Invisible man
by
Ralph Walda Ellison
Background and setting of the novelist/novel, and summary
Subject: Literature-in-English
Theme: Literature in English
Topic: Invisible man by Ralph Walda Ellison
Sub Topic: Background and setting of the novelist and novel
Date: dd/mm/yyyy
Class: S.S 3
Average Age: 16 years and above
Duration: 35 Minutes
No of Learners: 40
At the end of the lesson, the students should be able to:
1. Explain the Background of the novelist.
Invisible man is Ralph Walda Ellison’s 1952 novel about race in America. Ellison was the grandson of slaves. He attended the Tuskegee institute, which was founded by Booker T. Washington. He both studied and played jazz, which informed the improvisational style of invisible man. He then moved to Harlem, where he befriended people like Langston Hughes and Richard Wright.The novel won the national Book Award in 1953 and is regarded as one of the greatest American texts of all time. Amazingly, this was Ellison’s first and only text published during his life. One more text, Juneteenth, was published, after his death. Ralph Ellison was an American novelist, literary critire and scholar best known for his novel, Invisible man, which won National Book Award in 1953.
2. Explain the Background setting of the novel.
The book is set in the 1920s and '40s and the main story begins in the American South, a place where the oppression of Black people was a dominant societal practice. Segregation was the norm in many parts of the United States when Invisible Man was published.3. Explain the tone and mood used in the novel.
Tone: The tone of invisible man create both a tragic and comic response to the reader. This tone occurs when an incestuous Negro farmer tells his tale of seducing and impregnating his own daughter. Though tone, Ellison reveals his invisible man thought himself to be invisible.
4. Explain Language and Style used in the novel
1. Irony: Ellison’s use of irony is seen through the narrator during the eviction. The reader is astonished to hear the invisible man stand up for himself at the eviction by stating: “I asked a civil question. If you don’t care to answer, don’t, but don’t try to make me look ridiculous”. The reader find the situation ironic because the black man is the one that is usually made to look ridiculous and forced to tolerate embarrassment. But here, the invisible man is declaring that he will not put with this kind of treatment.
2. Antagonism: The narrator’s reaction to an advertisement sign stating that whiter skin is better, shows the black man moving towards a feeling of antagonism. Using the sign, Ellison gives invisible man a sense of hostility. The opposing force at the white man taking away the couple’s belongings was also an inspiration for the blacks to stand up for themselves. After the uproar at the eviction people are heard exclaiming how they had never done anything like that before. Ellison uses antagonism to modify the idea that blacks are of no importance.
5. List and explain the Characters in the novel
1. The Narrator: The nameless protagonist of the novel. The narrator is the “Invisible man” of the title. A black man in 1930’s America, the narrator considers himself invisible because people never see his true self beneath the roles that stereotype and racial prejudice compel him to play. Though the narrator is intelligent, deeply introspective, and highly gifted with language, the experiences that he relates demonstrates that he was naive in his youth. As the text progresses the narrator’s illusions are gradually destroyed through his experiences as a student at college, as a worker at the liberty paints plant, and as a member of a political organization known as Brotherhood. Shedding his blindness, he struggles to arrive at a conception of his identity that honors his complexity as an individual without sacrificing social responsibility.
2. Brother Jack: The white and blindly loyal leader of the Brotherhood, a political organization that professes to defend the rights of the socially oppressed. Although he initially seems compassionate, intelligent, and kind, and his claims to uphold the rights of the socially oppressed. Brother Jack actually possesses racist view points and is unable to see people as anything other than tools. His glass eye and his red hair symbolizes his blindness and his communism, respectively.
3. Tod Clifton: A black member of the Brotherhood and a resident of Harlem. Tod Clifton is passionate, handsome, articulate, and intelligent. He eventually part ways with the Brotherhood, though it remains unclear whether a falling-out has taken place or whether he has simply become disillusioned with the group. He begins selling Sambo dolls on the street, seemingly both perpetrating and mocking the offensive stereotype of the lazy and servile slave that dolls represent.
4. Ras The Exhorter: A stout, flamboyant, charismatic, angry man with a flair for public agitation. Ras represents the black nationalist movement, which advocates the violent overthrow of white supremacy. Ellison seems to use him to comment on the black nationalist leader, Marcus Garvey, who believed that blacks would never achieve freedom in white society. A maverick Ras frequently opposes the Brotherhood and the narrator, often violently, and incites riots in Harlem.
