The Story
“I am an invisible man.” In this world premiere stage production, the first authorized by The Ralph and Fanny Ellison Charitable Trust, a landmark American novel comes to life. Ralph Ellison’s classic story of a young African American’s search for his identity blazes with luminous theatricality and truth. Adapted by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Oren Jacoby, Invisible Man marks the first Chicago appearance by award-winning New York City director Christopher McElroen, a co-founder of the Classical Theatre of Harlem. Invisible Man is a produced in association with Christopher McElroen Productions.
A summary of the novel:
In the beginning, the main character lives in a small town in the South. He is a model student, even being named his high school’s valedictorian. Having written and delivered an excellent paper about the struggles of the average black man, he gets to tell his speech to a group of white men, who force him to participate in a series of degrading events. After finally giving his speech, he gets a scholarship to an all-black college that is clearly modeled on the Tuskegee Institute.
During his junior year at the college, the narrator takes Mr. Norton, a visiting rich white trustee, on a drive in the country. He accidentally drives to the house of Jim Trueblood, a black man living on the college’s outskirts, who impregnated his own daughter. Trueblood, though disgraced by his fellow blacks, has found greater support from whites. After hearing Trueblood’s story and giving Trueblood a $100 bill, Mr. Norton faints, then asks for some alcohol to help his condition, prompting the narrator to take him to a local tavern. At the Golden Day tavern, Norton passes in and out of consciousness as World War I veterans being treated at the nearby mental hospital for various mental-health issues occupy the bar and a fight breaks out among them. One of the veterans claims to be a doctor and tends to Mr. Norton. The dazed, confused Mr. Norton is not fully aware of what’s going on as the veteran doctor chastises the actions of the trustee and the young black college student. Through all the chaos, the narrator manages to get the recovered Mr. Norton back to the campus after a day of unusual events.
Upon returning to the school he is fearful of college president Dr. Bledsoe’s reaction to the day’s incidents. Insight into Bledsoe’s knowledge of the events and the narrator’s future at the campus is somewhat prolonged as an important visitor arrives. The narrator views a sermon by the highly respected Reverend Homer A. Barbee. Barbee, who is blind, delivers a speech about the legacy of the college’s founder with such passion and resonance that he comes vividly alive to the narrator; his voice makes up for his blindness. The narrator is so inspired by the speech that he feels impassioned like never before to contribute to the college’s legacy. However, all his dreams are shattered as a meeting with Bledsoe reveals his fate. Fearing that the college’s funds will be jeopardized by the incidents that occurred, Bledsoe immediately expels the narrator. While the Invisible Man once aspired to be like Bledsoe, he realizes that the man has portrayed himself as a black stereotype in order to succeed in the white-dominated society. This serves as the first epiphany among many in the narrator realizing his invisibility. This epiphany is not yet complete when Bledsoe gives him several letters of recommendation to help him get a job under the assumption that he could return upon earning enough money for the next semester.
Upon arriving in New York, the narrator distributes the letters with no success. Eventually, the son of one of “possibilities” takes pity on him and shows him an opened copy of the letter; it reveals that Bledsoe never had any intentions of letting the narrator return and sent him to New York to get rid of him. On the son’s suggestion, the narrator eventually gets a job in the boiler room of a paint factory in a company renowned for its white paints. The man in charge of the boiler room, Lucius Brockway, is extremely paranoid and thinks that the narrator has come to take his job. He is also extremely loyal to the company’s owner, who once paid him a personal visit. When the narrator tells him about a union meeting he happened upon, Brockway is outraged, and attacks him. They fight, and Brockway tricks him into turning a wrong valve and causing a boiler to explode. Brockway escapes, but the narrator is hospitalized after the blast. While recovering, the narrator overhears doctors discussing him as a mental health patient. He learns through their discussion that shock treatment has been performed on him.
After the shock treatments, the narrator attempts to return to his residence when he feels overwhelmed by a certain dizziness and faints on the streets of Harlem. He is taken to the residence of Mary, a kind, old-fashioned, down-to-earth woman who reminds him of his relatives in the South and friends at the college. Mary somewhat serves as a mother figure for the narrator. While living there, he happens upon an eviction of an elderly black couple and makes an impassioned speech decrying the action. But when the police arrive soon after, the narrator is forced to escape over several building-tops. Upon reaching “safety,” he is confronted by a man named Jack, who implores him to join a group called The Brotherhood—a thinly-veiled version of the Communist Party that clamies to be committed to social change and betterment of the conditions in Harlem. The narrator agrees.
At first, the rallies go smoothly and the narrator is happy to be “making history” in his new job and making a difference in history. Soon, however, he encounters trouble from Ras the Exhorter, a fanatical black nationalist in the vein of Marcus Garvey who believes that the Brotherhood is controlled by whites. Ras tells this to the narrator and Tod Clifton, a youth leader of the Brotherhood, neither of whom seem to be swayed by his words.
The narrator continues his work in Harlem until he is called into a meeting of The Brotherhood. They believe he has become too powerful and reassign him to another part of the city to address the “women question.” After the narrator gives his first lecture on women’s rights, he is approached by the wife of another member of The Brotherhood. She invites him to her apartment where she seduces him. The narrator is soon called to return to Harlem to repair its falling membership in the black community.
When he returns to Harlem, Tod Clifton has disappeared. When the narrator finds him, he realizes that Clifton has become disillusioned with the Brotherhood and quit. Clifton is selling dancing Sambo dolls on the street, mocking the organization he once believed in. Soon after, Tod is shot by a police officer and dies. At his funeral, the narrator delivers a rousing speech, rallying crowds to reclaim his former widespread Harlem support. He’s criticized in a clandestine meeting with Brother Jack and other members for not being scientific in his arguments at the funeral; he angrily retaliates and Jack loses his temper to the extent that a glass eye flies out of its socket. The narrator realizes that the half-blind Jack has never really seen him either, and that The Brotherhood has no real interest in the black community’s problems.
He is trailed by Ras the Exhorter’s men as he returns to Harlem; buying sunglasses and a hat, he’s mistaken for a man called Rinehart in several scenarios: a lover; a hipster; a gambler; a briber; and finally, a reverend. He sees that Rinehart has adapted to white society at the cost of his own identity. He decides to take his grandfather’s dying advice to “overcome’em with yeses, undermine’em with grins, agree’em to death and destruction….” and “yes” the Brotherhood to death by making it look like the Harlem membership is thriving when it’s actually crumbling. He seduces Sybil, the wife of another member, to learn of the Brotherhood’s new activities. He soon realizes the cost of this action: Ras becomes a powerful demagogue.
Riots break out in Harlem and the narrator gets mixed up with a gang of looters. Wandering through a ravaged Harlem, he encounters Ras, who now calls himself Ras the Destroyer. After escaping Ras’s attempt to have him lynched (by throwing a spear Ras had acquired through the leader’s jaw, permanently sealing it), the narrator is attacked by a couple of white boys who trap him inside a coal-filled manhole/basement, sealing him off for the night and leaving him alone to finally confront the demons of his mind: Bledsoe, Norton, and Jack.
At the end of the novel, the narrator is ready to resurface because “overt action” has already taken place. This could be that, in telling us the story, the narrator has already made a political statement where change could occur. Therefore, it is storytelling and the preservation of the history of these invisible individuals that causes political change.