Ralph Ellison
INV I SIBLE MAN: PROLOGUE TO A NOVEL
I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those
who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am lone of your Hollywood–
movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber
and liquids-and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am in–
visible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the
bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though
I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When
they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or
figments of their imagination-indeed, everything and anything
except me.
Nor is my invisibility exactly a matter of a bio-chemical accident
to my epidermis. That invisibility to which I refer occurs because of a
peculiar disposition of the eyes of those with whom I come in con–
tact. A matter of the construction of their
inner
eyes, those eyes with
which they look through their physical eyes upon reality. I am not
complaining, nor am I protesting either.
It
is sometimes advanta–
geous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the
nerves. Then too, you're constantly being bumped against by those
of poor vision. Or again, you often doubt if you really exist. You
wonder whether you aren't simply a phantom in other people's
minds. Say, a figure in a nightmare which the sleeper tries with all his
strength to destroy. It's when you feel like this that, out of resent–
ment, you begin to bump people back. And, let me confess, you feel
that way most of the time. You ache with the need to convince your–
self that you do exist in the real world, that you're a part of all
the sound and anguish, and you strike out with your fists, you curse
and you swear to make them recognize you. And, alas, it's seldom
successful.
