The Color of InvisibleBy meow0730
Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” is a novel overflowing with symbolic imagery. No description in the story, however mundane, exists simply to fill empty space. Every word seems to have an underlying purpose and each image conveys a breadth of meaning that is easily as important to the theme of the story as the plot, itself. One of the most obvious ways Ellison ties imagery to the theme of the novel is through the use of color. The story is richly painted with reds, blues, greens, and, especially, white and black. Upon close inspection, it is easy to see that these color choices are used in the story for more than just vivid description. Each color is significant and symbolic and helps to imply connections between events that might otherwise be missed.
While Ellison uses a variety of colors within “The Invisible Man,” certain colors appear more frequently than others. The most abundant of these colors are, not surprisingly, black and white. Separately, these colors send different messages, but the combined image of white on black or vice versa seems to mean something entirely different. Alone, the color white represents oppression, domination, corruption, hypocrisy, America and, one of the essential themes of the book, blindness. Black, on the other hand, is used to indicate repression, the unseen, comfort, clarity and the inner workings of society and economy.
Together, however, black and white represent unity, serenity and beauty. This is the most important message that “The Invisible Man” offers: the fact that black and white are only at their best and most complete when they exist in harmony with one another. Ellison uses a few other colors besides black and white within the novel. Red appears in combination with violence, lust, and the ever-dangerous temptation of white women. Gray is associated with obscurity, “the veil,” and conformity to oppression.
The color red first appears in the scene of the Battle Royal in connection with a white woman and violence. The narrator neatly combines the color red with the ideas of both violence and lust with his observation about one of the other boy’s “dark red fighting trunks much too small to conceal [his] erection” (20). There is no doubt in this scene that the object of the boy’s lust is the dancing white woman who has been deliberately placed in front of them for this purpose. The color red is once again combined with lust and violence when a small riot breaks out around the dancing girl and the narrator sees “the terror and disgust in her eyes” above her “red, fixed-smiling lips,” (20).
The color red is used more in this scene as the battle is described.
Later in the story, the color red appears in the apple that a white woman is eating (250). Both of the white women whom the narrator associates with are also mentioned in connection with the color red. The first woman is wearing a red robe (416) while the second woman is marked by a “red imprint left by the straps of her bra” (520). In the description of the second woman red is again linked to violence by the fact that the red is a mark of pain and that the narrator, looking at it, wonders to himself “Who’s taking revenge on whom?” (250).
The violence of red is often associated in the novel with the repression of black and the oppression of white. In the beginning of the story the narrator uses all three colors in the same sentence when he closes his eyes and imagines walking “along the forbidden road that winds past…the small white Home Economics practice cottage, whiter still in the moonlight, and on down the road with its sloping and turning, paralleling the black powerhouse with its engines droning earth-shaking rhythms in the dark, its windows red from the glow of the furnace” (34). This sentence seems to be an apt description of the world, both at that time and in the preceding centuries. The white Home Economics cottage is an indication of white wealth and ownership. The black powerhouse is an example of how the blacks produced all the power, both literally and figuratively, that whites had and that this power was produced behind the scenes or “in the dark” (34). The red windows imply the violence that has been used to keep the black powerhouse running.
The description the narrator gives about the college is a good example of how blacks are the “the machines inside the machine” and this concept is brought up frequently throughout the course of the novel (217). The black policeman directing white drivers in the city (159) and the irreplaceable black man running Liberty Paints from his hole in the basement (217) are just two examples of the way blacks are the hidden powerhouse of society. The novel, remaining true to this concept, uses the color black sparingly in descriptions, though the blacks and their struggle are essential to the story. The color white is mentioned much more frequently than black or any other, emphasizing through simple imagery the domination that whites enforce.
As the narrator blithely comments, “If you’re white, you’re right,” (218). Liberty Paints is an excellent example of the total domination desired by whites. White is considered the ideal paint color and only the whitest of whites is suitable for something so important as a national monument (202). There is also a constant effort to change black into white throughout the novel. A sign in a store window declares “win greater happiness with whiter complexion. Be outstanding in your social set,” (262) and Brockhurst happily boasts that “Our white is so white you can paint a chunka coal and you’d have to crack it open with a sledge hammer to prove it wasn’t white clear through!” (217). Even the narrator’s own white friends attempt to dominate him by changing his identity. His new identity, notably, is given to him in a white envelope by a white woman (309).
“White,” the narrator says, “Is not a color but the lack of one,” (577). “Must I strive toward colorlessness?” he then asks (577). While it is possible that this remark is meant as an insulting jab against whites, it is more likely that the narrator is implying that conformity and lack of diversity (colorlessness) is not an admirable goal. The colors black and white are always used positively within the novel when they are used in conjunction with each other. Beauty, in particular, seems to be analogous to the color combination. Sybil tells the narrator, “You’re beautiful, I’ve always thought so. Like warm ebony against pure snow,” (520). Sybil, herself, is later described as “a beautiful dreamer, one ivory arm flung above her jet-black head,” (418). The white paint in Liberty Paints is another example of a positive mixture of white and black. Only with the addition of the black dope can the white paint become brighter, and thus more attractive (200).
What the narrator recognizes at the end of the novel is what most of America is finally able to recognize today: that it is the multitude of colors and identities that make America the great country it is. Without that diversity, our society would become colorless in every sense of the word. The narrator puts it succinctly, as he thinks back on all that he has learned and realizes that all “men are different and that all life is divided and that only in division is there true health,” (576).
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