Invisible Man

by Ralph Ellison

You ache with the need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world, that you’re a part of all the sound and anguish, and you strike out with your fists, you curse and you swear to make them recognize you.

All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was.

Live with your head in the lion’s mouth. I want you to overcome ’em with yeses, undermine ’em with grins, agree ’em to death and destruction, let ’em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open.”

I could not believe it, yet I had a feeling that it all had happened before.

And I felt that I would fall, had fallen, moved now as against a current sweeping swiftly against me.

“Everybody has to be trouble to somebody.

I now felt a contempt such as only a disillusioned dreamer feels for those still unaware that they dream

What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do? What a waste, what a senseless waste!

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.