Reading 1001 discussion

1. 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?

His color but it must be more because he is also invisible to other blacks. I think that all of us are pretty much invisible a lot of the time. People are so self absorbed they pay little attention to those around them.

It really speaks to the blindness of people around him. He really isn't invisible, others choose not to see him as he really is.

This book may have been written in the forty's and fifties but it is still relevant.

He is invisible not because people don't see him but because they don't understand him. The whites can ignore him because he is black and the other blacks don't understand him.

He really becomes invisible when he puts on his hat and glasses and everyone thinks he is someone else.

At points in the novel he is completely visible but still not understood.

He is invisible on many levels:
Some people don't want to see him as he is a person of color. Some people don't see him, as they put him in a role that does not fit the whole person. Or simply that they don't look close enough to perceive the whole person and his circumstances.

There was a quote that I will look up later (I'm at work (shhhh!!)and don't have the book with me) that says something along the lines of being invisible because only a member of a group and failing to become an individual.

Agree with everyone.

I agree that the narrator was invisible to both blacks and white. I agree with Book that he was misunderstood by all.