Characters
The Reverend Homer A. Barbee - This character is a blind preacher from Chicago of substantial rhetorical skill who gives the Founder's Day speech at the college.
Dr. A. Herbert Bledsoe - This character is called "Old Buckethead" by the students and is the president of the college.
Lucius Brockway - This character is the invisible man's irascible second supervisor at Liberty Paints.
Brother Todd Clifton - This character is the leader of the Brotherhood youth. When the Brotherhood fails, he plunges into despair, becomes a street peddler and is ultimately killed by the police.
Emma - This female character is one of the first members of the Brotherhood the invisible man meets. She thinks the hero should be "a little blacker."
Grandfather - This character is idolized by the invisible man, although he is dead when the novel begins. This character considers himself a traitor to his race.
Halley - This character is the spirited manager at The Golden Day.
Brother Hambro - This character puts the invisible man through a four-month period of intense study and indoctrination. He is the Brotherhood's chief theoretician.
Invisible Man - This character initially believes that it is to his advantage to flatter the whites and that humility is a mark of progress. He changes as he learns that he is nobody but himself.
Brother Jack - This character is the author of the anonymous threat mailed to the invisible man.
Mr. Kimbro - This man is the invisible man's first supervisor at Liberty Paints.
Mr. Norton - This man is a romantic about race and thinks his life's work is the "first-hand organizing of human life." He causes the hero's expulsion from college.
Old Bucket-head - This character is a shrewd survivor who most wants to protect his own position. His recipe for success is to attain power and influence by making the right contacts and "then stay in the dark and use it!"
Mary Rambo - This character is the only person who ever treats the hero with real affection. The hero thinks of her as a "stable, familiar force."
Ras the Exhorter - This character is a West African nationalist who preaches black pride, a return to Mother Africa, and a willingness to die for one's principles.
Rinehart - This man signs himself a "spiritual technologist." While he is never actually seen, he seems to have so many roles that he becomes instrumental in helping the invisible man realize that it is possible to live with contradictions.
Sybil - This person is the wife of a member of the Brotherhood with whom the invisible man has a brief liaison in the hope of gaining inside information on the organization.
Brother Tarp - This member of the Brotherhood spent 19 years on a chain gang and reminds the invisible man of his grandfather.
Jim Trueblood - This black sharecropper once shamed the black community and shocks Mr. Norton with his tale of incest.
Veteran at the Golden Day - This character served in France, but ends up in a local mental hospital. The hero admires his bold way of speaking to Mr. Norton.
Peter Wheatstraw - This character is a kindly old man who wanders the streets of Harlem while singing the blues.
Brother Wrestrum - This character is jealous of the invisible man and makes a false accusation against him.
Introduction
1. Why is Harlem a particularly appropriate setting for the novel?
2. What does Ellison mean when he says that for African Americans, all wars are "wars within wars."
3. What does Ellison mean by "benign neglect"?
4. Why is important to know that the introduction was written 30 years after the novel itself?
Short Essay Question - Prologue
5. Why does the narrator say he is invisible?
6. Who are the sleeping ones?
7. To what kind of action has music called the narrator?
8. Of what "irresponsibility" are sleepwalkers and dreamers accused?
Short Essay Question - Chapter 1
9. Why do the grandfather's dying words make the narrator feel guilty about receiving praise?
10. How was the narrator's graduation speech a betrayal of black people?
Short Essay Question - Chapter 2
11. Why does the trip to the Trueblood house make the narrator feel uncomfortable?
12. Why does Mr. Norton give Jim Trueblood $100?
Short Essay Question - Chapter 3
13. What does the veteran at the Golden Day understand that the narrator does not?
14. In what way, according to the veteran, is the narrator likely to become a casualty?
Short Essay Question - Chapter 4
15. Describe Dr. Bledsoe.
16. What literary device is used in Chapter 4?
Short Essay Question - Chapter 5
17. How does the setting in chapter 5 provide additional foreshadowing?
18. What is the objective of Rev. Barbee's sermon?
Short Essay Question - Chapter 6
19. What lie does Dr. Bledsoe expect the narrator to tell?
20. What does Dr. Bledsoe mean by "acting the nigger."
Short Essay Question - Chapter 7
21. What mistake does the veteran doctor predict the narrator will make?
22. What surprises the narrator upon his arrival in Harlem?
Short Essay Question - Chapter 8
23. What does the narrator expect from his visit with Mr. Bates?
24. What does the narrator notice while waiting for his appointment with the trustees?
Short Essay Question - Chapter 9
25. Why does the drug store have the pork chop and grits special?
26. What favor does the young Mr. Emerson do for the narrator?
Short Essay Question - Chapter 10
27. Explain the irony of the sign "Keep American Pure with Liberty Paints."
28. Why was the narrator doomed to fail at the paint factory?
Short Essay Question - Chapter 11
29. How has the narrator ended up in the factory hospital? How is he being treated once he gets there?
30. What final action does the hospital take to ensure the narrator's silence?
Short Essay Question - Chapter 12
31. What does Mary Rambo want the narrator to do?
32. Why do the people at the Men's House treat him with hostility?
Short Essay Question - Chapter 13
33. What is the narrator's intention in speaking up for the black couple who have been evicted?
34. How do we know at this point that the lobotomy has not been completely successful in changing the narrator's personality?
Short Essay Question - Chapter 14
35. How does Emma's conversation create a sense of foreboding?
36. Why does Jack become angry with the man who asks the narrator to sing a "spiritual"?
Short Essay Question - Chapter 15
37. Explain the irony of the figurine owned by Mary.
38. Why does the lady on the street become angry when he tries to put the figurine in the trash can?
Short Essay Question - Chapter 16
39. Identify several mistakes that the narrator makes in his first assigned speech in Harlem.
40. Why does Brother Jack defend the narrator at this point?
Short Essay Question - Chapter 17
41. What does Brother Jack really want the narrator to avoid doing?
42. What is the primary problem with the instructions given to the narrator to gather more members?
Short Essay Question - Chapter 18
43. To what does Brother Tarp attribute the warning letter?
44. How does the narrator really feel about the gift of the chain from Brother Tarp?
Short Essay Question - Chapter 19
45. Explain why the "woman question" is typical of the Brotherhood's approach to issues.
46. Why is the narrator's work on the "woman question" cut short?
Short Essay Question - Chapter 20
47. What is meant by "white fever"?
48. In what way could the new shoes be symbolic?
Short Essay Question - Chapter 21
49. What is the significance of the black thread that controls the dancing doll?
50. Why is the narrator's funeral oration more moving than if he had planned a speech based according to party guidelines?
Short Essay Question - Chapter 22
51. The narrator says that he has learned that the lack of surprise is a warning. What does he mean?
52. Brother Jack refers to Clifton as Brutus? How does the metaphor fit the situation?
Short Essay Question - Chapter 23
53. Why is Ras' anger ironic?
54. Describe one of the roles played by Rinehart.
Short Essay Question - Chapter 24
55. Explain the initial results of the narrator's strategy of "yessing" them to death.
56. What epiphany has the narrator experienced regarding his race?
Short Essay Question - Chapter 25
57. Why do Dupre and his men choose a particular building to burn?
58. What strikes the narrator as the profound truth about the riot?
Short Essay Question - Epilogue
59. What puzzling irony does the narrator tell us about the human race?
60. What was the narrator's real problem, and how has he settled it?