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7 - Invisible Ellison

the fight to be a Negro leader

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2006

Ross Posnock
Affiliation:
Columbia University, New York
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Summary

In his moving story, ''Boy on a Train,'' written approximately fifteen years before the publication of Invisible Man (1952), Ellison portrays through the eyes of an eleven-year-old child the conflict that was to consume him both as an artist and as a cultural critic until his death in 1994: How to represent the distinctiveness of Negro American culture without being consumed by the soul-killing racism endemic to American life. James, the protagonist of the story, is riding with his mother and brother in a Jim Crow train car away from their home in Oklahoma City to begin a new life after the death of James's father. The reader sees the boy first as his mother directs his attention to the fall colors of the passing trees and tells him that Jack Frost ''made the leaves pretty'' and that he ''paints the leaves all the pretty colors.'' This moment of innocence between mother and child contrasts sharply with the anger James witnesses from his mother when ''a butcher had tried to touch her breasts'' (Flying, 13). Her response is defiant: ''she had spat in his face and told him to keep his dirty hands where they belonged'' (13-14). Traveling in the JimCrow car, seeing that the hostile treatment his family receives is in part a consequence of others’ perception of their skin color, the boy begins to understand his place in a racially divisive society.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2005

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  • Invisible Ellison
  • Edited by Ross Posnock, Columbia University, New York
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Ralph Ellison
  • Online publication: 28 May 2006
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521827817.008
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  • Invisible Ellison
  • Edited by Ross Posnock, Columbia University, New York
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Ralph Ellison
  • Online publication: 28 May 2006
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521827817.008
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Invisible Ellison
  • Edited by Ross Posnock, Columbia University, New York
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Ralph Ellison
  • Online publication: 28 May 2006
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521827817.008
Available formats
×