Racial Prejudice In Ralph Emerson's 'Invisible Man'

Essay #1 Topic 3 Invisible, the incapability by nature of being seen is a major theme in the book Invisible Man by Ralph Emerson. The book covers the racial prejudice and racism towards African Americans in the early 1900’s. In the story, the main character whom is also the narrator, calls himself as “invisible”, for he is an African American male living in the early 1900’s. In the early 1900’s, racial injustice, white supremacy, segregation, and no civil rights marked this era. Upon knowing the setting, it presents an underlying factor of social treatment against the character resulted him to be the Invisible Man. To begin, the prologue discloses the main character and narrator as, “I am the Invisible Man.”(Prologue pg.3) The diction of
He accidentally bumped into a man, “he was a tall blonde man, and as my face came close to his he looked insolently out of his blue eye and cursed me.” (Prologue pg.4) Upon bumping into the man, it is known that he is a white male. As the Invisible Man comes closer to the white male’s face, the white male realizes that the Invisible Man is an African American and retorts back using hostile words. The interaction between the two different colored races shows how one perceives the other. The white male, a Caucasian, thinks he is superior cursed at the Invisible Man after bumping into one another. Feeling wronged, the Invisible Man disregarded his race, demanded an apology, After the incident, and seeing the, “Daily News, beneath the caption stating that he had been mugged. Poor fool, poor blind fool, I thought with sincere compassion, mugged by an invisible man.” (Prologue pg.5) The newspaper symbolizes how the majority of the population wrongfully view African Americans. In the narrator’s case, it was not a mugging, but a wrongfully misunderstood situation between the two males. By reading the newspaper, the Invisible realizes that because of his race, that is how society was always view him