Invisible Man

by Ralph Ellison

I realized, a new beginning, and I would have to take that part of myself that looked on with remote eyes and keep it always at the distance of the campus, the hospital machine, the battle royal—all now far behind. Perhaps the part of me that observed listlessly but saw all, missing nothing, was still the malicious, arguing part; the dissenting voice, my grandfather part; the cynical, disbelieving part—the traitor self that always threatened internal discord.

How was it? Perhaps simply to be known, to be looked upon by so many people, to be the focal point of so many concentrating eyes, perhaps this was enough to make one different; enough to transform one into something else, someone else; just as by becoming an increasingly larger boy one became one day a man; a man with a deep voice—although my voice had been deep since I was twelve.

Three white men and three black horses. Then a car passed and they showed in full relief, their shadows flying like dreams across the sparkle of snow and darkness.

“Yes, we’re the uncommon people—and I’ll tell you why. They call us dumb and they treat us dumb. And what do they do with dumb ones? Think about it, look around! They’ve got a slogan and a policy, they’ve got what Brother Jack would call a ‘theory and a practice.’ It’s ‘Never give a sucker an even break!’ It’s dispossess him! Evict him! Use his empty head for a spittoon and his back for a door mat! It’s break him! Deprive him of his wages! It’s use his protest as a sounding brass to frighten him into silence, it’s beat his ideas and his hopes and homely aspirations into a tinkling cymbal!

“Dispossession! Dis-possession is the word!” I went on. “They’ve tried to dispossess us of our manhood and womanhood! Of our childhood and adolescence— You heard the sister’s statistics on our infant mortality rate. Don’t you know you’re lucky to be uncommonly born? Why, they even tried to dispossess us of our dislike of being dispossessed!

These are the days of dispossession, the season of homelessness, the time of evictions. We’ll be dispossessed of the very brains in our heads! And we’re so un-common that we can’t even see it! Perhaps we’re too polite. Perhaps we don’t care to look at unpleasantness. They think we’re blind—un-commonly blind. And I don’t wonder. Think about it, they’ve dispossessed us each of one eye from the day we’re born. So now we can only see in straight white lines. We’re a nation of one-eyed mice— Did you ever see such a sight in your life? Such an uncommon sight!”

“Let’s make a miracle,” I shouted. “Let’s take back our pillaged eyes! Let’s reclaim our sight; let’s combine and spread our vision. Peep around the corner, there’s a storm coming. Look down the avenue, there’s only one enemy. Can’t you see his face?”

My voice fell to a husky whisper, “I feel, I feel suddenly that I have become more human. Do you understand? More human. Not that I have become a man, for I was born a man. But that I am more human. I feel strong, I feel able to get things done!

“SISTERS! BROTHERS! “WE ARE THE TRUE PATRIOTS! THE CITIZENS OF TOMORROW’S WORLD! “WE’LL BE DISPOSSESSED NO MORE!”

“You did it, goddamnit! You did it!” And I was puzzled by the hot mixture of hate and admiration bursting through his words as I thanked him and removed my hand from his crushing grasp.

“In my opinion the speech was wild, hysterical, politically irresponsible and dangerous,” he snapped. “And worse than that, it was incorrect!”

“I think the brothers speech was backward and reactionary!” he said.

next man. “I am of the opinion that it was a mistake.” “And just why?” “Because we must strive to reach the people through their intelligence …” “Exactly,” the brother with the pipe said. “It was the antithesis of the scientific approach. Ours is a reasonable point of view. We are champions of a scientific approach to society, and such a speech as we’ve identified ourselves with tonight destroys everything that has been said before. The audience isn’t thinking, it’s yelling its head off.”

“It’s disgusting,” he said, pointing to me. “Our new brother has succeeded by instinct where for two years your ‘science’ has failed, and now all you can offer is destructive criticism.”

“Stephen’s problem, like ours, was not actually one of creating the uncreated conscience of his race, but of creating the uncreated features of his face. Our task is that of making ourselves individuals. The conscience of a race is the gift of its individuals who see, evaluate, record … We create the race by creating ourselves and then to our great astonishment we will have created something far more important: We will have created a culture.

But no, it wasn’t Woodridge. “More human” … Did I mean that I had become less of what I was, less a Negro, or that I was less a being apart; less an exile from down home, the South? … But all this is negative.

It was a mystery once more, as at the eviction I had uttered words that had possessed me.

I thought of Bledsoe and Norton and what they had done. By kicking me into the dark they’d made me see the possibility of achieving something greater and more important than I’d ever dreamed.

