Invisible Man By Ralph Ellison

Want to read the rest of this paper? Join Essayworld today to view this entire essay and over 50,000 other term papers

doll, respectively. I choose to write about these items because they are symbolic of his struggle in his community fighting for the black people and of his struggle within himself searching for identity.
The narrator works hard for the Brotherhood and his efforts are rewarded by being distinguished as the representative of the Harlem district. One of the first people he meets is Brother Tarp, a veteran worker in the Harlem district, who gives the narrator the chain link he broke nineteen years earlier, while freeing himself from being imprisoned. Brother Tarp's imprisonment was for standing up to a White man. He was punished for his defiance and attempt to assert his individuality. Imprisonment robbed him of his identity which he regained by escaping and establishing himself in the Brotherhood. The chain becomes a symbol between the narrator and Brother Tarp because the chain also symbolizes the narrator's experience in college, where he was not physically chained down, but he ...

Get instant access to over 50,000 essays. Write better papers. Get better grades. Already a member? Login

a tool to be exploited. For example, he aspired to emulate Dr. Bledsoe, but the older man used him to promote his own power. Additionally, the chain not only serves as a reminder of Tarp's fight against slavery, but is ultimately used as a weapon of defiance and an implement of strength, as it is used by the narrator during a riot. Just as Brother Tarp lashed out against slavery and the people that suppressed him, the narrator is metaphorically lashing out at the injustice that he has seen. He ultimately discovers that he and the people of Harlem have been used by the Brotherhood for the promotion of the institution's power and he is lashing out against this. During the riot, the narrator ...

Succeed in your coursework without stepping into a library. Get access to a growing library of notes, book reports, and research papers in 2 minutes or less.

CITE THIS PAGE: