Invisible Man- Plot Summary
The narrator is a black man who describes his living conditions in an underground room wired with hundreds of electric lights that are operated by power stolen from the city’s electric grid.
He narrates the ways he has experienced social invisibility during his life. He narrates the story from his teenage years.
He lives in a small southern town and when he graduates from high school, he wins a scholarship to a black college. However, before he receives the scholarship, he must take part in a brutal battle royal for the entertainment of the invited rich white men.
One afternoon, during the narrator’s years in the college, he drives Mr. Norton, a visiting rich white trustee out among the old slave-quarters beyond the campus. Along the way, he stops at the cabin of Jim Trueblood.
Jim True’s blood has impregnated both his wife and his daughter at the same time. This incident horrifies Mr. Norton he requests a drink. The narrator then drives him to a bar where there are many prostitutes and patients from a nearby mental hospital.
The place is so rowdy that the mental patients who are supposed to keep the patients under control cannot control them. The patients disturb the narrator and Mr. Norton and Mr. Norton nearly suffocates.
The narrator has to rush Mr. Norton out of the rowdy place quickly and drive him back to the campus.
Dr. Bledsoe is the college president. He is furious with the narrator for this incident and blames him for taking Mr. Norton beyond the campus and exposing him to the crude life of the blacks. He thereby expels him from the school.
Before the narrator leaves, Dr. Bledsoe gives several sealed letters of “recommendation” to him to give to friends to assist him in finding a job to do, so that he may re-enroll in the school.
He travels to New York where he distributes the letters but records no success. The son of one of the recipients reveals the content of the letter and it reveals Dr. Bledsoe’s intention not to admit the narrator into the school again.
The son then advises him to take a job in a famous paint factory where he is initially assigned to the shipping department and then to the boiler room under the chief attendant Lucius Brockway who always believes that somebody is after him.
He suspects that the narrator wants to take his job. The suspicion worsens when the narrator stumbles on the union meeting; he believes he is working against him. Mr. Brockway thereby attacks the narrator and tricks him into setting off an explosion in the boiler room.
He is greatly wounded and is hospitalized and given shock treatment. He hears the doctor saying he is likely a mental patient.
After the narrator leaves the hospital, he faints on the street of Harlem and is taken in by a lady named Mary Rambo, who reminds him of his relatives in the South. The narrator later presents an impressive speech to condemn the eviction of an elderly black couple.
The speech incited the crowd and the law enforcement agents in charge of the proceedings were attacked by the crowd.
The narrator has to escape via the rooftops. As a result of the impressive speech, Brother Jack, a white man and the leader of a group, “the Brotherhood” that is said to be fighting against injustice in Harlem and the world accosts the narrator to join the group and he agrees.
He then speaks at rallies to spread the word among the black people. He is placed on a salary and he is able to settle the rents he owes Mary and moves into an apartment provided for him by the Brotherhood.
The narrator is doing well in the group and the rallies go on smoothly with a lot of indoctrination about the Brotherhood ideology. He later encounters a problem when a fanatical black nationalist named Ras the Exhorter believes that the Brotherhood is being controlled by whites.
He thereby campaigns against the group as a sellout. The narrator and Tod Clifton, a youth leader in the group are not bothered by the Exhorter’s threats.
The narrator is later summoned to the group’s meeting where he is accused of putting his ambition ahead of the group; he is then reassigned to another part of the city to see to the issues that have to do with women.
The narrator is seduced by one of the women he addresses. The woman accosts him that she would like to see him personally and she invites the narrator to her house where she seduces him.
The narrator is later taken back to Harlem when Clifton is reported missing and much impact of the group is no longer being felt in the area.
The narrator does not know the whereabouts of Clifton until he sees him one day selling dancing Rambo dolls on the street. Clifton is confused by the Brotherhood’s activities of late; he is later shot dead by the police while resisting arrest.
At his funeral, the narrator delivers an impressive speech that jeers up the crowd to support the Brotherhood again. The fame of the narrator does not go down well with some of the members of the Brotherhood.
At an emergency meeting of the group, Jack and the other Brotherhood leaders accuse him that his arguments are not scientific, the narrator then concludes that the group has no interest in solving the black community’s problems.
The narrator goes back to Harlem. He discovers that he is being trailed by Ras’ men. He then buys a hat and a pair of glasses and disguises himself as Rinehart who is known to be a gambler, hipster, a bribery, and a spiritual leader.
He believes that Rinehart has adapted to white society at the cost of his identity. He also discovers that the Brotherhood does not believe in truth, he then feeds them with wrong information about the situation in Harlem as well as the membership.
After the narrator seduces the wife of one of the members to know about the activities of the Brotherhood, he discovers that there is a widespread riot in Harlem. The group then counts on this development to lay credence to their activities…
The narrator mixes up with a group of looters who burn down a tenement building but later move away from them. He then leaves to look for Ras, who now calls himself “the Destroyer.” He rides on horseback with a spear and shield in his hands.
He campaigns against the narrator and urges the crowd to lynch the narrator. The narrator is able to attack him with the spear and escapes into an underground coal bin. This is how the invisible narrator finds himself living an isolated life underground.