Identity in African American Literature: the case of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man

Abstract

The African-Americans traumatic experience with slavery aroused another battle with identity along the way. The dominance of the white ideology and culture marginalized totally the blacks and the minorities in general. Many African American writers like Ellison dealt with the issue of identity; either to succumb for the dominant power, or to embrace their blackness and their past as the offspring of the former slaves. This present research examines identity from a post colonialist approach and sheds light on African-American literature and its writers who took identity as their central theme, from slavery till the Civil Right movement era. Within the analysis of Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man from a post-colonial point of view; this latter, focuses namely on the theme of alienation and the quest for identity for the main character who narrates his journey towards self discovery in a white dominant world.