Prejudice And Discrimination Exposed In Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man
950 Words4 Pages
I have read 269 pages in the novel Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. The storyline so far from the pages that I have read is the character experiencing his new job at the plant called Liberty Paints. The narrator starts off his first day at work by working on the first floor mixing chemicals to make white paint. Since the chemical was black, he had trouble finding which of the two black tanks had the chemical he needed. In the end he ends up getting the wrong chemical which makes his official send him to the basement. When he goes to the basement, the nameless character finds out his superior is an old black man and gets annoyed by this fact. After the narrator eats his lunch, he gets in a fight with the old black man, Lucius Brockway, and…show more content… This is the theme because when the narrator accidentally stumbles into a union meeting at his work, the workers immediately call him a black “fink” after he tells them that he works for Lucius Brockway. The workers react negatively without knowing that the narrator doesn’t know anything about the feud between the union members and Lucius Brockway. The theme can be seen in the quote “ “I ran into a union meeting-” “Union!” I heard his white cup shatter… “I knowed you belonged to that bunch of troublemaking foreigners! I knowed it!... Git out of my basement!” ” This line expresses how the narrator is about to explain how he ran into the union meeting and Brockway gets angry before the character can explain. This line explains how the narrator is trying to fit into a workplace with others like him, but others make negative assumptions about him which makes it hard to fit in. Therefore, the theme is people can mostly be racially prejudiced because even his own culture makes assumptions of him. It is important to note this because the character is having assumptions being made out of him without being able to explain himself. In total, the theme of the this section of the novel is people can mostly make prejudiced opinions towards others because of the people coming to conclusions without letting the nameless character