| Ralph Ellison is one of the most prominent black novelists in contemporary American society. Ellison gained great honor for writing the finest piece of fiction Invisible Man, which attracted thousands of readers for its original theme and artistic technique. In 1953, Invisible Man won the National Book Award for Fiction. Ellison realized his artistic ideal in Invisible Man.Firstly, the most obvious feature in Invisible Man is that Ellison inherited and made use of black folklore such as the blues, Jazz ,folk tales ,myth and rituals. The novel is full of artistic attraction for Ellison's absorbing the energies of black folklore.Ellison employed the blues into his novel Invisible Man. The blues consists of a variation of statement of a theme, a repetition of the theme, and a resolution of the theme. The dominant blues mood is lament, beginning in a sentimental expression of grief or hard luck. Ellison adapted the blues structure to the novel by incorporating the character, theme, and plot of the blues into the metaphysical structure of the novel. Blues language and rhymes resound throughout Invisible Man.Ellison creatively incorporates the spirits of jazz in his writing style. In the prologue and epilogue, Invisible Man suggests a traditional jazz structure. In this novel, Ellison uses the first-person narration, but there are double voices: one na?ve"I"and one mature"I"voices. The na?ve"I"ask a question , then the mature"I"response, so a circle response is formed. The double voices run into one voice with the plots progressing in the prologue and epilogue.Ellison is a gift of language. in this novel, we can see both the standard English and black street slang. Furthermore, some words and expressions from the Bible are also used in Invisible Man. Ellison realized preaching Pathology perpetuates it and worshipping wounds ultimately leads to"self-help"and survival wisdom in black life. Ellison employs these black culture tradition to stir the Harlem crowd to socially responsible action.Black folk tales, songs, poems, and proverbs show both the wisdom of folk experience and their function as survival rituals clearly. Ellison is not only employing the blues, the jazz, the black language into his novel, but also he self-consciousness of employing the myth and folk tales into Invisible Man. By this way, his social act, is to counteract the repressive forces of ritualized behavior by lifting it from thoughtlessness into consciousness, from social habit into poetic form.Secondly, The other prominent feature in Invisible Man is its vivid symbols and images. Invisible Man is a symbolic novel full of deep symbolic significance. He succeeded by projecting his words through meanings of specific images—any aesthetic experience, specially the written word, is inherently a distortion of reality. The symbols will be analyzed with the light of the plot development. Black color plays an important role throughout the book. Ellison uses the contrast colors white and black to symbolize the white and the black in American society in order to reveal the injustice that the black suffered in the racist society. Naming is another symbol in Invisible Man. The processes of naming and the function of the name are central to the problem of identity in Invisible Man. Besides, Ellison also employed other symbols and images such as eyes, briefcase, leg shackles to represent deeper significant meaning—the miserable life of the blacks in the United State.Thirdly, Ellison emphasizes the importance of African-American folklore to his writing, and his excellent skills of combing different kinds of materials from different sources. Invisible Man is a perfect integration of American mainstream literature and American black literature. As a result, Invisible Man is characterized by diverse writing techniques, and his unique personal style.In conclusion, Invisible Man is a classic masterpiece not only in black American literature, but also in American mainstream literature. It is a great contribution to the world literature. |
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