Ralph Ellison is an American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer. He was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Ellison is well known for his novel Invisible Man which won the National Book Award in 1953. After his fourth year, Ellison moved to New York City to study the visual arts (sculpture and photography). There, he made the acquaintance of the artist Romare Bearden. Perhaps Ellison’s most important contact would be with the author Richard Wright, with whom he would have a long and complicated relationship. After Ellison wrote a book review for Wright, Wright encouraged Ellison to pursue a career in writing, specifically fiction. Ellison works very hard and he wants through his own efforts to change the family conditions, but because of racial discrimination in society at that time, blacks could not enjoy basic civil rights, their lives are very inferior. Ellison is addicted in literature, film and theater, and so has a keen interest, and in 1933 won a scholarship to enter the Tuskegee Institute to study music and sculpture, there are literary commentaries “shadow and behavior” and other masterpieces . The Invisible Man is a great novel that takes seven years to have completed, and it is also the only novel of Ralph Ellison. The two main fuse of this novel is that, the young blacks lost himself after suffering from unfair treatment. During the time of self-esteem, he moved towards self-awakening gradually and explored the relationship between inpidual and society, human and environment in the process of establishing self. Finally, he figured out many principles and found the true life. In the novel, Ellison explores the contrasts between the northern and southern varieties of their dissimilation and racism. The protagonist is “invisible” in a figurative sense, but the true meaning is that people refuse to see him. 

Through referencing the thinking and research results of previous scholars and combined with the background of the times, this paper analyzes the submissive image before self-realization and independent image after self-realization and the reasons. At the same time, this paper analyzes the impact of invisible man as the independent inpidual on the society.

2. Literature Review

The Invisible Man is the portion controversial works. It has come to get a high rating and also been criticized. The critic Irving Howe who good at analyzing Marxist theory thinks that the description in the Invisible Man about the United States in Harlem Communist Party (the Brotherhood in the novel) is not real enough. It is too wicked and stupid (Hoos, 1974: 38). Howe accused Ellison “abandoned black writers’ task while did not inherit the tradition which is a typical of Wright’s Native Son” (Hoos, 1974: 58-59).来!自~751论-文|网www.751com.cn

Some black readers are also discontented with Ellison, they blame him for negating all the black nationalists in the novel. But, more critics pay attention to the novel’s artistic value. They emphasize that the novel successfully demonstrated beyond racial significance. The Robert Bone commentary said “Invisible Man is the most outstanding works written by an Afro-Americans probably, this is the best American novel since the Second World War.”(Bone, 1958: 212) Nathan A Scott also said: “The reputation of Invisible Man has not diminished in recent years, moreover it is recognized as a classic work of modern American literature.” (Hoffman, 1979: 295)