Ellison and the Narrator

One of the first things I noticed while watching Ralph Ellison: An American Journey was how similar Ellison’s life was to the narrator’s in Invisible Man.  Both of them worked hard in school in order to better themselves.  The narrator had to go through the Battle Royale in order to get a scholarship to college, and while it was not very realistic, it was a good metaphor for how hard it could be for African-Americans to get it into college.  Ellison also experienced problems when applying to college. He wanted to go to Tuskegee and applied twice and was denied before finally getting a scholarship for music. But after a while, he started endangering his scholarship.  Unlike the narrator, he didn’t take an important white man to a controversial man’s house, but he did start spending less time on music and more time in the library reading and getting more and more interested in literature.

Like the narrator, Ellison chose to leave behind the university and head to New York for more opportunities and to get a job, although Ellison had more of a choice than the narrator did.  While in New York, both Ellison and the narrator meet people who influenced them and presented them with opportunities, but in very different ways. The narrator met Mr. Emerson who gave him a job at a paint factory and then he met Brother Jack.  Ellison met Langston Hughes and then Richard Wright. The movie referred to Invisible Man as a “fictionalized autobiography” and I agree.  Ellison took the basic facts from his life and gave them a slight twist and made them less fortunate.  While Ellison met other writers and artists who inspired and encouraged his work, the narrator met a man who took advantage of him and led him in the wrong direction.  And while Ellison and the narrator hid similar beginnings, they had very different endings with Ellison being an accomplished writer, and the narrator living in a hole for a long time.  It’s easy to see that Ellison was very fortunate with who he met in New York and how his life could be very different without that happening.