Abstract

This article seeks to examine the theme of self-realization in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man in the light of two important intellectual histories: Marxist materialism and Henry David Thoreau’s transcendentalism. In his novel, Ellison creates a protagonist who seeks to discover and define himself within the world in which he lives, depending on the Marxist conceptions of societal intercourse and materialism; and then the protagonist seeks to define himself outside his society when he descends underground in an attempt to find his true self through reflection and introspection, which can be traced back to Henry David Thoreau’s transcendentalism. The article also shows how the consciousness of the protagonist was formed and deformed by the material reality of his life. Ellison presents a man, who, when faced with the problem of being invisible in society, finds shelter in the shadows of the visible.