The Narrator In Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man

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A man, restrained, entrapped, and excluded to the metaphorical table; restrained from enjoying the luxuries provided to other people in many ways, this is what the Narrator in Invisible man experiences and accepted as fact at one point. The world at the time, was filled with the false narrative of supremacy in race, lacking justice for those who were considered faulty. The Narrator denounces the injustice of the indoctrinated conformity to white supremacy through the knowledge that he gained over a lifetime as an African-American man because in his world fear, humility, and envy are promoted traits for African-Americans by white supremacists.

The Narrator eventually began to denounce the irrational fear involved in what he was taught by becoming
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When the narrator was younger, he was embarrassed about his culture and race even though his fret over it was unneeded. In the prologue, during the narrators self introduction, he mentions about how he has overcome the feeling of humility over his grandparents being slaves stating that instead he is “not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time been ashamed” (Ellison 2). In this instance, the narrator is displaying how he changed as a person from whence he was, therefore overcoming humility that he was taught. Another point indicates how the narrator believes that eating yams in the street is embracing his culture because today “you could cause us the greatest humiliation simply by confronting us with something we liked. Not all of us, but so many”(Ellison 264). The example provided reveals that the narrator is aware and is against the denial of African-American culture even in the majority African-American communities such as Harlem, the place he was at. Even though The Narrator was taught differently about what he should and should not be humiliated about he breaks that injustice by being proud in his culture and

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