What makes Ellison's narrator invisible? What is the relationship between his invisibility and other people's blindness--both involuntary and willful? Is the protagonist's invisibility due solely to his skin color? Is it only the novel's white characters who refuse to see him?
The narrator's inability to define himself, as well as the fact that he's part of a minority, is what allows others to see him or "not" see him as invisible. Only reminded who he is by a memory of his grandfather he, as well as others, are given little to go off in order to put together a solid foundation of what makes him who he is. He represents innocence throughout the story which, although true, is unfathomable to not only the Brotherhood and Ras but to his society as a whole. The Invisible Man and society both have the ability to selectively not see reality and to find something so incomprehensible that it they continue to disregard it binds them both to what is commonly referred to in the story as blindness. While struggling to find himself, find equality, and peace deters himself from becoming more visible because "because finding them would mean facing the truth.
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