A Small Biography

While reading the first few chapters of Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison, I became curious about the author himself. Honestly, the only time I had heard about his book was in another book that I had read last year, The Book Thief. So I did a bit of digging and here's what I found.

Ralph Waldo Ellison was born in Oklahoma City on March 1, 1914. In case any of you were wondering, yes, he was named after Ralph Waldo Emerson, a choice made by his father who wanted his son to become a poet. Interestingly, because Oklahoma was a state with little history of slavery (being a 'frontier' state) Ellison grew up with more freedom than some African Americans had, even those in the North. He was able to go to a good school, get tutors and mentors that were white as well as black, and had access to the town's public library. His family was poor but this better racial status could be why Invisible Man is so different than the harsh protest novels of its day (including Richard Wright's Native Son). At least so far in the novel, Ellison's attacks against racism are much more subtle (and possibly more light-hearted?) than in Native Son. His character is also quite the opposite, being educated and self-aware.

Another interesting thing I found was that after studying music in Alabama, Ellison moved to New York to study photography and while there, met Richard Wright (of all people!) who pointed him towards a career in writing fiction. The two were members of the Communist party until World War II caused Ellison to abandon it, thinking the party had betrayed African Americans. It wasn't until after serving in the Merchant Marines that Ellison began working on Invisible Man, which took him from 1947 to 1951.

Just some things to think about while reading the book! 

The Opening Scene for the Opening Post

It's hard to start something. It's true of a blog, but Richard Wright too had trouble in beginning his novel, Native Son.

"When I sat down to the typewriter... I could not think of a good opening scene for the book. I had definitely in mind the kind of emotion I wanted to evoke in the reader in that first scene, but I could not think of the type of concrete event that would convey the motif of the entire scheme of the book"

The scene that Wright eventually settled on was one in which the reader wakes up with Bigger in the Thomas family's tiny apartment. The family has been terrorized by a large rat for quite some time and it is this morning when Bigger confronts the rat and kills it. This scene, according to Wright, "conveys the motif of the entire scheme of the book", but how?

To answer that, I'll first take a look at the character of the rat, a representation of Bigger Thomas himself. Physically, it's like Bigger in that it's big and black. Okay. But more interesting parallels can be drawn in looking at the emotions behind the boy and the animal. As a more simple creature, the rat has fairly basic, yet strong, instincts and feelings. The one most obviously present here is fear: fear of the other animals in his world and fear of being killed. The rat, like Bigger, tries to prevent its fear by lashing out in violence. It will try to defend itself from the objects threatening its life. Later, realizing it can't win against the larger forces, the rat tries to hide and get back into its hole before it is killed. In the character of the rat, Wright paints us the general picture of Bigger Thomas: a scared man, who will lash out in fear, only to die in the end.

Another interesting point that I could talk a lot about, but instead will just mention: The idea that Bigger is only a product of society and that his life is almost predetermined (key ideas of naturalism) also makes Bigger a "rat" in a maze.

As we can draw many connections between the rat and Bigger, I think we can do the same between the Thomas family's reaction to the rat and white society's reaction to Bigger. In this first scene of Native Son, the family first hears the rat scuttling about and is immediately frightened. This reminds me of early scenes of Book I of the novel, where Bigger is only milling around, but where the tension between himself and white society is definitely present. They are afraid of him (not him specifically, but of African Americans) and he is afraid of them. Then, the rat makes the first move, jumping out in an attack to break the painful suspense, a parallel to Bigger's killing of Mary Dalton. Almost immediately we begin to hear the shouts of Bigger's family.

""Hit 'im, Bigger!" Buddy shouted.
"Kill 'im!" the woman screamed." (p. 5)

Sounds a little like the lynch mob that emerges after Bigger is publicized to be the murderer of Mary. At this point, the Thomas family wants the rat out of their lives. They don't care about the value of its life, only that it 'threatens' theirs. Finally, Bigger throws a skillet and crushes the rat, foreshadowing the crushing of his own life by a power so much larger than himself.

Ending a blog post is pretty difficult too. Completing the last scene was the second-to-last thing Wright did to finish writing his book. But I'll save my analysis of the last scene for later...

You've found the invisible girl! I guess that's me, and this is where I'll be posting the occasional idea or thought, all regarding some assigned novel. It's all for my African American Literature class so expect eight posts a month for a few months...

~Iulianna