Seeking The True Self

Invisible Man is generally viewed as one of the most important American novelappearing after World War II. Its author Ralph Ellison is regarded as the father ofAfrican-American modernism. Although many literary critics have recognized thephilosophical meaning impregnated in this novel and interpreted this novel by means ofSartre’s Existentialism and other theories concerning philosophy, there are few studiesin China interpret this novel in the light of Henry Bergson’s philosophy. Therefore thepresent paper attempts to interpret, in the light of Henry Bergson’s philosophyconcerning two selves and freedom, the characters in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, soas to find the answer to their enslavement. It is argued that their enslavement derivesfrom the bias of the outer world and themselves. This thesis contains six chapters.Chapter one, the introduction, is divided into four parts: the significance and motivationof writing this thesis, the claim of the thesis, the brief introduction to the theoreticalbasis of this thesis and the outline of the thesis. Chapter Two is the literature review. Inthis chapter, the author gives a brief survey of the critical works, both at home andabroad, on Invisible Man. Chapter Three introduces the theoretic framework myresearch employs. Chapter Four turns to analyze some main characters in this novel interms of Bergson’s two selves and freedom. Almost all the characters analyzed in thisthesis make their true self belied by the superficial self and fail to carry outself-searching, but they do exert different influence on the protagonist. Chapter Fivemoves on to analyze the journey the protagonist has undergone in seeking the true self.According to his attitude toward himself, the people around him and the society, hisjourney is roughly divided into two stages: that is, before and after, the factory hospitalepisode. At the first stage of his journey, because of his credulousness of the bias of theouter world, his true self is neglected by himself. At the second stage, he always fightsbetween his two selves and his attitude toward others and the world is ambivalent.Chapter six is the conclusion. Based on the analysis in the previous chapters, it can beconcluded that their enslavement is from their superficial self or their enslavement isself-generated.