Year 12 IB Extended Essays 2018

Overall, readers are positioned to view the narrator as one who is constantly misled and distorted. From the early stages of the novel, readers perceive the narrator as an ignorant young man who does not know the power structure and racial stereotypes associated with African Americans for his time. As the novel progresses, readers see the narrator’s identity begin to blossom after his riveting eviction speech, in which he catches the attention of many, and the first time, “nobody laughed” (265). Finally, the narrator is seen to have been betrayed, as what was meant to save his identity and allow it to flourish, was rather it’s ironic undoing. Ralph Waldo Ellison’s Invisible Man describes an American black youth without a name ousted by society. His experience reflects the phenomenon of racial discrimination in the American society, and his resultant quest for his own identity. The author describes the problem of racial discrimination in a staggered society through different stages of the narrator’s experience. Throughout the novel, the author Ellison conducts a comprehensive, real, and profound description and characterization of the social phenomenon of racism. Ellison describes common racial discrimination and prejudice through the experience of the narrator. After much evaluation of identity and racism in the novel Invisible Man , the message of the novel becomes clear. The narrator, a bright young prospect student, struggles to create his own identity and to lead a successful life, not because of himself as an individual, but rather because he is black. The word ‘racism’ is defined as “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior” (Oxford Dictionaries, 2018). As we see countless times in the novel, the narrator is discriminated against because of his race and not judged on his character. Everyone around him, including fellow African-Americans, overlook him as an individual, therefore they do not give him an identity but rather assigning him a vacuous one, and thus the title, Invisible Man . Yet in our modern world, people have been working together to reduce racism altogether. From a psychological perspective, thoughts of differing attitudes of different races are "natural" and "innate”, yet it is the teachings to the mind which cause for prejudice and hate towards a race (Taylor, 2018). There are still many levels of extreme racism in countries such as India and countries in the Middle East. In western societies such as America where the novel takes place, people such as the comedian who uses the ‘n-word’ and political figures such as Donald Trump are heavily criticized for even suggesting something insulting towards another race. Donald Trump specifically received a lot of backlash for saying Nigerian immigrants wouldn’t ever ‘go back to their huts’ in Africa, and Afghanistan is a ‘terrorist haven’ amongst many other racially controversial comments (Silva, 2018). While there are still many instances today of prejudice and racism, our modern world has come a long way from the overt racism and identity stripping of settings such as 1950’s America depicted in Invisible Man , specifically in the consequences of being racist in today’s society.

Total Word Count = 3993 (not including abstract or headings)

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