Ralph Waldo Ellison took a circuitous path to novel writing. When, at the height of the Cold War and the nascent stages of the Civil Rights Movement, he finally arrived as a novelist with the publication in 1952 of Invisible Man, this writer's debut novel, and ultimately his only completed novel during his lifetime, made a lasting impact on the literature of the United States. In this novel, Ralph Ellison collects the particularities of African American culture while telling a story that transcends the borders of his book's specific cultural inheritance, as Ellison's events and characters in Invisible Man speak to the universal from his firm position in the folklore, music, idiom, and politics of African American culture an

This article in full comprises 1955 words but only the first 150 or so words are available to non-members.

All our articles have been written recently by experts in their field, more than 95% of them university professors. To read about membership, please click here.

Published 20 June 2003

Citation: Jimoh, A Yemisi. "Invisible Man". The Literary Encyclopedia. 20 June 2003.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=4394, accessed 9 February 2010.]