It goes a long way back, some twenty years

The Struggle for Existence in Invisible Man

It goes a long way back, some twenty years. All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization ev 747d39h eryone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man!

The purpose of this essay is to discuss the struggle for existence in Ellison's novel Invisible Man." Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison is a novel which embodies the universal theme of self-discovery, of the search to figure out who one truly is in life which we all are embarked upon." (https://123helpme.com/view.asp?id=11399)

This fragment belongs to chapter one and it is an extract from the novel Invisible man written by Ralph Ellison.

In this fragment the Narrator admits that all his life he has searched for something,but he never listened and never looked into his mind and soul for the answers that he wanted to know. The text is more like a confession that the Narrator makes to himself. Being the first paragraph from chapter one, the text begins with a return in time, where it all started, from where the author realized that he has to discover that individuality doesn't exist in a society governed by white rules and he must accept his invisible state of being. His life was controlled by other people, everytime he tried to reach for something or to find something someone tried to tell him what he is looking fro. His decisions were influenced by other people and he never succeeded to  discover himself: All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. The Narrator has struggled all his life to understand and to identify his identity. But he admits and realizes that he was naïve and he believed what other people told him,even if their answers were not the right ones. Knowing and considering himself an invisible man,with no identity, with no idea he thought that accepting somebody else's opinions and answers was the best thing for him: I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive. The Narrator struggled all his existence to find himself and to find his place in society, trying to find out a personality that suited him, but only later he realized that he was the only one able to answer his own questions. It can be said that the Narrator accepted his status of invisible man for society and thought that he could not take his own decisions: I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer.

Although he was born among his people, The Narrator had a different perspective of the future. As a young man he tries to fight for his right to chose being a part of a community or being an individual. Years later he realizes that all his expectations, his dreams had come back and forth at him. He did not succeed in anything and his most important goal, to become an individual, rested in his mind and made him realize that he should have accepted his state of invisibility."

"Throughout the story, the protagonist was constantly searching for his true identity, and in the end he realizes that he has no true identity. He is invisible, or more appropriately, he is a mirror which reflects only what other people want to see."