5. Rinehart: A surreal figure who never appears in the book except by reputation. Rinehart possesses a seemingly infinite number of identities, among them Pimp, bookie, and preaches who speaks on the subject of “invisibility”, when the narrator wears dark glasses in Harlem one day, many people mistake him for Rinehart’s shape-shifting capacity represents a life of extreme freedom, complexity and possibility. He also recognizes that this capacity fosters cynical and manipulative in authenticity. Rinehart thus figures crucially in the book’s larger examination of the problems of identity and self-conception.
6. Dr. Bledsoe: The president at the narrator’s college. Dr. Bledsoe proves selfish, ambitious and treacherous. He is a black man who puts on a mask of servility to the white community. Driven by his desire to maintain his status and power, he declares that he would see every black man in the country lynched before he would give up the position of authority.
7. Mr. Norton: One wealthy white trustees at the narrator’s college. Mr. Norton is a harcissistic man who treats the narrator as a tally on his scorecard that is, as proof that he is liberalminded and philanthropic. Norton’s wistful remarks about his daughter add an eerie quality of longing to his fascination with the story of Jim Trueblood’s incest.
8. Reverend Homer A. Barbee: A preacher from Chicago who visits the narrator’s college Reverend Barbees fervent praise of the founder’s “vision” strikes an inadvertently ironic note, because he himself is bind with Barbee’s first name Ellison makes reference to the Greek poet Homer, another blind orator who praised great heroes in his epic poems. Ellison uses Barbee to satirize the college’s desire to transform in the founder into a similarly mythic hero.
9. Jim Trueblood: An uneducated black man impregnated his own daughter and who lives on the out skirts of the narrator’s college campus. The students and faculty of the college view Jim Trueblood as a disgrace to the black community. To Trueblood’s surprise, however, whites have shown an increase interest in him since the story of the incest spread.
10. The Veteran: An institutionalized black man who makes bitterly insightful remarks about race relations, claiming to be a graduate of the narrator’s college, the veteran tries to expose the pit falls of the school’s ideology. His bold candor angers both the narrator and Mr. Norton the veteran exposes their blindness and hypocrisy and points out the sinister nature of their relationship. Although society has deemed him shell-shocked and insane, the veteran proves to be the only character who speaks the truth in the first part of the novel.
11. Emerson: The son of one of the wealthy white trustees (whom the text also calls Emerson) of the narrator’s college. The younger Emerson reads the supposed recommendation from Dr Bledsoe and reveals Bledsoe’s treachery to the narrator. He expresses sympathy for the narrator and helps him to get a job, but he remains too pre occupied with his own problems to help the narrator in any meaningful way.
12. Mary: A Jerene and motherly black woman with whom the narrator stays after learning that the man’s house has banned him. Mary treats him kindly and even lets him stay for free. She nurtures his black identity and urges him to become active int the fight for racial equality.
13. Sybil: A white woman whom the narrator attempt to use to find out information about the Brotherhood. Sybil instead uses the narrator to act out her fantasy of being raped by a savage black man.
6. Explain Theme of the novel
1. Racism as an Obstacle to individual identity: As the narrator or invisible man struggles to arrive at the conception of his own identity, he finds his efforts complicated by the fact that he is a black man living in a racist American society. Throughout the novel, the narrator finds himself passing through a series of communities, from the liberty paints plant to the Brotherhood with each microcosm dictating a different idea of how blacks should behave in a society.
Upon arriving in New York, the narrator enters the world of the liberty paints plant. There, the narrator finds himself involved in a process in which white depends heavily on black-both in terms of the mixing of the paints tones and in terms of the racial make up of the work force. Yet the factory denies this dependence in the final presentation of its product and the narrator, as a black man, ends up stifled.
Later, when the narrator joins the Brotherhood, he believes that he can fight for racial equality by working within the ideology of the organization, but he then finds that then finds that the Brotherhood seeks to use him as a token black man in its abstract project.
The narrator concludes that he is in the sense that the world is filled with blind people who cannot or will not see his real nature. As such, he remains unable to act according to his own personality.
