Through the characterization of the protagonist during his college life, Ralph Ellison demonstrates how Negroes have trouble achieving their own identities in a white-dominated society, and often have an identity imposed on them by other people. The protagonist, the unnamed narrator of the story, wins a scholarship to a Negro college because of his speechmaking. The fact that the narrator isn't given a name emphasizes the notion that he is struggling to find an identity or personality in a white racist society (Invisible Man, 162). The narrator initially wants to succeed in life and is t…
