The Invisible Man

The Invisible Man, written by Ralph Ellison, is a very interesting book. To be honest when we first started reading this canonical piece, I was expecting it to be very boring, difficult to understand, and worst of all that the length was going to make me want to rip my eyes out. But as I have continued to read this book, I have been pleasantly surprised with it. While it is not an “easy read,” it is certainly a much easier read than I originally thought it would be. While at times it is a little difficult to understand, for the most part it is relatively easy to get through.
There was one specific part in the book that represented a lot to me – that being the Optic White part. This small part of the novel seemed to show a lot. First of all it showed Ellison’s clever use of metaphors, and most importantly it captured the very essence of the book, being racism. On page 200, the narrator is given instructions to make a perfect white paint. The process in doing this is rather odd. He started with a “dead black” paint, and was told to drop 10 drops of black paint into the paint can. The narrator was confused because the intent was to make a perfectly and purely white paint, but how could this be possible to mix to black colors and then create the purest and cleanest white colored paint, that it can be used on national monuments. The part that really connects to the racism that the book follows is the metaphor that the Optic White Paint Company uses – “White is Right.” This is the unfortunate racist mindset throughout The Invisible Man, and this slogan is definitely a metaphor for thinking that white people are dominant and “right” over African Americans.