Structural Analysis

Lindsey S.

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison is structurally composed to engage the reader and cause one to question what they have previously read. The novel is primarily broken into three sections, although these sections are not cut clearly by Ellison, but are left to the reader. These three sections influence how the reader perceives the narrator and his journey to invisibility, as well as the development of the traits of the character. The first part of the novel tells the present life of the narrator. He lives in solitude, alone, and tells the reader of his invisibility. The next section follows to explain his complete path and his journey to invisibility. This section describes his life in the South, his family, his past, his education, his travels to the North and his encounters with the Brotherhood and Harlem. The end finally concludes with his present invisibility and his thoughts of the future as an “invisible man”.

By the reader knowing of the narrator’s invisibility at the beginning of the novel, not only from the title but also from the prologue, it gives the reader a path of thought to follow, such as the Brotherhood did to its “victims”. The reader seems to read looking for the clues and reason to why the narrator will at the end becoming invisible, trying to piece the clues together to make a final solution such as in a murder mystery. The middle of the novel, the story of his past life, really does not focus upon his invisibility whatsoever. It appears to be the story of a man’s life and all that encompasses it. His life appears to be normal, although influenced strongly by racial inequality and prejudices as he lives in the South. Upon arriving to the North, this section shows a new chapter in his life where virtually everything that was right in his past, takes a turn for the worst. In a sense, it makes the reader forget that the man becomes invisible because the intentions of the Brotherhood as well as Bledsoe’s intentions, which have been mentioned by Denis below, seem truly respectable. Not until the latter part of the novel is the reader thrown back into the upcoming invisibility, then causing them to reflect upon the past events in a different light. As said by the narrator, “the end is the beginning”.

The way in which Ellison split up the novel into the 25 chapters plus a prologue and an epilogue was significant to the progress of the character as well as the story as a whole. Ellison appeared to separate each important event and everything surrounding it into one separate chapter. This gave the reader a step-by-step outline of the events that progressed in his life. By each chapter as well, the character took one more step towards invisibility. The reader can scan back through the chapters and see how each chapter shaped the narrator a little bit more into the invisible man he was meant to become.

Finally, I feel as though the prologue and the epilogue contain the greatest significance in the structure of the novel than any other parts that fall in-between. As a reader, I know that many times people, as well as myself, commonly skip over prologues as well as epilogues when reading a novel that possibly we don’t have the sufficient time to read or don’t completely desire to read whatsoever. Although this may not have been purposeful by Ellison, I feel that by the narrator talking about his life as an “invisible man” in primarily the prologue and the epilogue, he placed them in the “invisible” chapters. Prologues and epilogues do not sit in the main body of the work, but outside it. The prologue and epilogue are in my opinion, the two most important parts of the novel due to how they portray the true meaning behind it. The narrator is “invisible” which causes great meaning to the plot, and the prologue and epilogue as not chapters are “invisible” which make the greatest meaning to the novel as a whole. Without these two parts, the novel would be the story of a man’s life as well as a little questioning of identity and invisibility, but not to the extent to with the prologue and the epilogue push it.