Invisible Man Ralph Ellison Sacrifice

What you sacrifice in life is what you tend to value the most. In the book “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison the main character, who goes unnamed for the novel, values education, success, and the equality of the black community . how ever he chooses to suppress and sacrifice his black culture(for example their folk songs, slavery), his old self , and his family, in order to be successful in life. Although from all of these I believe he values more his education, I believe this is because in college his education was taken from him. He uses the anger he has towards those people who used him in his life to make empowering speeches, that cause people,both black and white, to move towards wanting equality and finding who he is in society.
His …show more content…
All throughout the novel he is either being used of fooled into something, because he believes in honesty and wanting to please others including the white man. He seeks himself in every person who is in a higher position than himself,” All my life I had been looking for something and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naïve. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man!”(chapter 1 invisible man) .He quickly learned that the world controlled by the whites doesn’t care much for honesty or who you are. He starts to realize that he hates the people that have used him, he suppresses his anger , towering over the edge of insanity, for example when he saw the old couple being evicted from their home, he …show more content…
Another example would be when he worked in the paint factory, Mr.brockway was constantly fighting to keep his job and stay on top, he wasn't scared of going to the extreme to keep what he had worked so long for . The book is balanced in a way that it doesn’t solely focus on equality for the black, but is also filled with a story of a man trying to find himself and his purpose in society. The invisible man’s needs to make something of himself through education, in order to find equality speaks in volumes of today's society. His willingness to forget who he is order to be a better member of society is why he so eagerly seeks acceptance in other people. This is why he values equality so much, because he seeks to be viewed in the same way that people with power are viewed. His sacrifice in whole is as a loophole where he seeks equality for his race and others, but because he can’t find the balance in himself between listening to his old self or pretending or acting to be someone he is not to be accepted,then when he is rejected and used he fills with anger to find equality for his race. Until finally he is caught and let's go of wanting to be