and how the protagonist gradually takes in Blues to combat all the bitterness and misfortunes ascribed to black folks, cherishes the possibilities through Blues, and finally reclaims his identity culturally. The third part is the concluding part of the thesis, summarizing the main ideas of the thesis and relates Ellison ideal of equal dialogues, i.e., the blacks should reclaim themselves through equal dialogues.