Name: Gerlie May A.

Neri | BSED ENGLISH 2A

DECONSTRUCTIONALIST CRITICISM on INVISIBLE MAN

Attending a black college, and moving to Harlem in New York City, the
Invisible Man narrates his first-hand experiences in the society filled with racial
prejudice and injustice by which he grapples with his own sense of invisibility—both
literal and metaphorical. In such a novel, we see several pairs of opposite ideas, like
being visible versus being invisible, having power versus being powerless, and
having an identity versus being erased. Usually, being visible, having power, and
having an identity are seen as better or more favorable, or positive. But if we look
deeper, we can see how these opposites depend on each other and how being
invisible, powerless, or erased can only emerge within the existence of the other. For
example, we cannot really tell which person is pretty if there are no wretched person
in the first place, which is the same exact way we can't truly understand what it
means to be powerful without knowing what it feels like to be powerless. This
dependency suggests that these concepts are not as straightforward as they seem;
they are interconnected and often defined in relation to each other.

Metaphors present in this novel may also pose as rather ambiguous

such as the concept of blindness in a sense that it both represents ignorance and
closing one’s eyes to absorb things more clearly. On the other, characters like
Trueblood and events like the battle royal, which might appear minor at first glance,
are actually very important due to the fact that they propelled a critical influence to
the character's development and the direction of the story. When we pay close
attention to these seemingly minor elements, the overall meaning of the story
changes, and we can see how widespread and deeply ingrained societal hypocrisy
and systemic exploitation really are. On paying attention to these marginal
characters and incidents, it offers fresh narratives and sentiments that may have
possibly been overlooked with conventional reading. It begins to make us realize
that the story is not really as simple as it appears to be and that the struggle of the
protagonist for his/her own identity is much more complex than meets the eye.