2. The Limitations of ideology: The texts contains many examples of ideology; from the ideology of Booker T. Washington subscribed it at the narrator’s college to the more violent separatist ideology voiced by Ras the Exhorter. Among the Brotherhood, the narrator is taught an ideology that promises to save “the people”, though in reality, it consistently limits and betrays the freedom of the individual.
The text implies that life is too rich, too various and too unpredictable to be bound up neatly in an ideology. Life reaches the heights of its beauty during moments of improvisation and surprise.
3. The Danger of Fighting Stereotype with Stereotype: The narrator is not the only African American in the book to have felt the limitations of racist stereotyping. While he tries to escape the grip of prejudice on an individual level, he encounters other blacks who attempt to prescribe a defense strategy for all African Americans. Each presents a theory of a supposed right way to be black in America and tries to outline how blacks should act in accordance with the theory. The supporters of these theories believe that any one who acts contrary to their prescriptions effectively betrays the race.
Early in the novel, the narrator’s grandfather explains his belief that in order to undermine and mock racism, blacks should exaggerate their servility to whites. The narrator’s college, represented by Dr. Bledsoe, thinks that blacks can best achieve success by working industriously and adopting the manners and speech of whites. Ras the Exhorter thinks that blacks should rise up and take their freedom by destroying whites.
Although all these conceptions arise from within the black community itself, the text implies that they ultimately prove as dangerous as white people’s racist stereotypes. Instead of exploring their own identities, as the narrator struggles to do throughout the book, Bledsoe and Ras consign themselves and their people to formulaic roles; ultimately undermine themselves.
4. Slavery's Baggage: Although the narrator was born a free man, he is forced to carry the baggage of slavery's legacy with him everywhere. The "baggage" is symbolized in the calfskin briefcase the narrator wins at the end of the battle royal. Throughout the novel he fills the case with other symbols of enslavement to white men, such as the letters, his diploma, the Sambo doll, pieces of Mary's broken bank, and Brother Tarp's leg chain. Even when he is in the middle of the tenement fire, the narrator returns for the briefcase, suggesting the impossibility of simply leaving this baggage behind. It is only at the end of the novel, when the narrator chooses to plunge into darkness, that he is able to rid himself of the baggage and truly create a new identity for himself.
5. Invisibility: The unnamed narrator wants nothing more than to be seen as an individual in a society where racist expectations label what he "should" be before he has the chance to prove anyone wrong. As a result, the narrator feels unseen or invisible. In seeking to create a unique identity for himself, the narrator repeatedly denies his true self, his culture and heritagen to create an identity that will make others proud. First, he tries to suppress his Southern heritage, then he tries to cover his "blackness" with "white manners and ideologies" while in college. In Harlem he literally takes a new name, Rinehart, only to find that this, too, pushes him further from his true self. As the narrator matures, however, he begins to see that invisibility isn't always a bad thing. When he "meets" Rinehart, for example, he learns that by donning disguises, he is able to pursue his own goals without others' expectations getting in the way. He had always believed that pleasing others would bring him success, but as Rinehart, he follows his own pleasure and creates his own rewards. It is also by being "invisible" that the narrator learns to change society. In the novel's prologue, the narrator wonders how an invisible man could be held accountable for his actions. Ultimately, however, the narrator is desperate to create a unique identity, one that will be remembered in history, which would be impossible if he remains invisible.
