Ralph Ellison wrote the prologue to Invisible Man in 1947. Ellison started off with saying “I am an invisible man”.(Ellison 1) He said that first to draw the reader into the story and with the time period it is a suspicion that he is black. He states that he is like everyone else “I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids- and I might even be said to possess a mind”.(Ellison 1), but why did Ellison say “I might even be said to possess a mind”? Ellison said that to show the world that he is told what he is that him having a mind is like a myth our some very rare creature. “When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination- indeed,everything and anything except me”.(Ellison 1)
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He calls white people blind or sleepwalkers because they go with what they are told they were told that whites are better than blacks so they only see the skin color. Whites did not treat blacks as equals they did not comprehend that blacks were just like them they did not think they were actual people or at least did not treat them as people. Ellison one night accidentally bumped into a man and the man called him an insulting name. Ellison was angered and tried to get him to apologize, overtaken by anger ellison started to beat the man close to death and almost slit the man's neck but then he realized the man was in the middle of a walking nightmare. He wrote “it occurred to me that the man had not seen me, actually; that he,as far as he knew, was in the midst of a walking nightmare”.(Ellison 3) Ellison put that in because he had a sudden realization that the white man was scared of him. That what Ellison was doing to the man was putting him through his biggest fear and he was also reassuring the man that his fear was valid. The invisible man then was very amused about the fact that the white man's nightmare came to life and beat him not the invisible man but the nightmare.
He calls white people blind or sleepwalkers because they go with what they are told they were told that whites are better than blacks so they only see the skin color. Whites did not treat blacks as equals they did not comprehend that blacks were just like them they did not think they were actual people or at least did not treat them as people. Ellison one night accidentally bumped into a man and the man called him an insulting name. Ellison was angered and tried to get him to apologize, overtaken by anger ellison started to beat the man close to death and almost slit the man's neck but then he realized the man was in the middle of a walking nightmare. He wrote “it occurred to me that the man had not seen me, actually; that he,as far as he knew, was in the midst of a walking nightmare”.(Ellison 3) Ellison put that in because he had a sudden realization that the white man was scared of him. That what Ellison was doing to the man was putting him through his biggest fear and he was also reassuring the man that his fear was valid. The invisible man then was very amused about the fact that the white man's nightmare came to life and beat him not the invisible man but the nightmare.