In the epilogue, the IM realizes everything that has happened and can distinguish between the lessons that he has learned. The book shows a long, tedious, and struggling transition from an IM to someone on their way to an identity. Throughout the entire novel the IM suffered from alienation from whites and blacks. One of the first occurrences happened to be from doctor Bledsoe, the college president.He trusted Bledsoe, especially seeing as he was another black man and had the utmost respect for him. Although Bledsoe got the IM kicked out of the university, Bledsoe was not very different from the IM.
Bledsoe was a black man playing his “role” for whites, but he was corrupt. He had a false sense of power and he was okay with that. He knew that if he did what whites wanted him to do and showed white what they wanted to see he would be happy. Despite the selfish and hypocritical views of doctor Bledsoe, Bledsoe greatly influenced the IM by setting a bad example.Although it might not have been immediately after his interactions with Bledsoe the IM learned a valuable lesson from Bledsoe. Eventually he learned that the only way he was truly going to realize an identity was going to be by being an individual.
Mary Rambo was also a very influential figure to the IM. The IM meets Mary after his time accident at the liberty paint company. Mary found the IM on the street and nursed him back to health. Seeing as Mary is the first person he interacts with, during his rebirth, she is the first person that provides guidance for him and influence.Mary Rambo can be characterized as a black person that white people envisioned: subservient, humble.
Mary was a selfless individual; she wanted to improve the black race by helping any and everyone. Mary’s main view on blacks is the power of youth she says, ““It's you young folks what's going to make the changes. Y'all's the ones. You got to lead and … move us all on up a little higher” and that is really the only point she makes about the race relation between blacks and whites. Through the IM interactions with Mary Rambo, he is set on the right path to self realization and individualism.In chapter sixteen the IM says “I could hear him ‘Stephen’s problem, like ours, was not actually one of creating the uncreated conscience of his race, but of creating the uncreated features of his face.
Our task is that of making ourselves individuals. ’” Culture, not race, is more important and people should focus more on being individuals than trying to build a race. Ellison was an individualist, he believed that the job of each individual is to create himself, to become genuinely and honestly a single individual. These words are a play on the phrase "the uncreated conscience of my race. By Stephen Dedalus, the hero of James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
The invisible man is on his way to creating an individual for himself, one that is more human rather than focusing on race or the color of his skin. Despite his advances towards an identity, those advances are usually destroyed by another character in the novel. In chapter twenty, the invisible man’s teacher told him when he was younger that he was "like one of these African sculptures, distorted in the interest of a design. "The invisible man then asks "well, what design and whose? During this part of the book, the invisible man seems to be the design of the Brotherhood to only talk based on what the Brotherhood tells him. When the invisible man talks to the Brotherhood after Clifton's funeral, he is told “You were not hired to think.
” If he was not hired to think, then that suggests that he was created just to perform the tasks given to him, like those African sculptures. Thus, the realizations the IM has had up to this point are still on the minds of the readers but the IM seems to discredit the past and do what he is told. This is one of the experiences that distort the identity of the IM.In the epilogue, as the IM emerges from his refuge he says “Even an invisible man has a socially responsible role to play. ” Making this declaration at the end of the novel is evident that he has developed as a character. The IM recognizes the fact that people do not see him for who he is, but that should not change who he is.
The IM also says "Being invisible and without substance, a disembodied voice, as it were, what else could I do? What else but try to tell you what was really happening when your eyes were looking through? And it is this which frightens me: Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you? Ellison tried to show us that in the end, we will all come to realize that we’re just as invisible as the next man.But that is not a bad thing, because it is the invisible man that speaks for us. In doubting his own existence, the invisible man is making a claim to personality, to character, to being the center of an experience, even if he is invisible to others. It is this statement of being a character that allows the narrator to resist the ideology of the Brotherhood. It is the only time in the novel that the IM is taking a stand for himself, which he also shows by burning the contents of his briefcase.Within his briefcase were all the papers that all the other characters of the novel gave him.
These slips of paper were used to define the IM at that particular moment in time. Burning the contents of the briefcase illustrates the IM recognizing that he will no longer be the definition that the other characters in the novel have given him. Through his long journey of self-realization the IM is given that “happy ending. ” When he realizes that even he has a socially responsible role to play, it opens a new door. With his new sense of an identity society has forced standards upon him.
He can either conform to those standards or not conform to them. In not conforming, he realizes the chaos that comes with that decision which is evident because he says “step outside the narrow borders of what men call reality…you step into chaos. ” Therefore, the novel leaves the IM as someone who will live their life as who they are, and he will fulfill his responsibilities to society without necessarily playing the role others want you to play. The IM had yet again, had another rebirth and this one is an indication that he will mold himself into the person that he wants to be.
