50 Fun Facts About Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

What does the narrator of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man never reveal across twenty-five chapters and an epilogue?

His name never appears, and when the Brotherhood recruits him as a speaker it simply issues him a new one.

After the fight in Ralph Ellison's Battle Royal, the boys are told to grab coins and bills from what?

An electrified rug is the trap: the boys are jolted as they scramble for the money, and some of the gold pieces turn out to be brass tokens advertising cars.

Why does the narrator of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, who is no ghost, call himself invisible?

Others refuse to see him: nothing is wrong with his body, and he has learned to exploit being overlooked by living rent-free on stolen power.

In Ralph Ellison's Battle Royal, what are the ten boys made to wear once inside the boxing ring, before the bell?

Blindfolds turn the bout into chaos: the classmates swing at one another unseen while a roomful of drunken town leaders yells at them.

Whose jazz recordings does the narrator of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man play in his hideout during the prologue?

Louis Armstrong is his choice, and he dreams of owning five phonographs so he can feel one Armstrong record playing on all of them at once.

Which major American prize did Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man win in 1953, a first for a Black writer?

The National Book Award capped a remarkable debut: a first novel by an unknown writer that had spent sixteen weeks on the bestseller list.

Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man shares all but one word of its title with an 1897 science-fiction novel by which author?

H. G. Wells called his story The Invisible Man, about a scientist who makes himself unseen; Ellison's novel dropped the article fifty-five years later.

What does the narrator of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man learn about his college president's sealed letters?

They bar him from returning: the president has told each trustee that the expelled student will never be readmitted, while sending him north full of hope.

In Chapter 11 of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, what treatment do the factory hospital's doctors give the narrator?

Electric shocks jolt him inside a machine while the doctors talk over him like a specimen, one joking that his convulsions show a sense of rhythm.

After his speech in Ralph Ellison's Battle Royal, what gift does the school superintendent hand the bloodied narrator?

A calfskin briefcase is his reward, and he keeps it to the last chapter, even turning back up the stairs of a burning tenement to rescue it.

In Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, whose deathbed confession of being a lifelong traitor and spy haunts the narrator?

His grandfather had seemed the meekest of men, so the family is stunned when he urges them to keep up the fight by agreeing with white people to their ruin.

The narrator's speech in Ralph Ellison's Battle Royal borrows from an 1895 Atlanta address by which Black educator?

Booker T. Washington urged patience, hard work and friendship with white Southerners in that address, and the young narrator repeats the message to please his audience.

Which quality does the narrator's graduation speech in Ralph Ellison's Battle Royal call the secret of progress?

Humility is his theme, and the older narrator admits he never believed a word of it: he simply knew it was what white listeners wanted to hear.

In Ralph Ellison's Battle Royal, which two-word phrase does the narrator blurt out mid-speech, silencing the room?

Social equality slips out in place of the responsibility he meant to praise, and the laughter stops until he assures the men it was a mistake.

In Ralph Ellison's Battle Royal, which fighter, the biggest of the boys, knocks the narrator out to win the bout?

Tatlock turns down the narrator's offer of a bribe, flattens him, and collects ten dollars, double what each loser is paid.

Before the fight in Ralph Ellison's Battle Royal, the boys must watch a dancer who has which tattoo on her stomach?

A flag is tattooed on the dancer, part of a red, white and blue motif that colours the whole scene all-American.

Where do the town's leading white men stage the fight in Ralph Ellison's Battle Royal, in a room thick with smoke?

A hotel ballroom hosts the evening, and the narrator arrives expecting only to repeat his graduation speech before the town's most important men.

At the end of Ralph Ellison's Battle Royal, which document does the narrator find tucked inside his prize?

A scholarship to the state college for Black students is inside, and that night he dreams the envelope holds a very different message.

Which British magazine first printed the battle royal episode of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man in 1947?

Horizon, edited by Cyril Connolly, ran the scene five years before the finished novel reached American readers.

How many light bulbs illuminate the home of the narrator in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, all run on stolen power?

1,369 bulbs blaze around him, fitted to use up as much stolen current as possible, and he treats the glow as proof that he exists.

Where is the narrator of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man living, rent-free and unnoticed, as he begins to tell his story?

A forgotten basement in a whites-only building is his home, on the edge of Harlem, lit for free with current siphoned from the power company.

The narrator of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man insists his long retreat is a preparation for action and calls it what?

A hibernation is his word for it, and in the epilogue he decides the sleep has lasted long enough and that it is time to come up.

Which wealthy white trustee does the narrator chauffeur around the countryside in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man?

Mr. Norton, a Northern philanthropist who believes the students are his fate, insists on seeing the old slave quarters, and the detour gets his young driver expelled.

Which sharecropper's scandalous family confession leaves a visiting trustee faint in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man?

Jim Trueblood, once admired as a storyteller, recounts it all so matter-of-factly that the horrified trustee hands him a hundred-dollar bill.

In Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, which roadside bar full of war veterans does the narrator visit to fetch whiskey?

The Golden Day is packed that afternoon with patients from a nearby asylum, who turn on their attendant and beat him unconscious.

