Conclusion
Ellison tells a story of self-transcendence. It narrates not a specific character, but countless ordinary people hiding in dark corners suffering from gaze and neglect. A theme that runs throughout Invisible Man is that humans seek their identity on many levels, from individual to community to national identity. But every time identity is within reach, it is seen as false. Ultimately, the protagonist in Invisible Man embraces the idea that man must find his identity in the self rather than in others, which means that he must learn to become “visible” again through an act of self-consciousness and can only overcome the crisis of race and existence by embracing invisibility itself, which is integral to this dilemma.
All through the book, the gaze of power plays an important role in the construction of the self’s identity. When the invisible man describes himself as “invisible”, he does not mean that he is actually invisible. Rather, he means that the physical eyes of those around him can see him in the flesh, but their “inner eyes” can never see the real him. The eye of power simply gazes at the skin color, while ignoring and denying the true existence. His invisibility at the same time stems from his own uncertainty about his own identity. He is always unsure of who he is, invisible not only to others, but also to himself. Influenced by the power gaze, there is a conflict between self-perception and the projection of others. The internalized self-see is watched by the power gaze as a self-image, thus becoming the origin of the conquest of the self and losing the true self. But where there is power, there is resistance. The protagonist goes from fearing the gaze and internalizing it, to daring to look at it directly and resist it, to trying to get rid of it, and finally to transcend it by achieving the intersection of the gaze through communication. The protagonist tells his own story and reconnects with the world. He brings the readers (especially those who are also neglected by society) into his story, as if looking directly at and conversing with the readers, who in turn watch the narrator as he listens and reads. It is in this process of self-discovery that one continues to learn who he is, and the self is gradually refined until it is complete.
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