The Paper Motif in Invisible Man :: Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

Ralph Ellisons Invisible Man depicts a realistic nightclub where washrag people act as if black people are less than benignant. Ellison uses papers and letters to show the narrators shortsighted position in this society. Many papers seem to show beneficial fortune for the narrator, but only provide false dreams. The narrators prize of a skeleton case containing his scholarship first illustrates this misrepresentation take this prize and keep it well. Consider it a badge of office. look on it. Keep developing as you are and some day it impart be filled with important papers that will help define the destiny of your people (32). The narrator is filled with joy from receiving his scholarship and brief case but subconsciously knows of the sh altogetherowness of the superintendents shopping center felt speech. Ellison shows this subconscious knowledge through the narrators dream of receiving a letter of deep and truthful meaning And I did and in it I found an engraved docume nt containing a short means in letters of gold To Whom It May Concern, I intoned. Keep This Nigger-Boy runway (33). Even though it is just a dream, the white people actually do urgency to keep the narrator and his race running after false dreams. A nonher example of the bad associated with papers is when the brotherhood gives the narrator an envelope containing a new name on a constituent of paper, replacing his identityThis is your new identity, Brother Jack said. Open it. deep down I found a name written on a slip of paper.That is your new name, Brother Jack said. Start thinking of yourself by that name from this moment. Get it down so that if you are called in the center field of the night you will respond. Very soon you shall be known by it all over the country. You are to answer to no other, understand (302)?The particular that the narrator has been given a new identity and is not certain which one is himself means that the he has no identity at all I would do the work but I would be no one except myself--whoever I was (303).The hospital release forms illustrate the white mans way of making the narrator less than human by depriving him of his work at the company the doctor will not let him work You arent ready for the rigors of industry. Now I want you to rest, undertake a period of convalescence.