6. Explain The Plot Synopsis (Summary of the Novel)
Invisible Man opens with a Prologue. The unnamed narrator tells you that he is an invisible man living in a hole under the streets of New York somewhere near Harlem. His hole is warm and bright. He has come here to hibernate, to think out the meaning of life, after the events he is about to narrate What drove him to this state of hibernation? He begins to tell. The story starts when the narrator graduates from high school in a southern town. The leading white citizens invite him to give his graduation speech at a "smoker" in the ballroom of the local hotel. He arrives to find himself part of a "battle royal" in which local black boys are forced to fight one another blindfolded for the entertainment of the drunken whites. After the battle, the blacks are further humiliated by having to crawl on an electrified carpet to pick up coins. Finally, the hero is allowed to give his speech and is rewarded with a leather briefcase and a scholarship to the state college for blacks. The narrator is a good student at college and is sufficiently well thought of to be allowed to drive distinguished white visitors around the campus and community. Near the end of his junior year, he drives one of the trustees, a Mr. Norton, out into the country. They arrive by accident at the cabin of a black sharecropper named Jim Trueblood, who has caused a terrible scandal by committing incest with his daughter. Trueblood tells his story to Norton who is so overwhelmed that he nearly faints. In order to revive Norton, the narrator takes him for a drink to a nearby bar and house of prostitution called the Golden Day. The horrified narrator finally returns Norton to the college, but the damage has been done. The young man is called into the president's office and dismissed from school. The president, Dr Bledsoe, gives him letters of introduction to a number of the school's trustees in New York, and the narrator boards a bus the following day, hoping that the letters will help him succeed in the white world. To his surprise, the letters do not seem to help when he arrives in Harlem. No one offers him a job. Finally, young Mr Emerson, the son of one of the trustees, explains why: The letters are not letters of recommendation at all but instructions not to help the boy, to keep him away from any further association with the college. The stunned narrator now has nowhere to turn, and so takes a job at the Liberty Paint Company at the recommendation of young Mr. Emerson. The experience is a bizarre one. The narrator goes out into the icy streets and has the most important experience of his life. He sees an old black couple being evicted and spontaneously gets up before the gathered crowd and stirs the people to action. He has found a new identity- as a spokesman for blacks but the police arrive and he is forced to flee across the rooftops, followed by a white man who introduces himself as Brother Jack. Brother Jack would like the narrator to work for his organization, the Brotherhood, as a speaker for the Harlem district. The narrator hesitates, then accepts the offer. He is given a new name and is moved from Harlem to a new location, where he will study the literature of the Brotherhood. Four months later, the narrator is made chief spokesman of the Harlem district.
The narrator returns to Harlem, hoping to reorganize the neighbourhood, but things have deteriorated since he was sent downtown. He searches for Tod Clifton and finds him, pathetically selling Black Sambo dolls near the New York Public Library. A police officer nabs Clifton for illegal peddling and shoots him when he resists arrest. Suddenly the narrator, who has witnessed this, finds himself plunged into a historical event. He returns to Brotherhood headquarters and is severely criticized by Brother Jack for having acted without authority. The angry narrator is frustrated at his inability to accomplish anything constructive. He puts on a pair of sunglasses to disguise himself and suddenly finds that he has taken on another new identity, that of Rinehart, a swindler. Not even Ras the Exhorter, now Ras the Destroyer, seems to recognize the narrator in this disguise. He finally begins to see what a fool he has been and understands that he has, to white people, been invisible. He follows his grandfather's advice and starts "yessing them to death," meanwhile secretly planning his own strategy. As a part of his revenge he spends a drunken evening with Sybil, the wife of one of the Brotherhood members, hoping to obtain useful information from her. A telephone call interrupts them. There is a huge riot in the district, and the narrator is needed. He hurries back to Harlem to find total chaos. Looters are everywhere, and Ras and his troops are out in force. The narrator narrowly escapes being killed by Ras. He dives into a manhole to avoid being mugged by a group of white thugs, and falls asleep. He wakes up to find himself in a dark, underground passage from which he can't escape, and decides to stay. Here he will try to understand what has happened to him and then write his story. The novel ends with an Epilogue in which the narrator decides it is time to come out of his hole. He is ready to rejoin society, because he knows and understands himself now "The hibernation is over. I must shake off the old skin and come up for breath," he says. The novel ends as he makes a new beginning.
