Comparing The Invisible Man And Rebel Without A Cause

The existence of man is limited to immediate contact with an environment, body, and time. As a species, humans possess a narcissistic view of reality. The end of one person’s life is not the end of all lifeforms. Author of the novel The Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison and director of the film Rebel Without A Cause, Nicholas Ray explore the themes of macrocosm and microcosm in their works. The observatory lecturer from Rebel Without A Cause is noted as having said the lines: “Through the infinite reaches of space, the problems of man seem trivial and naïve indeed, and man, existing alone, seems himself an episode of little consequence.” The true conflict within the two works was that all of the characters were disenfranchised in varying degrees …show more content…
He just didn’t exist in the myopia of others. They chose not to see him and his struggles by turning a blind eye, consequently, the narrator felt that no one knew what he experienced as an educated black man. Anything within his vicinity and all that he had come into contact with had affected his microcosm. His natural human narcissistic being craved similarity so badly that he reacted violently against against a stranger who had triggered him. The discernment of the fact that he could not teach those that didn’t want to be taught set him free. The narrator identifies this revelation as advantageous. He explained his life as such: “Several years ago (before I discovered the advantage of being invisible) I went through the routine process of buying service and paying their outrageous rates. But no more. I gave up all that, along with my apartment, and my old way of life: That was based upon the fallacious assumption that I, like other men, was visible. Now, aware of my invisibility, I live rent-free in a building rented strictly to whites, in a section of the basement that was shut off and forgotten during the nineteenth century…” The theory of man alone in The Invisible Man is a cycle. The social rejection, accept and embrace said rejection, and disillusionment of acceptance which then validates mistrust of society. The reality of ignorance that The Invisible Man encountered validated his feelings of …show more content…
She had matured to the point where her father no longer felt it was appropriate for her to behave as though she were a little girl. Her strained relationship with her father led to her seeking out any male attention she could get by being promiscuous. Within a day, Judy told Jim that she loved him because he had expressed a degree of affection for her which was more than what her father had given her. Judy expected her father to see things from her perspective as he was her sole reason for rebellion. When things became too much for her, she ran away which seemed to always get her in trouble. Judy’s problems were what consumed her. The world seemed to have been unaware of what Judy faced. This displays how the problems of Judy Hopper had no dramatic effect on her environment, let alone the