During his hibernation inside the coal bin, he states that the reason he is telling his story is that “who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?”. Giving him enough time to ponder over the racism he has experienced. Although two white men catch and seal him in.

When the young man sees Ras attacking him and urging others to lynch him, he rather attacks Ras and escapes into an underground coal bin. Seeing no way out, he joins the gang of looters to find now Ras, the Destroyer. Soon unrest takes on Harlem and the riots break out which was detrimental to the Brotherhood to further its own aims. As a result, he is repeatedly mistaken for a man named Rinehart. Suspecting a chase by the Ras’s men, the narrator disguises by wearing a hat and pair of sunglasses. He was killed by the police while resisting the arrest. Again, he faces criticism when the narrator delivers a rousing speech at Tod Clifton’s funeral who went missing and was found selling dancing Sambo dolls on the street. Yet he faces accusations of the same group for being over-ambitious. This takes him into the politics of the Brotherhood but he comes to know that it is also a white ploy from Ras the exhorter, though he feels unconvinced. His joining the Brotherhood helps him understand his background. When he flees, the Brotherhood leader, Jack chases him and urges him to join hands with the group to help African Americans. After this, he delivers an impassioned speech that incites the crowd to attack the law enforcement officials when an African American couple faces forced eviction. She cooks for him, nurses him back to health, and adopts him as her surrogate son. While walking on the streets of Harlem he faints and finds himself being taken in by a kind old-fashioned lady Mary Rambo. When the young man gets out of the hospital he heads for Harlem. When he comes to his senses after this episode, he finds himself in the hospital overhearing the doctors’ words that he was a mental patient and subject to shock treatment. This mistrust widens the chasm between them, leading Brockway to exploit him and framing him in setting an explosion in the boiler section. He comes to know that Lucius is obsessed with the idea that the young man is after his job. Emerson suggests he seek work in a paint factory where he works in different departments temporarily.ĭuring that time, he comes across Lucius Brockway, a paranoid chief, in the boiler operating room. Emerson to the narrator that the so-called recommendation letters contained nothing good about the narrator, also stating that he’s unfit for work and had no intention of re-enrolling him in the college. Bledsoe has rather ruined his entire career in both education and the job market when it was revealed by young Mr. Therefore, he thinks it better to expel the narrator who, though gets many recommendation letters from him to assist him in the job market yet he does not succeed in laying his hands upon anything. Bledsoe, the president, fuming at his home for showing insolence in taking Mr. When he returns to the college, he finds Dr. Norton out of this mess and take him back to the college campus. The young man, however, musters up the courage to pull Mr. Norton, is injured due to the melee created by the people. The pandemonium forces him to take assistance from the orderly who, while saving Mr. Norton confronts mentally unsound people and prostitutes enjoying life. The narrator hurriedly drives him to the nearest bar filled with prostitutes and mental patients. Norton shook by this scandalous issue, asks the narrator to find him a drink. Jim Trueblood who has already created a brouhaha by impregnating both his wife and daughter in his sleep. By chance, he stops by the cabin owned by some Mr. Norton, a trustee of that college, to the slave apartments beyond the campus area. It happens that he gets admission to that college and takes Mr. However, he has to participate in the battle royal to entertain the white dignitaries in order to receive that scholarship against other African American students. He reflects upon his life as a teenager when living in a Southern town after winning a scholarship for an African American college. Fed up of the discrimination, he thinks about social invisibility and ways to tackle it. The storyline presents an anonymous African American young man who happens to live in a basement with stolen electricity from the local grid station.

Invisible man ralph ellison wikipedia