SOURCE: "In Need of Folk: The Alienated Protagonists of Ralph Ellison's Short Fiction," in CLA Journal, Vol. XIX, No. 2, December, 1975, pp. 165-72.

In the essay below, Doyle examines several of Ellison 's short stories, demonstrating that his alienated protagonists usually reconnect with their racial heritage by embracing a folk person or some type of folk practice.

In an interview, Ralph Ellison stated that a man must both find and create his identity, starting with those given elements he did not pick: "His problem is to recognize himself through recognizing where he comes from, recognizing his parents and his inherited values. . . . The way to create a false identity is to think that you can ignore what went before," [John O'Brien, Interviews with Black Writers, 1973]. Though these words refer to Ellison's Invisible Man, they could easily be applied to most of the protagonists of his short stories. Excluding from consideration...