Rationale:
As the narrator tries to form a unique identity for himself, he finds that everyone else in society has an expectation of what it means to be a "black man." At college and at the Brotherhood, he is expected to embody Booker T. Washington's ideologies that "white is right," dutifully following the orders of his white leaders without question. He, and those in power, believe that obedience will bring success.Prerequisite/ Previous knowledge:
Storyings, songs, history etc.Learning Resources:
Flash cards, an audio video youtube examples, Available useful objects.Reference Materials:
1. Exam focus on Literature in English by J.O.J Nwachukwu et’al.2. Standard literature in English vol.4 by Tony Duru
3.Invisible man by Ralph Walda Ellison
4. Internet sources
Lesson Development:
STAGE |
TEACHER'S ACTIVITY |
LEARNER'S ACTIVITY |
LEARNING POINTS |
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| STEP 1: PREVIOUS KNOWLEDGE full class session (3 mins) |
The teacher Introduces the lesson by asking questions based on previous knowledge What are myths and legends? |
The students respond to the questions based on previous knowledge. MYTH: Myth is a story with a traditional oral beginning that was used as an explanation in the early history of a culture. They are stories which ou r forefathers used to explain their beliefs such as existence of God, philosophies, sciences, natural and historical phenomena, such as the origin of a people. They are transmitted from generation to generation. Eg. Why there is day and night, Fulani creation story. LEGENDS: These are old well known stories about brave people and their adventures. They are tales of historical events that seem believable but are not comple tely true. They were passed down from generation to generation through oral tradition. Examples are: Moremi of Ife, The Osun of Osogbo, the drum and the creator, etc. |
Reversing previous lesson |
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| STEP 2: INTRODUCTION full class session (3 mins) Identification of prior ideas. |
The teacher review/introduce what they are going to study today, the novelist/novel “Invisible man” by Ralph Ellison. Thereafter, the teacher asks student to narrate the background of the novel. |
The students listen attentively to the teacher. Thereafter, Students narrate the background ofthe novelist/novel. Invisible man is Ralph Walda Ellison’s 1952 novel about race in America. Ellison was the grandson of slaves. He attended the Tuskegee institute, which was founded by Booker T. Washington. He both studied and played jazz, which informed the improvisational style of invisible man. He then moved to Harlem, where he befriended people like Langston Hughes and Richard Wright. The novel won the national Book Award in 1953 and is regarded as one of the greatest American texts of all time. Amazingly, this was Ellison’s first and only text published during his life. One more text, Juneteenth, was published, after his death. Ralph Ellison was an American novelist, literary critire and scholar best known for his novel, Invisible man, which won National Book Award in 1953. |
Introducing the topic for discussion to arouse their interests and refresh their memories. |
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| STEP 3: DEVELOPMENT Group Work (2 mins) |
The teacher guides the learners to form four groups and asks them to choose their leaders and secretaries. | Learners choose their group leaders and secretaries. | Inculcating leadership skills, competitive spirit, cooperation, teamwork and a sense of responsibility among learners. |
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| STEP 4: EXPLORATION 3 mins Mode: Individual |
The teacher presents to the class the instructional resources and leads the students
to air their views on them. Thereafter, Teacher asks probing questions that lead students to: explain the theme of the novel. The teacher makes contribution were necessory. |
The students explain the theme of the novel. 1. Racism as an Obstacle to individual identity: Upon arriving in New York, the narrator enters the world of the liberty paints plant. There, the narrator finds himself involved in a process in which white depends heavily on black-both in terms of the mixing of the paints tones and in terms of the racial make up of the work force. Yet the factory denies this dependence in the final presentation of its product and the narrator, as a black man, ends up stifled. 2. The Limitations of ideology: Among the Brotherhood, the narrator is taught an ideology that promises to save “the people”, though in reality, it consistently limits and betrays the freedom of the individual. The text implies that life is too rich, too various and too unpredictable to be bound up neatly in an ideology. Life reaches the heights of its beauty during moments of improvisation and surprise. 3. The Danger of Fighting Stereotype with Stereotype: The narrator encounters other blacks who attempt to prescribe a defense strategy for all African Americans. Each presents a theory of a supposed right way to be black in America and tries to outline how blacks should act in accordance with the theory. The supporters of these theories believe that any one who acts contrary to their prescriptions effectively betrays the race. 4. Slavery's Baggage: Although the narrator was born a free man, he is forced to carry the baggage of slavery's legacy with him everywhere. |
Theme of the novel |
