The Identity Crisis In Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man

In the novel Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, the main character, a decedent of a sharecropper, spends his life trying to find an identity for himself. He travel from the Deep South where racism is evident to the north where there is racism but with some freedom. Finding an identity for oneself requires communication, where there was a lack of communication throughout the novel. Coming from a family where individualism is rare, the invisible man faces an identity crisis as he sets out on his own; his blindness of recognizing the true intention of some people, and he fails to understand the importance of events. Invisible man’s identity crisis first began when he entered the “battle royal” where he accepted his scholarships from the white …show more content…
The college where invisible man attends does not allow him to have his own identity, it is frowned upon. Instead, the identity is given to him by Mr. Bledsoe, the president of the college. Shaming a person’s identity is way of destroying them and not being able to find individualism, “when I was praised for my conduct I felt a guilt that in some way I was doing something that was really against the wishes of the white folks…that I should have been sulky and mean, and that that really would have been what they wanted, even though they were fooled and thought they wanted me to act as I did” (Ellison 17). Invisible man behave the way someone told him to behave whether he liked it or not, which put a toll on him because he could not decide if he should act the way someone told him to or be an individual. If he went against what they wish for him to act, he would have been scolded for not listening. As invisible man traveled north, he comes closer to finding his own identity, but it gets stripped away just as soon he thought he was going to reach it. In the north, …show more content…
Not knowing his associations true intentions invisible man has a difficult time knowing who to trust and who not to trust. Because of his incapability to comprehend what people intentions are, he becomes easily manipulated to do what other people want him to do. When crisis he faced was what he put on sunglasses and a hat which gave him a new identity. The costume he had on gave him the character Reverend Reinhart, people mistakenly saw him as Revan Rinehart instead of invisible man, "I was nearing the end of the block now, wet with sweat. Who was this Reinhardt and what was he putting down? I 'd have to learn more about him to avoid further misidentifications" (Ellison 484). Further showing more manipulation, invisible man was manipulated by people 's perspective of who they thought he was instead of who he really is. When they saw that he was Reverend Rinehart, this manipulated him to become who Rinehart really is. The costume he puts on to become Rinehart gave him a new sense of identity although it was not his own identity. He manipulates his mind to think that it is not wrong to be another man other than