SOURCE: “Imagery in the ‘Battle Royal’ Chapter of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man,” in CLA Journal, Vol. 31, June, 1988, pp. 394-99.

In the following essay, German discusses animal imagery as representative of racism and sexism in the first chapter of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.

Chapter one of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man was initially published as a short story; thus, it has an artistic unity independent of the novel. One of the threads binding the narrative together while reinforcing the theme is the animal imagery. In an interview, Ellison has said,

When you begin to structure literary forms you are going to have to play variations on your themes, and you are going to have to make everything vivid, so that the reader can see and hear and feel and smell, and, if you're lucky, even taste. … But … there are things in Invisible Man … that I can't imagine my having consciously...