Dramatic Monologue in Invisible Man
Style, tone and imagery are essential elements in a speech that an orator must use to evoke powerful emotions in an audience. Speeches must be molded meticulously to achieve the desired effect in a crowd. In Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, there are a multitude of speeches that are given by professional and non-professional speakers. Their compositions differ in various aspects, and their outcome is ultimately affected as a result. The narrator of this novel consistently uses style, tone, and imagery, all to enhance the effect felt by the crowd. Through his use of these various elements, the narrator encapsulates the essence of his speech’s content; namely, social equality, and racism.
The narrator of Invisible Man often excited the crowds to which he has spoken. This is evident in the unplanned speech he gave during the eviction of an old black family. The narrators’ style is often composed of extended metaphors, symbolism and inclusion and exclusion, all which progressively add to the total meaning of his speech. In the narrators’ first speech while working for the Brotherhood, the narrator resorts to using his own oration techniques after forgetting all “the correct words and phrases from the pamphlets” (342). The narrator used his own ideologies to speak to the crowd, instead of groups of unimpassioned sentences. To portray his ideas, the narrator lays the foundation of his speech on the symbolics idea of blindness and sight. The narrator believes that the African American community in Harlem is segregated within itself, and because of this it is “a nation of one-eyed mice” (343). The narrator continues this idea of blindness by telling the audience that only through working together can they become sighted once again. Furthermore, by consistently using the personal pronouns of “us and we” the narrator establishes a relationship with the crowd inside the auditorium. Instead of using isolating pronouns such as “me and...