Isolation Invisible Man

The theme of alienation, a withdrawal or separation of an individual from an object, position, or value of former attachment and from the individual’s society or family, is one commonly inserted in works of literature to describe a character and reveal the character’s motivations, fears, and desires. The alienated characters are often those who have been marginalized, disenfranchised, or oppressed in some manner, and most commonly, underprivileged. In works with such characterization, the individual who is alienated and poor is, implicitly, counters socially and psychologically those with money and power, the societal foil to the alienated character. The character is typically alienated by some aspect or value of society or special circumstances …show more content…
Written in the 1940s, just as the American involvement in World War II was coming to an end, marginalized and abandoned soldiers, workers, and families became disillusioned with the American system and its failures to provide for its constituents. As part of the modernist, post-war, literary movement, Invisible Man illustrated the anger people felt during the transition between the 1940s and the 1950s, especially that of the African American community targeted by white supremacists with increasingly successful attempts at complete segregation and minimization of the importance of the Black communities as an essential part of the economic and political prowess of the United States. Ellison wrote Invisible Man, much like Heller, in the mid-20th century, thus it explores similar themes and messages. Invisible Man’s protagonist and narrator recounts his story of systematic oppression, victimization to racism, and blatant exploitation in New York City as an African American man. The narrator’s experiences explain the path to the alienation he has been forced into by American society, and the helplessness he feels as a result of centuries of stripping of power from African Americans, the lack of control industrialized workers feel, and the dehumanization of people by large system that control and regulate. The narrator is abused by entire groups of people, even those that claim to aid the disenfranchised and oppressed such as himself, and retreats to a state of social invisibility and absolute isolation so as to ease the effects that decades of hurt caused. In Invisible Man, the alienation from all aspects of life, from social to academic to professional, turns the narrator powerless and dehumanizes him to the extent to which he does not even have neither an identity nor a