racism is not the central theme; identity is.

Ralph Ellison the motivation speaker, like our narrator the motivational speaker, would say "I'm riding the race I'm forced to ride" when talking about the presence of class conflict and the oppression of african americans in Invisible Man. Racism is not the theme of this novel; it is ubiquitous because in the context of the time, it was inextricable and extremely relevant to the theme: the lifelong search for self-aware identity.
Ellison asks questions about class struggle through his characters - how does one ask a black man to sing without offending him? or, if the Brotherhood is not acting on behalf of the black race, what are they doing? - to lead the ruminating reader to wonder if the class struggle is more than about elevating the black race. (a ruminant is literally an animal like a cow that lives on something with negligible nutritional content like grass, and to compensate for low calories, protein, fat, vitamins, et cetera that you need to run a huge animal like a cow, the cow has to eat all day and have four stomachs to rip apart and combine everything. the ruminating reader must sift through questions and digest a lot of diverse incidents in Invisible Man to find any answers.) Recurring examples of identity crises and the progression of the narrator in relation to racism make me believe that Ellison writes about class struggle as another system of taxonomy for ones identity.

The narrator struggles with his self perception because he is comfortable in many systems that name him, instead of naming himself and letting his actions follow. He is a part of various institutions: 1.the south 2.college 3.blacks 4.the brotherhood. For the first half of the book, the Narrator's actions are determined by others because his position requires him to be vulnerable to circumstance. It can be argued that his entire life progress to New York City and beyond was determined by others - he went to college because he had a scholarship, he drove Mr. Norton to the Golden Day, he went to New York because Dr. Bledsoe gave him the letters. (I think that the deprecating letters were another of Ellison's and Bledsoe's hints to take a stand for yourself. They were written after the Narrator had resigned himself to his absurd fate without a fight, agreeing not to be bitter.)
The narrator's life of circumstance ends after a circumstantial hospitalization and strange rebirth scene. What is purged from his system is his affiliation to everything, he is a clean slate. And though he is without drive or purpose, he is not without history or education. He is reminded to be earnest in Central Park when he tastes the orange sweetness of loyalty to his upbringing. He summons forth his refined competence for the melodic cadence of speech writing from years of listening to talented sermons (practice and listening is how one develops jazz improvisation! - I can hardly see how speeches are different.) A man with a wealth of talent was once crippled by the obligations his role was expected to fulfill, and when he lost everything, he created the space to seek success that is not gilded. After biting the sweet potato the narrator asks, "What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?" (the person who read my book before me put a check next to that, so it must be important.)

The funeral speech struggles along and falters like Narrator's raw and shifting emotion. For this reason it is the most accurate depiction of the author's genuine sentiment. In a series of speeches for the brotherhood, the conflict between extemporization and prescriptive, deliberate, scientific speech making recurs. Faced with another institution of questionable morality, the Brotherhood, the narrator finally has enough self-assuredness and clarity to buck the system. He is moved to fight on behalf of the negro race not because another person demands it, but because the narrator's own morality demands that he fight for freedom of expression in any manifestation.
nyssa collins