Invisibility In Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man
Zehra Naqvi is a Muslim immigrant in the United States, a successful attorney, and she struggles with the same problem that the narrator in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man faced: invisibility. This is not a literal invisibility but a lack of acknowledgement of their presence and a lack of individuality. The Invisible Man describes invisibility as society seeing “only [their] surroundings, themselves,or figments of their imagination”(3) when they look at the narrator or people like the narrator. The narrator is a black man in the early twentieth century America, and because of this he lost his individuality and his social freedom; he was controlled by society’s desire for a pure white America. Naqvi and other muslim immigrants are also struggling
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The United States was built from the blood of the of the first Americans, including both Muslims and African Americans; and yet both groups have found it difficult to integrate into society. Both the Muslims and African Americans aren’t acknowledged and have been stripped of their individuality. These two groups aren’t alone in their invisibility to society, a quick glance through history shows multiple groups that have experienced similar treatments: Jews in Egypt, Native Americans in the United States, homosexuals in Russia, Tutsis in Rwanda, etc. All these groups had different freedoms, but they were all treated as though they were invisible. They were stripped of their individuality and people refused to acknowledge their presence and their voice. Eventually society realizes that they have placed no value on these groups and they try to fix their mistake. The United States has attempted to fix their suppression of the blacks after they realized the treatment of blacks like seen in the Invisible Man, and yet they are doing the same to Muslim immigrants. But can there be a society where a group isn’t suppressed to the point of invisibility? Or is it the nature of societies to attempt to create a more unified community by ignoring those who are
The United States was built from the blood of the of the first Americans, including both Muslims and African Americans; and yet both groups have found it difficult to integrate into society. Both the Muslims and African Americans aren’t acknowledged and have been stripped of their individuality. These two groups aren’t alone in their invisibility to society, a quick glance through history shows multiple groups that have experienced similar treatments: Jews in Egypt, Native Americans in the United States, homosexuals in Russia, Tutsis in Rwanda, etc. All these groups had different freedoms, but they were all treated as though they were invisible. They were stripped of their individuality and people refused to acknowledge their presence and their voice. Eventually society realizes that they have placed no value on these groups and they try to fix their mistake. The United States has attempted to fix their suppression of the blacks after they realized the treatment of blacks like seen in the Invisible Man, and yet they are doing the same to Muslim immigrants. But can there be a society where a group isn’t suppressed to the point of invisibility? Or is it the nature of societies to attempt to create a more unified community by ignoring those who are