Major Characters of Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man"

 The Invisible Man

The protagonist escaped from the Black Nationalist madman Ras the Destroyer during a race riot in Harlem and now lives underground. He begins his story by relating how he naively believed in the system and the people who ran it. He went to college with aspirations of gaining acceptance in middle-class mainstream society. When he gets into trouble at an unnamed black southern college, he is expelled. He goes to New York, only to discover that he has been betrayed by the college’s president, Bledsoe. The protagonist winds up joining the Brotherhood, an organization similar to the Communist Party, and begins to work against the system that he once believed in, but the Brotherhood betrays him, too.

Mr. Norton

Mr. Norton is a wealthy, white, Northern trustee of the unnamed southern black college. He is a condescending patrician who is strangely obsessed with his daughter. The Invisible Man works as Mr. Norton’s chauffeur, driving the old man around campus and the surrounding area. Ultimately, the Invisible Man gets into trouble when he inadvertently takes Mr. Norton to the farm of sharecropper Jim Trueblood, who tells a shocking story of accidentally committing incest. The Invisible Man compounds his problem by taking the stunned Mr. Norton to the Golden Day, a black bar, on the day when the mentally ill black veterans are there. As a result of his misadventures with Mr. Norton, the Invisible Man is expelled from college.



Dr. Bledsoe

Dr. Bledsoe is the manipulative, scheming president of the unnamed black college where the Invisible Man is a student. He acts like a submissive, obedient Uncle Tom–type around whites but is a tyrant to blacks. He expels the Invisible Man from the college after learning that he has taken Mr. Norton to a black sharecropper’s farm and to a black tavern. But President Bledsoe misleads the Invisible Man into thinking that he can return to the college when, in reality, he can’t. He gives the Invisible Man several letters of introduction to prominent white men in New York. Though the Invisible Man thinks the letters are meant to help him, they are, in fact, intended to hurt him.

Mr. Emerson

Mr. Emerson is the son of the man, also named Mr. Emerson, to whom the Invisible Man has a letter of introduction when he arrives in New York. Mr. Emerson is the last of the prominent white men the Invisible Man tries to contact, after all the other letters have failed. Mr. Emerson, the son, agrees to see the Invisible Man and finally reveals to him the contents of the letter from Bledsoe. The younger Mr. Emerson has some interaction with blacks; he is of a liberal, bohemian disposition, at odds with his father, and apparently homosexual. He offers to help the Invisible Man, but the Invisible Man refuses the aid.

The Reverend Homer A. Barbee

Homer Barbee is the blind minister who gives the powerful  epic-sermon on the founder of the Invisible Man’s college (a fictional version of Booker T. Washington) in the campus chapel on Founders’ Day—the same day that the Invisible Man is expelled. It is significant to note that Homer, the Greek epic poet, was also blind.

Peter Wheatstraw

Peter Wheatstraw is a street peddler who, pushing a cart full of blueprints, encounters the Invisible Man in Harlem. When the Invisible Man is on his way to Mr. Emerson’s office, the peddler reminds him of his black folk roots. Peetie Wheatstraw (1902–1941) was the stage name of an influential blues singer in the 1930s.

Lucius Brockway

Lucius Brokway is the Invisible Man’s black supervisor at Liberty Paints, the company where the Invisible Man works after his meeting with Mr. Emerson. The Invisible Man and Brockway get into a fistfight when Brockway accuses the Invisible Man of being a union spy who is out to get his job. Brockway has been with Liberty Paints since the business started; he is a loyal company man who is intensely anti-union. Brockway leaves the Invisible Man just as the tanks in the basement explode, injuring the Invisible Man so badly that he must be hospitalized.

Mary Rambo

Mary Rambo, a Good Samaritan, shelters the Invisible Man after he is discharged from the hospital following the explosion at Liberty Paints. She is very motherly and constantly tells the Invisible Man that she expects him to become a great leader of the race. He tires of this talk and feels guilty that he cannot pay her for her kindness to him. At the end of the novel, during the Harlem riot, the Invisible Man is trying desperately to return to Mary’s apartment.

Brother Jack

Brother Jack is the leader of the Brotherhood, a fictionalized version of the Communist Party. Brother Jack, who wears a glass eye, employs the Invisible Man to work for the Brotherhood after hearing him give a public speech on behalf of an elderly black couple who have been evicted from their apartment. In the end, Brother Jack turns out to be as manipulative and dishonest as Dr. Bledsoe.

Ras the Exhorter/Ras the Destroyer

Ras the Exhorter, a Jamaican Black Nationalist, hates the Brotherhood, particularly the blacks who belong to it. He thinks the blacks who belong to the Brotherhood are sell-outs, lured by the expectation of having sex with white female members. Ellison depicts sexual encounters between the Invisible Man and two white female members of the Brotherhood, which suggests that the Invisible Man suspected there was some truth in the allegation, although it is clear that he disapproves of Ras and his politics. Ras does not want the Brotherhood operating in Harlem, which Ras considers his turf. At the end of the novel, he hunts down the Invisible Man on horseback and tries to kill him with a spear.

Tod Clifton

Tod Clifton is the handsome, young Harlem operative for the Brotherhood. His dark skin and good looks charm the women and elicit the admiration of Ras the Exhorter, although Tod hates Ras. For some reason, Tod leaves the Brotherhood after the Invisible Man is transferred from Harlem to the downtown (white) area of New York City. Tod winds up selling dancing Black Sambo dolls on the street corner before being fatally shot by a white policeman. His murder is one of the causes of the riot at the end of the novel.

Brother Tarp

Another Harlem operative for the Brotherhood, Brother Tarp escaped from a chain gang years earlier. He admires the Invisible Man and gives him a portrait of Frederick Douglass. He also gives the Invisible Man a twisted link from one of the chains that he broke in order to make his escape.



Brother Tobitt and Brother Wrestrum

Brothers Tobitt and Wrestrum are two members of the Brotherhood. Tobitt (“two-bit”) is white and Wrestrum (“restroom”) is black. Both men hate the Invisible Man and constantly try to undermine his leadership. Tobitt is married to a black woman and uses that to validate his understanding of African-American life and his membership in the Brotherhood.

Sybil

Sybil is the white wife of one of the important white members of the Brotherhood. The Invisible Man tries to seduce her in order to get information and she, in turn, is infatuated with the idea of being “raped” by a black man.

Scofield and Dupre

Scofield and Dupre are the two black men the Invisible Man meets during the Harlem riot at the end of the novel. They organize a group to burn down their apartment building where Dupre’s son died from tuberculosis.


Read more about the novel:

Plot Outline/ Summary

Brother Jack

Themes

The Battle Royal Scene

The Golden Day Episode

The Liberty Paints Episode

As a Bildungsroman

Existential Vision

The Prologue and the Epilogue

Narrative Technique

Parody

Symbolism

Metaphor

Satire

Irony

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