“Master it,” Brother Jack said, “but don’t overdo it. Don’t let it master you. There is nothing to put the people to sleep like dry ideology. The ideal is to strike a medium between ideology and inspiration. Say what the people want to hear, but say it in such a way that they’ll do what we wish.” He laughed. “Remember too, that theory always comes after practice. Act first, theorize later; that’s

“Good. Now to your assignment: Tomorrow you are to become chief spokesman of the Harlem District …” “What!” “Yes. The committee decided yesterday.”

“Ah, so, Brother Tod Clifton is late,” Brother Jack said. “Our leader of the youth is late. Why is this?” The young man pointed to his cheek and smiled. “I had to see the doctor,” he said.

“That’s right, I was hired. Things have been so brotherly I had forgotten my place. But what if I wish to express an idea?” “We furnish all ideas. We have some acute ones. Ideas are part of our apparatus. Only the correct ideas for the correct occasion.” “And suppose you misjudge the occasion?” “Should that ever happen, you keep quiet.” “Even though I am correct?” “You say nothing unless it is passed by the committee. Otherwise I suggest you keep saying the last thing you were told.” “And when my people demand that I speak?”

Ask your wife to take you around to the gin mills and the barber shops and the juke joints and the churches, Brother. Yes, and the beauty parlors on Saturdays when they’re frying hair. A whole unrecorded history is spoken then, Brother. You wouldn’t believe it but it’s true. Tell her to take you to stand in the areaway of a cheap tenement at night and listen to what is said. Put her out on the corner, let her tell you what’s being put down. You’ll learn that a lot of people are angry because we failed to lead them in action. I’ll stand on that as I stand on what I see and feel and on what I’ve heard, and what I know.”

“Such crowds are only our raw materials, one of the raw materials to be shaped to our program.” I looked around the table and shook my head. “No wonder they insult me and accuse us of betraying them …” There was sudden movement. “Repeat that,” Brother Jack shouted, stepping forward.

sat there a while, growing wilder and fighting against it. I couldn’t leave and I had to keep contact in order to fight. But I would never be the same. Never. After tonight I wouldn’t ever look the same, or feel the same. Just what I’d be, I didn’t know; I couldn’t go back to what I was—which wasn’t much—but I’d lost too much to be what I was.

There were angry shouts from some of the crowd and I saw the men continue past me with hate in their eyes, leaving the crowd to disappear around the corner. Ras was attacking the Brotherhood now and

Behold the Invisible Thy will be done O Lord! I See all, Know all, Tell all, Cure all. You shall see the unknown wonders. —REV. B. P. RINEHART, Spiritual Technologist.

No Problem too Hard for God. Come to the Way Station. BEHOLD THE INVISIBLE! Attend our services, prayer meetings Thrice weekly Join us in the NEW REVELATION of the OLD TIME RELIGION! BEHOLD THE SEEN UNSEEN BEHOLD THE INVISIBLE YE WHO ARE WEARY COME HOME! I DO WHAT YOU WANT DONE! DON’T WAIT!

Jack had seen it, or had stumbled upon it and used it to prepare a sacrifice. And I had been used as a tool. My grandfather had been wrong about yessing them to death and destruction or else things had changed too much since his day.

I would take up residence underground. The end was in the beginning.

So there you have all of it that’s important. Or at least you almost have it. 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.

have also been called one thing and then another while no one really wished to hear what I called myself. So after years of trying to adopt the opinions of others I finally rebelled. I am an invisible man.

So I took to the cellar; I hibernated. I got away from it all. But that wasn’t enough. I couldn’t be still even in hibernation. Because, damn it, there’s the mind, the mind. It wouldn’t let me rest. Gin, jazz and dreams were not enough. Books were not enough. My belated appreciation of the crude joke that had kept me running, was not enough. And my mind revolved again and again back to my grandfather. And, despite the farce that ended my attempt to say “yes” to Brotherhood, I’m still plagued by his deathbed advice … Perhaps he hid his meaning deeper than I thought, perhaps his anger threw me off—I can’t decide.

Did he mean to affirm the principle, which they themselves had dreamed into being out of the chaos and darkness of the feudal past, and which they had violated and compromised to the point of absurdity even in their own corrupt minds? Or did he mean that we had to take the responsibility for all of it, for the men as well as the principle, because we were the heirs who must use the principle because no other fitted our needs? Not for the power or for vindication, but because we, with the given circumstance of our origin, could only thus find transcendence?

Perhaps that’s my greatest social crime, I’ve overstayed my hibernation, since there’s a possibility that even an invisible man has a socially responsible role to play.

“Ah,” I can hear you say, “so it was all a build-up to bore us with his buggy jiving. He only wanted us to listen to him rave!” But only partially true: Being invisible and without substance, a disembodied voice, as it were, what else could I do? What else but try to tell you what was really happening when your eyes were looking through? And it is this which frightens me: Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?