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The novel started when the protagonist started his college life in the south. He had no name. He was asked to show Mr. Norton around the college, but the protagonist took him to Trueblood’s house, and a bar named Golden Day, both of which were seemed as shameful places. Dr. Bledsoe was angry and rejected him from college. He gave him seven letters to look for a job in the North, he was rejected once and once again. At last, he knew the details of the letters. The protagonist was very angry and wanted to revenge, but he was helpless. After leaving college, he found a job in New York. His job was to add ten black drops into white paint. It should have been so easy for him, but he was injured because of the accident of explosion. Then doctors did experiments on him, which implied that the whites tried to wipe up the past thoughts and personality of the blacks, and then made the blacks work for the whites. The protagonist listened to the talks of the white doctors. He changed his ideas of the white folks. After leaving hospital, he started a new life. He thought he could find himself, but he worked for Brother Tarp and lost himself once again. This implied that it was not easy to get rid of the control of white people and the destiny of black people was never hold by themselves. He devoted himself to the organization in Harlem but a series of things let him see the fact finally. The protagonist fell into an abandoned coal mines while escaping from being killed by Black Las. He thought of his own experiences there and finally realized that he was an invisible man in the eyes of others.
Ralph Ellison is good at using all kinds of writing techniques to express his ideas, especially using symbols, which can express characters’ inner world. So symbol is a good tool to express themes. In Invisible Man, he uses a lot of symbols, which are full of symbolic meanings.
Symbolism is one of the most sophisticated movements in literary history in French in the late 19th century. It has affected the literature and other arts of the whole Europe since it appeared. The basic theory of symbolism is subjective idealism and the basic creation method is symbol. Symbolism is a literature school formed of some writers with same thoughts, writing style and artistic tendency in specific historical period. It is in the category of literary.
In the broadest sense a symbol is anything which signifies something; in this sense all words are symbols. Symbol is based on the relationship between two things, in order to express some abstract concepts, ideas or emotions with the help of specific images of a person or something. The connection between the two things is related to imagination, so as to make the abstract thinking and meaning concrete. In literature, to study a symbol is to study the symbolic meanings of the symbol.