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| STEP 5: DISCUSSION 5 mins. Mode: Group |
The teacher guides the learners to discuss the plot summary of the novel. | The Students in their various groups discuss the plot summary of the novel. The narrator, an unnamed black man by describing his living conditions, an underground room wired with hundreds of electric lights, operated by power stolen from the cities electric grid. He reflects on the various in which he has experienced social invisibility during his life and begins to tell his story, returning to his teenage years. The narrator lives in a small Southern town and upon graduating from high schools, wins a scholarship to an all-black college. However, to receive it, he must first take part in a brutal, humiliating battle royal for the entertainment of the town’s rich white dignitaries. One afternoon during his junior year at the college, the narrator chauffeurs Mr. Norton, a visiting rich white trustee, out among the old slave-quarters beyond the campus. By chance, he stops at the cabin of Jim Trueblood has caused a scandal by impregnating both his wife and his daughter in his sleep. Trueblood’s account horrifies Mr. Norton so badly that he asked the narrator to find him a drink. The narrator drives him to a bar filled with prostitutes and patients from a nearby mental hospital. The mental patients rail against both of them and eventually overpowered the orderly assigned to keep the patients under control. The narrator hurries and injured Mr. Norton away from the chaotic scene and back to campuses. Dr. Bledsoe, the college president, excoriates the narrator for showing Mr. Norton the underside of black life beyond the campus and expels him. However, Bledsoe gives several sealed letters recommendation to the narrator, to be delivered to friends of the college in order to assist him in finding a job so that he may eventually re-enroll. The narrator to New York and distributes his letters, with no success; the son of one recipient (Mr. Emerson) shows him the letter, which reveals Bledsoe’s intent to never admit the narrator as a student again. Acting on the son’s suggestion, the narrator seeks work at the liberty paint. He is assigned first to the shipping department, then to the boiler room, whose chief attendant, Lucius Brockway is highly paranoid and suspects that the narrator is trying to take is job. This distrust worsens after the narrator stumbles into a union meeting, and Brockway attacks the narrator and tricks him into setting off an explosion in the boiler room. The narrator is hospitalized and subjected to shock treatment, over hearing the doctor’s discussion of him as a possible mental patient. After leaving the hospital, the narrator faints on the streets of Harlem and is taken in by Mary Rambo, a kind old fashioned woman who reminds him of relatives in the South. He later happens to come across the eviction of an elderly black couple and makes an impassioned speech that incites the crowd to attack the law enforcement officials in charge of the proceedings. The narrator escapes over the rooftops and is confronted by Brother Jack, the leader of a group known as “The Brotherhood”, that professes its commitment to bettering conditions in Harlem and the rest of the world. At Jack’s urging the narrator agrees to join and speak at rallies to spread the word among the black’s community. Using his new salary, he pays Mary the back rent he owes her and moves into an apartment provided by the brotherhood. The rallies go smoothly at first, with the narrator receiving extensive indoctrination on the Brotherhood’s ideology and methods soon, though, he encounters trouble from Ras the Exhorter, a fanatical black nationalist who believes that the Brotherhood is controlled by whites. Neither the narrator nor Tod Clifton, a youth leader within the Brotherhood, is particularly swayed by his words. The narrator is later called before a meeting of the Brotherhood and accused of putting his own ambition ahead of the group. He reassigned to another part of the city to address issues concerning women. Seduced by the wife of a Brotherhood member, and eventually called back to Harlem when Clifton is reported missing and the Brotherhood membership and influence begin to falter. The narrator can find no trace of Clifton at first, but soon discovers him selling dancing Sambo dolls on the street, having become disillusioned with the Brotherhood. Clifton is shot and killed by a policeman while resisting arrest. At his funeral, the narrator delivers a rousing speech that rallies the crowd to support the Brotherhood again. At an emergency meeting, Jack and the other Brotherhood leaders criticize the narrator for his unscientific arguments; The narrator determines that the group has no real interest in the black community’s problems. The narrator returns to Harlem, trialed by Ras’s men, and buys a hat, a pair of sunglasses to elude them. As a result, he is repeatedly mistaken for a man named Rinehart known as a lover, a hipster, a gambler, a briber, and a spiritual leader. Understanding that Rinehart has adopted to white society at the cost of his own identify, the narrator resolves undermine the Brotherhood by feeding them dishonest information concerning the Harlem membership and situation. After seducing the wife of one member in a fruitless attempt to learn their new activities, he discovers that riots have been broken out in Harlem due to widespread unrest. He realizes that the Brotherhood has been counting on such an event