Ralph Ellison

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Ralph Ellison
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Biography

• 1913-1994
• Raised in Oklahoma City by mother (father died
  when Ellison was 3)
• Named after Ralph Waldo Emerson
• In 1930, attended Tuskegee Institute for music
• In 1933, moved to NYC to get job- there met
  novelist Richard Wright- who encouraged him to
  write-
• 1937-44 Wrote lots while working various jobs
• In WWII was in merchant marine wrote Invisible
  Man- his breakthrough work.
• Continued to write teach until death in 1994.

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Relationship to Other Figures

• In Invisible Man, deals in detail with
• Washington- his narrator attends Tuskegee-
  ultimately rejects Washingtons philosophy
• DuBois- is greatly influenced by Dubois writing-
  see Double Consciousness
• Garvey- The character Ras the Exhorter closely
  modeled on Garvey and his followers
• Also communists.

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Themes- Invisibility and Double Consciousness

• D.C. that blacks simultaneously view themselves
  through their own eyes AND ALSO through the lens
  of racist white America.
• However, white people refuse to see black people
  at all, due to the guilt actually seeing them
  would cause, thus making them disappear

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Themes- Self Aware

• Unlike Hughes and Hurston, Ellisons characters
  are educated, articulate, and self-aware
• Thus, doesnt speak in dialect, very
  philosophical, etc.
• Like DuBois, in that low culture, dialect,
  etc. not celebrated sort of embarassing