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VOICE ONE:

Like many other novels, Ellison's story is a series of experiences as the storyteller learns to deal with life. Yet, unlike other novels, “Invisible Man” takes place in a dream-like atmosphere in the United States. It is a world where dreams come close to reality, and the real world looks like a frightening dream.

The man telling his story in “Invisible Man” lives in a hidden underground space. But to prove that he exists, at least to himself, he has lit his underground room with one thousand three hundred sixty-nine lights. They remain lit with power he has stolen from the electric company.

In much of Ellison's novel the person telling the story is a victim, usually of white people, but also of some blacks. He both loves and hates the world. He plans some day to leave his underground shelter. He says that as a man he is willing to believe that "even the invisible victim is responsible for the fate of all.”

VOICE TWO:

The man telling the story says that as a boy, white men covered his eyes with a cloth. The white men tell the boy to blindly fight other black boys. The blacks are forced to fight each other to please whites.

At the end of the novel the story has moved from the American South to the North. There are riots in Harlem, the black area of New York City. Instead of ten black children fighting each other blindly, grown black men are battling each other to the death. Blacks still are having their strength turned upon themselves.

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VOICE ONE:

Critics said “Invisible Man” was well written. But some critics called this a weakness. They said the writing seemed to hide the book's ideas and make them less a product of black life.

One critic said that he found it difficult to call “Invisible Man” an African-American novel. He said that the main person in the book is a southern black man. But, the critic said, he is all of us, no matter where we were born or the color of our skin.

VOICE TWO:

After “Invisible Man” was published in nineteen fifty-two, Ralph Ellison taught at a number of universities. He retired from New York University in nineteen eighty. While he was alive, he published only two other books. They were books of criticism and essays, called “Shadow and Act” and “Going to the Territory.”

Ralph Ellison died in nineteen ninety-four, at the age of eighty. After his death, a book of his stories, “Flying Home,” was published. Shortly before his death, Ellison had told someone that his second novel was almost finished. He had worked on the novel for forty years without finishing it.

Parts of the book had appeared in magazines during the nineteen sixties and seventies. Ellison had to rewrite the novel after a large part of it was burned in a fire at his home in nineteen sixty-seven. The novel was said to be two thousand pages long. Finally, his friend John Callahan put the book together after Ellison died. The novel was published in nineteen ninety-nine. It was called “Juneteenth.”

VOICE ONE:

Since “Invisible Man” was published, many American writers have said how much Ellison influenced them.

In nineteen ninety, another black writer, Charles Johnson, was given the National Book Award. In receiving the prize, Johnson thanked Ralph Ellison for leading the way for black writers. Ellison was present at the ceremony. He thanked Johnson. Then he expressed his belief that black writers should not be influenced only by other black writers. He said:

READER:

"You do not write out of your skin. You write out of your ideas and the quality of your mind. "

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VOICE TWO:

This program was written by Richard Thorman and produced by Lawan Davis. Shep O'Neal read the part of Ralph Ellison and quotes from “Invisible Man.” I'm Steve Ember.

VOICE ONE:

And I'm Faith Lapidus. Join us again next week for People in America in VOA Special English.