in order to further its own aims. The narrator gets mixed up with a gang of looters, who burn down a tenement building and wanders away from them to find Ras, now on horseback, armed with a spear and shield, and calling himself “The Destroyer” Ras shouts for the crowd to lynch the narrator, but the narrator attacks him with the spear and escapes into the underground coal bin. Two white men seal him in, leaving him alone to ponder the racism he has experienced in his life. The epilogue returns to the present, with the narrator stating that he is ready to return to the world because he has spent enough time hiding from it. He explains that he has told his story in order to help people see past his own invisibility, and also to provide a voice for people with a similar plight. “Who knows but that, on the lover” Frequencies, I speak for you? “Invisible man” ends with the protagonist being chased by policeman during a riot in Harlem, and falling into a manhole in the middle of the street. The police put to the cover of the manhole back in place, trapping the narrator underground. “I’m an invisible man and it placed me in a hole or showed me the hole I was in, if you will and I reluctantly accepted the fact”, he says. |
Plot summary of the novel. |
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| STEP 6: APPLICATION 4 mins Mode: Group |
The Teacher allows some contributions from students, stating the Language and Style of the novel. | The Students made contribution on the language and style of the novel 1. Tone: The tone of invisible man create both a tragic and comic response to the reader. This tone occurs when an incestuous Negro farmer tells his tale of seducing and impregnating his own daughter. Though tone, Ellison reveals his invisible man thought himself to be invisible. 2. Irony: Ellison’s use of irony is seen through the narrator during the eviction. The reader is astonished to hear the invisible man stand up for himself at the eviction by stating: “I asked a civil question. If you don’t care to answer, don’t, but don’t try to make me look ridiculous”. The reader find the situation ironic because the black man is the one that is usually made to look ridiculous and forced to tolerate embarrassment. But here, the invisible man is declaring that he will not put with this kind of treatment. 3. Antagonism: The narrator’s reaction to an advertisement sign stating that whiter skin is better, shows the black man moving towards a feeling of antagonism. Using the sign, Ellison gives invisible man a sense of hostility. The opposing force at the white man taking away the couple’s belongings was also an inspiration for the blacks to stand up for themselves. After the uproar at the eviction people are heard exclaiming how they had never done anything like that before. Ellison uses antagonism to modify the idea that blacks are of no importance. |
Being able to Explain the language and style of the novel. |
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| STEP 7: EVALUATION Mode: Entire Class 5 mins |
The teacher asks the students the following questions: 1. What is the background of the novel? 2. Highlight the theme of the novel. 3. List the characters in the novel. |
The students expected answers 1. The novel won the national Book Award in 1953 and is regarded as one of the greatest American texts of all time. Amazingly, this was Ellison’s first and only text published during his life. One more text, Juneteenth, was published, after his death. Ralph Ellison was an American novelist, literary critire and scholar best known for his novel, Invisible man, which won National Book Award in 1953. |
Asking the learners questions to assess the achievement of the set objectives. |
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| ASSIGNMENT | The teacher gives learners take home. Write chapter-by-chapter analysis of Invisible man by Ralph Walda Ellison |
The learners copy the assignment | Better understanding of the novel. |
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| CONCLUSION 5 mins |
The teachers wrap up from the learners' contribution. As the narrator tries to form a unique identity for himself, he finds that everyone else in society has an expectation of what it means to be a "black man." At college and at the Brotherhood, he is expected to embody Booker T. Washington's ideologies that "white is right," dutifully following the orders of his white leaders without question. He, and those in power, believe that obedience will bring success. In New York he is immediately identified as a Southerner who likes soul food, folktales, and jazz music. White women view him as a sexually powerful "black bruiser," whereas white men view him as a sort of Sambo (a negative stereotype of blacks based on an 1808 short story by Edmund Botsford). All the narrator wants is to be seen as an individual. He is unsure of his identity, but he knows that he wants to make a name for himself within the black community, first as a successful college student and then as a community leader with the Brotherhood. No matter the situation, however, the narrator is only seen as others label him. As the narrator attempts to move further away from racial expectations, he is frustrated to find that he moves further away from his individuality. The only way to free himself completely is to go "underground" and wait for the right time to emerge. |
The students listen to the teacher and copy down notes. | Consolidating and harmonizing scientific concepts. |