![]() One must at the same time, relocate the identity of the narrator through that of Wells’ Griffin (The Invisible Man) to find if their quest for identities intersect and involve similar struggles or not. The power forces and the exclusion of the Other helps construct or deconstruct (in case of the narrator) one’s identity. This idea of “becoming rather than being” (1996) is central to Hall’s question of identity. The text at hand shall be ‘reread’ using Stuart Hall’s concept of identity, who asserts that identity is not what we are, but rather what we become. This, however, helps us interrogate if his fight is against the system, the power holders, or his own race that he identifies with. What is unique about the invisible man’s identity is his ceaseless struggle throughout the novel, only to be rendered invisible in the end. Though it is the unnamed narrator, who grapples against various power blocks, it is essential to note that the powerful Black president, the White trustees, and the Brotherhood too, fight the same battle in a different way altogether. The present paper shall seek to study how Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952), captures the 1930s Afro-American search for identity. Even though it originates naturally, it is seen to undergo a manufacturing to uphold itself. Like gender, power, and racial discourses, identity too, is socially constructed.
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