Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T08:48:45.406Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - The Meaning of Narration in Invisible Man

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Valerie Smith
Affiliation:
Princeton University
Get access

Summary

In Ralph Ellison's essays and interviews, the artist is a figure of rebellion. Whether writing generally of the role and responsibilities of the contemporary American novelist or, more specifically, of his own achievements, Ellison describes the artist always in opposition to the restraints of received literary convention. In “Brave Words for a Startling Occasion,” his acceptance speech for the 1953 National Book Award, he identifies some of the restrictions that limit modern American fiction. For him, neither the “tight, well-made Jamesian novel” nor the “hard-boiled novel” can contain the complexity of American life. He writes:

There was also a problem of language, and even dialogue, which, with its hard-boiled stance and its monosyllabic utterance, is one of the shining achievements of twentieth-century American writing. For despite the notion that its rhythms were those of everyday speech, I found that when compared with the rich babel of idiomatic expression around me, a language full of imagery and gesture and rhetorical canniness, it was embarrassingly austere.

In response to these constraints, he suggests that the contemporary novelist assume an adversarial posture; he or she must “challenge the apparent forms of reality – that is, the fixed manners and values of the few, and … struggle with it until it reveals its mad, vari-implicated chaos, its false faces, and … until it surrenders its insight, its truth” (SA, 106).

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×