Symbolism In The Invisible Man

Register to read the introduction… He is afraid to come out due to his past experiences. In the narrator’s manhole, he has thousands of lights hung up and steals electricity from the local electric company. He explains how being invisible can have its benefits because he gets free services. The narrator loves light because, although no one else can, he can see himself. The light symbolizes the truth in the world. Through the novel the scenes are very dark and dimly lit. Stereotypes are corrupting the world, therefore diming society. There are no other point of views throughout the novel, so it is hard to tell whether the information is fact or fiction. As the reader we witness his personal progress, and at times, moments of insanity. As his life evolves, the reader watches him bounce from one group to another. He goes from college to a paint factory to the Brotherhood, where each time he tries to hard to fit in and messes up in the end. As he moves on from group to group, he feels like his is starting fresh, only to be haunted by his ugly past …show more content…
More specifically he moved to Harlem, a major center of African- American culture. The narrator finds the different between the North and South unbelievable. He is amazed to find white drivers obeying the directions of black policemen, on the subway he stresses out about being to close to a white woman, and in a diner he wonders if it’s insulting to tip a white waiter. In the North, the narrator experiences an undeniable amount of extraordinary racial freedom and feels as if he was transported to another planet. This was different for him, going from a place where he was treated like an object of entertainment to being seen as a working …show more content…
His boss fights him and he is knocked unconscious. When he arrives at the hospital the white doctors use his unconscious body in electroshock experiments.
A major theme in the novel is fighting like with like. In this case, stereotypes are battling back and forth. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a stereotype is to believe unfairly that all people or things with a particular characteristic are the same. The narrator has been set back by the limitations of African American stereotypes. When he joins the Brotherhood, those groups of African Americans live according to these stereotypes, as a defense strategy.
Finally in the end, he is hardened by all of his traumatic experiences. He seduces the girlfriend of one of the leaders of the Brotherhood just to get information out of her. Although his plan backfires because she doesn’t have the information he needs, this is the first time in the novel that he made a decision for himself. He realizes that it is better to stay true to you than true to a corrupt group for social