Which college president expels the narrator of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man for showing a trustee the wrong sights?

Dr. Bledsoe has spent his career humouring white trustees to hold on to his position, and to his students he is Old Bucket-head.

Which Southern school, where Ralph Ellison studied music in the 1930s, inspired the campus in Invisible Man?

Tuskegee Institute admitted Ellison in 1933, and he hopped freight trains to reach Alabama; he later left without finishing his degree.

In Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, the narrator is hired as cheap non-union labour at a factory that makes what?

Paint is the product, sold to the government under the Liberty brand, and his first task is to keep the white dazzling by stirring black drops into every bucket.

Which elderly engineer in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, guarding his job below the factory floor, fears the union?

Lucius Brockway has kept the boilers running for years and helped coin the company slogan, and he comes at the newcomer with his fists, losing his false teeth.

What accident on his first day at the factory puts the narrator of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man in the hospital?

An explosion rips through the boiler room after an old hand, convinced the newcomer is after his job, tricks him into setting it off.

In Chapter 11 of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, the hospital machine is meant to copy which operation without a knife?

A lobotomy is what the doctors have in mind: their machine is built to give the same result with no cutting, while the patient lies strapped inside it listening.

In Chapter 11 of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, a doctor's card asks the dazed narrator about which folk-tale figure?

Buckeye the Rabbit comes from the Black Southern folklore of his childhood, and the question sets him laughing inwardly when he cannot recall his own name or his mother's.

Who takes in the dazed narrator of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man when he reaches Harlem after leaving the hospital?

Mary Rambo nurses him back to health in her Harlem home and goes on feeding and housing him after his compensation money runs out and the rent falls behind.

Once the narrator is declared cured in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, what does the factory director do?

Dismisses him with a payout: the director says he is not ready for industrial work and has him sign away any claim over his injuries.

Which street-vendor food fills the narrator of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man with a sudden sense of freedom in Harlem?

Hot buttered yams taste of the South he has been hiding, and eating them openly on the street makes him feel he need not be ashamed of what he likes.

What is being done to an elderly Harlem couple when the narrator of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man first speaks out?

An eviction in the snow moves him to speak: finding the old man's freedom papers lying in the dirty snow, he stirs the crowd into carrying the furniture back inside.

What does Brother Jack lose in mid-argument with the narrator of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, after a funeral speech?

His glass eye pops out in the heat of a quarrel over the hero's funeral the narrator arranged for a comrade the Brotherhood had branded a traitor.

Which handsome Brotherhood youth leader is shot dead by a policeman in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man?

Brother Clifton is unarmed when he is gunned down, and the narrator turns his funeral into a public march through Harlem without asking the committee.

In Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, a disillusioned Brotherhood youth organiser turns up on the street selling what?

Dancing Sambo dolls, crude racist caricatures, are his wares, and the narrator has barely taken in the betrayal when a policeman opens fire.

Which Harlem street nationalist in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man denounces the Brotherhood for working with white men?

Ras the Exhorter wants Black Harlem to stand alone, and by the final riot he is on horseback with a spear and shield, calling himself the Destroyer.

In Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, a hat and dark lenses get the narrator mistaken for which preacher, gambler and lover?

Rinehart never appears in person, yet strangers greet the disguised narrator as a runner, a briber and a reverend, all the same man.

Which former slave turned orator is in the portrait Brother Tarp gives the narrator of Ellison's Invisible Man?

Frederick Douglass is the model the old man holds up: a self-freed speaker for his people, the kind of leader he hopes the newcomer will become.

Fleeing armed men during the Harlem riot in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, the narrator escapes by falling into what?

An open manhole drops him into a coal store, where the white men chasing him clamp the cover back on and leave him in the dark.

Sealed in darkness late in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, what does the narrator do with the keepsakes he has carried?

Burns them one by one for light: his school diploma goes first, and by the flames he learns that the anonymous warning letter came from Brother Jack.

The author of Invisible Man was christened after which American essayist, a champion of self-reliance?

Emerson gave him his first two names, Ralph Waldo, and turns up inside the novel too: a trustee tells the narrator to study him, and an unseen New York businessman shares the surname.

A Southern college admitted the future author of Invisible Man in 1933 because its orchestra lacked which instrument?

Trumpet lessons came free from the father of a neighbourhood friend, and Ellison went on to become his school's bandmaster.

Ralph Ellison, author of Invisible Man, was born in which state, admitted to the Union only a few years earlier?

Oklahoma City was his birthplace, and in 1975 his hometown dedicated a public library in his honour.

Which unfinished second novel by Ralph Ellison, the author of Invisible Man, was published five years after his death?

Juneteenth was carved by his literary executor out of more than 2,000 manuscript pages that Ellison had been writing for some forty years.

Which novelist steered Ralph Ellison, later the author of Invisible Man, toward fiction after asking him for a review?

Richard Wright, the author of Native Son, began a long and complicated friendship with him; Ellison later called Wright a literary relative, not a chosen ancestor.

A bronze slab with a cut-out human figure honours Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man in which Manhattan green space?

Riverside Park holds the memorial at 150th Street, facing the apartment building where Ellison long lived and three blocks from his tomb.