Being underground, the narrator sees himself as an “invisible man”. Then explaining his life leading up to that point. As a young man, he was a good public speaker, which helped him get into a college. At the college, he meets a white trustee, Mr. Norton, who talks about his daughter a lot. The narrator shows him around the campus and brings him to a bar, the Golden Day. At the bar, a fight breaks out and Mr. Norton passes out during the fight, and a doctor who attends to Mr. Norton insults the two for not seeing the racial relations. The college president, Dr. Bledsoe, finds out about what happened at the bar and expels the narrator. He’s then sent to New York City for new college recommendations and to find a job.
Going to one of the recommendations, Mr. Emerson, he meets Emerson’s son, and the boy helps the narrator get a job at the Liberty Paints Plant. At the plant, he serves as an assistant to Lucius Brockway, who makes white paint. However, he suspects the narrator to be in union activities and turns on him. While the two fight, unattended tanks explode and the narrator is left knocked out. He wakes up in the plant’s hospital with memory loss and no ability to speak. Leaving the hospital with his memory back, he’s taken to Mary, a woman who takes care of him and teaches him about the black heritage. One day he speaks out against the removal of a black couple of their home, and Brother Jack recognizes his talent as a speaker and recruits him into his Brotherhood, an organization to help the oppressed.
After being trained by Brother Hambro, he goes to his assigned place in Harlem and meets a smart black leader, Tod Clifton, he also meets Ras the Exhorter, who doesn’t like the Brotherhood and believes that blacks should rise over whites. Enjoying his work with the Brotherhood, he becomes a big figure in the Brotherhood, but on a note he’s reminded of his place as a black man. Brother Wrestrum then says that the narrator is using the Brotherhood for his selfishness, and the Brotherhood sends the narrator to a different post to work on women’s rights. Returning to Harlem, the narrator finds Clifton selling “Sambo” dolls on the street, but he doesn’t have the permit to do so, getting Clifton shot dead by policemen. The narrator throws a funeral for him, giving a speech in his praise. However, Jack and the Brotherhood didn’t like that, so they sent the narrator to Bother Hambro to learn the new rules.
The narrator is angry and wants to get revenge on Jack and the Brotherhood. Arriving in Harlem, he finds Ras, who sends his men to beat up the narrator, forcing him to be in disguise. He then goes to Brother Hambro’s home for answers, and he says that the Brotherhood’s goals are bigger than the people involved in it, and the narrator intends to find out more by making a relationship with one of the members’ woman. Choosing Sybil to be his woman, he gets no help from her because she knows nothing about the Brotherhood. Then he gets a call saying that he needs to go to Harlem immediately. Arriving in Harlem, he finds the place to be in a riot that was started by Ras. He sees Ras and Ras demanded the narrator to be lynched, causing him to run away. While running away he meets two policemen who suspect him to be a looter from the riot, and he runs away from them only to fall into a manhole, in which the policemen mock him and cover up the manhole. He’s been there ever since, but now it’s also the beginning. He must realize his identity and his duty to the community. He’s ready to go back to the surface.
I think it’s amazing how Ellison showed how hard it was for blacks in the 20th century. Throughout the story, the narrator was just getting rejected in places where he could have succeeded. At the college, he could have started out good, but he was expelled because he did what he thought was doing the right thing bringing Norton to that bar. At the paint factory he could have started a new life, but even his own kind didn’t trust him there. And shortly after that, being abused by white doctors for experiments. In the Brotherhood, he liked his job there, but a Brother only saw him as a spotlight taker. Not only that, he was then told in a mysterious letter to remember his place as a black man. And in the end, instead of getting help from the two policemen, he was rejected and covered from the world. However, in the end, the message is powerful in which he accepts his identity and is ready to show himself again.
I like the irony Ellison put in the story. I find it ironic how in the beginning he sees himself as an “invisible man”, but in his story, it’s his skill in speaking that gets him noticed. For example, in the beginning, he was invited to give a speech in front of a bunch of important white men, a chance that not many people get to do. Also, when he gave a speech about the eviction of a black couple, a Brotherhood member recognized his talent and wanted to recruit him. These examples show how the narrator was able to get people to notice his skill and not his color. I also find it ironic when the narrator had to disguise himself from Ras. This is because identifying himself as an “invisible man”, he shouldn’t have to hide, but when he does try to be invisible, it gets him visible to the whole neighborhood, which is what he’s trying not to do. But now, he doesn’t want to be invisible anymore, he wants to become visible to the world as himself.
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