Invisible Man

Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is a remarkable work that has been widely acknowledged for its ruthless exposure of the American Dream as a myth. However, while Ellison may have used American history and culture as the backdrop for his novel, focusing on his expose of the American Dream alone may actually be a far too restrictive assessment of his work. For, the fact is that Ellison's main purpose in the novel seems to have been to question the fundamental worth of the universally characteristic human quest for social success. Ellison achieves this through highlighting the fact that social success is usually built and maintained through the use of hypocrisy, deceit, sycophancy and power plays. Thus, Ellison's Invisible Man is a novel, which establishes the hollowness of social success when measured against the loss of individual values, dignity, and freedom. In fact, it is the loss of individuality that...
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