Boxing, Eyesight, and Ralph Ellison's the Invisible Man

In a work as long and ambitious as Invisible Man, there is ample opportunity for a wide variety of sub-themes to develop. Two of the most prevalent motifs found throughout this novel are sight and fighting. Ellison floods the pages of Invisible Man with countless references to eyesight, from the first two paragraphs of the prologue to the narrator’s penultimate question at the end of the epilogue (3, 581). Likewise, if the events described in the novel were arranged chronologically, the episode where the narrator fights with the other youths from his school would be near the beginning and his encounter with the man on the street described in the prologue would reside near the end. When the narrator looks at the old photograph of the boxer before he gives his first speech with the brotherhood, these two themes seem to collide into a more visible, coherent message (334). To fully comprehend the deeper meaning of this section, however, one needs to discern that the fighter in the photograph was a real person whose life story is quite apt when interpreting Invisible Man. This passage bridges together the motifs of sight and fighting, while simultaneously alluding to boxer Sam Langford, in order to suggest that the protagonist, and possibly his race as well, has something to learn from the boxer’s story.