Theme
Identity- The narrator struggles throughout the book to find his true identity, he is puzzled between what others perceive him to be rather than what he knows of himself to be. Later on in the book he realizes that his true identity is invisible to those around him and he gives himself time alone and comes to find his true self.
"I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me." (Prologue.1)
"All my life I had been looking for something and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naïve. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man!" (1.1)
"You must realize immediately that much of our work is opposed. Our discipline demands therefore that we talk to no one and that we avoid situations in which information might be given away unwittingly. So you must put aside your past." (14.120)
Race- The novel is based upon the civil rights time period, and it focuses mainly on racial discrimination, and the narrator deals with a lot of discrimination and hatred from the white community in the city of Harlem.
"I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time been ashamed. About eighty-five years ago they were told that they were free, united with others of our country in everything pertaining to the common good, and, in everything social, separate from the fingers of the hand. And they believed it. They exulted in it. They stayed in their place, worked hard, and brought up my father to do the same." (1.2)
"You're nobody, son. You don't exist – can't you see that? The white folk tell everybody what to think – except men like me. I tell them; that's my life, telling white folk how to think about the things I know about…But you listen to me: I didn't make it, and I know that I can't change it. But I've made my place in it and I'll have every Negro in the country hanging on tree limbs by morning if it means staying where I am." (6.76)
"Nigger, this isn't the time to lie. I'm no white man. Tell me the truth!" (6.34)
Love- Love is very important in the novel because it is not anywhere to be found, the narrator rejects it because he doesn't want it to interfere with his goals and dreams, but near the end of the book he mentions that he has found love, but not love for a person,place, or thing, but love that is unclear.
"Perhaps everyone loved someone; I didn't know, I couldn't give much thought to love; in order to travel far you had to be detached, and I had a long road back to the campus before me." (9.51)
"I returned the miniature, wondering what in the world had made him open his heart to me. That was something I never did; it was dangerous. First, it was dangerous if you felt like that about anything, because then you'd never get it or something or someone would take it away from you; then it was dangerous because nobody would understand you and they'd only laugh and think you were crazy." (2.65)
"And I defend because in spite of all I find that I love. In order to get some of it down I have to love. I sell you no phony forgiveness, I'm a desperate man – but too much of your life will be lost, its meaning lost, unless you approach it as much through love as through hate. So I approach it through division so I denounce and I defend and I hate and I love." (Epilogue.28)