He dreams of racial uplift through humility and hard work, a doctrine preached by the school and the larger Southern culture. Born and raised in the rural South, he is a star pupil at a college for black students. The novel's nameless narrator (the Invisible Man) is representative of many intelligent young African-Americans of his generation. Shortly before his death Ellison acknowledged the fact that his novel had expanded the very meaning of the word "invisible." Invisibility, he said, "touches anyone who lives in a big metropolis." ( New Yorker, 5/2/94) Ellison's hero is invisible within the larger culture because he is black, but his feelings can easily be understood by all those who experience the anonymity of modern life. The issues Ellison so powerfully addresses are those that confront everyone who lives in the modern world: not only racism but the very question of personal identity, our frustrated impulse to assert ourselves in a world which is metaphorically blind. Written in the politically and socially turbulent 1940s, Invisible Man is one of the definitive novels of the African-American experience it is also one of the definitive novels for all Americans.
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