He tells the reader that his grandparents were former slaves who believed after the end of the Civil War that they had achieved equality with white people. He relates that there was a time when he had not yet discovered that he was an invisible man. In chapter one, a narrator is a man in his forties who is looking back on his life and reminiscing. If he had called a police officer, the narrator would have been arrested immediately. The narrator thinks this is interesting because he feels that, although the white man was the one being attacked he still had control over the situation.

The next day the incident was reported as a mugging. The white man insulted him and the narrator attacked the man in anger. He remembers a recent incident where he was walking through the park at night and a white man stumbled into him. He listens to Louis Armstrong jazz records at full volume and prepares for some unnamed action. He lives secretly in the basement of a building which only allows white tenants and steals electricity. The narrator says that this invisibility has both upsides and downsides.

He clarifies that his invisibly does not come from a super power but from the fact that he is a black man and that people are unwilling to notice him. The book starts with a prolog where the narrator introduces himself and says that he is an 'invisible man'. At the end of the novel, after being betrayed by the Brotherhood he reveals that he is living in a disused basement but that he feel freer than ever from his mental constraints. Throughout the story, the narrator relates his experiences being treated poorly and even damagingly by white people. The narrator takes the reader through his life starting at the age of 17 when he is graduating high school and up to his time as a spokesperson for a association for the advancement of black people called the Brotherhood. As a black man living in America, he is looked past and ignored as well as treated like a child by white people. The narrator of the story, who is never given a name, begins by telling us that he is an 'invisible man' who is invisible by nature of his race. Its aim was to address intellectual and social issues of the black community during the 1950's as well as issues of personal identity and individuality.

The invisible man book ralph ellison