论《看不见的人》中的象征手法

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Symbolism on Invisible Man 论《看不见的人》中的象征手法

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Abstract: Invisible Man,written by Ralph Waldo Ellison who is a famous black writer, is a distinguished novel on an African-American’s struggling in the tough and adverse societ y, from blindness to vision, from darkness to light and from losing to identifying himself. Ellison told us about a young black people's fighting story in breaking the edge of race and region rather than in criticizing on racial discrimination. The theme of novel is that the hero seeks the identity of his own. What Ellison presents to us is not only an African-American’s pursuing his own identity but an anguish process of man's quest for identity in this dehumanizing and absurd society of racial discrimination, the mental crisis in western countries. By using the method of documentary, exemplification, quotation and comparison, the paper tries to analyze the application of symbolism on Invisible Man through visual symbolization, structure symbolization and ceremony symbolization and so on to discuss how the author used symbolism to deepen the topics and to learn Ellison's writing skills. Symbolism is throughout the whole novel. In addition, by analyzing the symbolic meaning and symbolic skill used in the book, we can demonstrate how the symbols contribute to developing the theme. The writing style was changing with the development of the story, which extended the space of language and imagination to make us speculate and ruminate. The social phenomenon and its characteristics of America gave us a better understanding of western culture.

Key words: African-American, Invisible Man, symbolism

Contents

1. Introduction (1)

1.1 Introduction about Ralph Waldo Ellison (1)

1.2 Introduction about Ralph Waldo Ellison's works (1)

1.3 Introduction about Invisible Man and its major theme (1)

1.3.1 Invisible Man (1)

1.3.2 Major theme of Invisible Man (2)

2. The concept of symbol (3)

3. Symbolization (3)

3.1 Visual symbolization (3)

3.1.1 Symbolism meaning of black and white (3)

3.1.2 Symbolism Meaning of Darkness and Light (5)

3.1.3 Symbolism Meaning of Blindness (5)

3.1.4 Symbolism Meaning of Visible and Invisible (6)

3.2 Symbolism Meaning of Structure (7)

3.3 Symbolism Meaning of Characters and Behavior (8)

3.4 Symbolism Meaning of Eyes. (9)

3.5 Symbolism in Rituals (9)

4. Conclusion (10)

Bibliography (11)

Acknowledgement (12)

1. Introduction

1.1 Introduction about Ralph W aldo Ellison

Invisible Man, which was first published in Spring of 1952 and it was called "epoch-making novel, we can say that it was a epic of modern African-American’s life ". The author of this novel is Ralph Waldo Ellison (1914---1994). He was a black writer who was born and raised in Oklahoma, a frontier state with no history of slavery in middle south of America. His fellow African—Americans suffered less racial injustices than those in other states. His father, Lewis Ellison, was a native of South Carolina working in Oklahoma as a businessman and construction worker. His mother, Ida Milsap Ellison, was a native of Mississippi and worked as a domestic maid. Ellison's father died when he was three years old and his mother brought him up all by herself. Though poverty—haunted, the mother tried to keep the son in school. Ellison worked so hard in school that he got a scholarship in 1933 to the well—know Tuskegee Institute which is reflected in his novel as the Eden. The author was interested in literature and music from his childhood.

1.2 Introduction about Ralph W aldo Ellison's works

In order to raise tuition fee, he went to New Y ork to work as a performer, waiter and worker and so on. And there he met Richard Wright who encouraged him to write in 1936. He began to write short stories, essays and reviews from 1939. During those years, he published 9 short stories and more than 10 reviews. Invisible Man was his first novel, which was started from 1945 and it was not published until 1952. Ellison had been working on a second novel for more than 40 years. At his death, the long—waited novel, delayed in part by the destruction of hundreds of pages in a 1967 fire, was left unfinished. Shadow and Act(1964) is a collection of political, social, and critical essays, and the early details set down in it can help to enhance the understanding of Invisible Man. Going to the Territory contains his essays and speeches from 1957 to 1985 with a focus on such as racial problems, American culture and black literature. Among Ellison’s much anthologized short stories are Flying Home, about a black pilot whose plane has crashed in Georgia, and King of the Bingo Game, which proves wrong the claim that an unemployed black can win the game if he gets the lucky number.

1.3 Introduction about Invisible Man and its major theme

1.3.1 Invisible Man

Invisible man is Ralph Waldo Ellison’s masterpiece and it gained him the most impor tant American novelists of his generation, a position that was not only maintained in the following decades. It is considered as the best novel after Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks. In recognition of its depth and brilliance, a 1965 poll of two hundred American writers, critics, and editors selected Invisible Man as the most distinguished novel published in the twenty years since the Second World War. Invisible man is mainly about the fate of African-American. However, its meaning is not only about racial discrimination and social issues, but the difficulty facing to all human beings. What's more, it's the classic work of American literature and a milestone in American literature, a book that has continued to encourage readers since it appeared. This work gained the reputation from its first published and never decay so far. So if a similar poll were to be conducted now, it would in all likelihood produce the same result. This is one of the reasons why I have chosen the book as the source of my essay. Therefore, I will give a brief introduction of the novel as follow.

Invisible Man is a controversial novel and the various conclusions made by his critics fully demonstrate such a dilemma. Initial reviews of particularly those by white reviewers, were