The Invisible Correlation Between Plath and Ellison

While we were reading Invisible Man, I started noticing some eerie parallels to Sylvia Plath’s writing,
which is odd. There’s barely anything to classify Ralph Ellison and Plath as connected genre-wise or
time-wise, really, but there are many shared archetypes and themes, especially regarding the factory
hospital scene in Invisible Man. In both IM and Plath’s novel The Bell Jar, as well as Plath’s poem “Lady
Lazarus”, we see similar elements of disillusionment, oppression, and a feeling of rebirth. In the 1950s,
neither African-Americans nor women were having it all that good, to say the least, so it does make
some sense why their narratives may seem to overlap. At the same time, you can sense a bit more
intensity of oppression in Invisible Man; not to say that Plath’s struggles and writing aren’t undeniably
harrowing of course.

In both The Bell Jar and Chapter Eleven of Invisible Man, we see a correlation between the attitudes of
medical professions treating those who can’t help themselves in their dismissive, even oppressive
nature. Throughout the novel, Esther frequently experiences fear around doctors, which manifests into
the anxiety that defines much of her time at Dr. Gordon’s institution. Dr. Gordon, as many of the male
doctors and authority figures are shown to be, is also quite dismissive of her needs and concerns,
especially when it comes to her own botched shock treatments. She cannot bear to return and do more
of them, and her mother’s response to this is basically, “I knew you weren’t crazy, now let’s get back to
normal.” A lot of this is triggered by an earlier scene, where we learn that Esther witnessed a delivery at
the hospital and saw how the doctors drugged and dismissed the mother. The doctors of Invisible Man
are even more brutal. While the narrator is undergoing “treatment”, not knowing he can actually hear
him (and probably not caring), the doctors joke about performing gruesome experiments, potentially
even lobotomizing or castrating him. Then when the narrator is getting shocked, they mock him for his
induced seizing, saying things like, “They really do have rhythm, don’t they?” (235) and laughing.
Once the narrator begins to emerge, they continue to mock his vegetative state and call him “boy”,
something not uncommon to the narrator at this point. 

Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus” is arguably one of the most powerful poems to be written by a modern
writer. In it, she explores her previous suicide attempts and depressive episodes and frames her
recovery in an empowering light. She frames it as a giant rebirth. At the end of the poem, she writes,
“Out of the ash / I rise with my red hair / And I eat men like air.” (Plath 83-84). In addition, she taunts
her oppressors with her language, saying, “Peel off the napkin / Oh my enemy. / Do I terrify?--” (Plath
10-12), and later, “So, so Herr Doktor. / So, Herr Enemy. / I am your opus. / I am your valuable, / The
pure gold baby / That melts to a shriek.” (Plath 65-71), and once later, “Herr God, Herr Lucifer /
Beware / Beware.” (Plath 79-81). In framing those who hurt her so much in life, especially male
doctors, it seems, as a brand of Nazis, she reclaims her power as a defeater of evil. She also frames
her rebirth as somewhat of a performance, with the lines, “The peanut-crunching crowd / Shoves in to
see. / Them unwrap me hand and foot-- / The big strip tease. Gentlemen, ladies / These are my
hands / My knees. / I may be skin and bone, / Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.” (Plath
26-34). 

While the narrator’s rendition might not be as poetic as Plath’s, the narrator’s discharge from this
makeshift hospital is empowering nonetheless. Determined not to let them get the best of him, he
keeps his mentality on himself, as his grandfather ominously told him just before dying. When the
doctors show the slate saying “Who was your mother?” he thinks to himself, “I don’t play the dozens.
And how’s your old lady doing today?” (241). When he’s meeting with the man who declares that he’s ‘
cured’, the narrator starts rambling, and readers are confused, until we realize that the narrator is
actually messing with the doctors right back; performing in his own way. He asks if they know Mr.
Norton, as if he’s some sort of white icon, if they know “Bled”, jokes about how he has so many
friends like these men, and says as he shook the man’s hand, “And now our palaver is finished.”
(249). He then strolls off confidently, thinking about how unafraid he is now. His experience following
the shock treatments is much like a rebirth, too; he wakes up unable to say his own name, unable to
remember anything, and yet he’s also had much of his fear stripped from him. It isn’t long after this
that the narrator starts fresh and joins the Brotherhood, a phase which ends up dominating the
remainder of the novel. 

To wrap up, I don’t exactly know why I found such a connection with Ellison’s writing to that of Plath’s, but this one scene in Invisible Man really evokes memories from reading The Bell Jar and learning about Plath in Coming-Of-Age Novel class last spring. Perhaps it’s the similar dreamlike yet raw style of writing, or the similar feeling of desperation and anxiety that plagues both protagonists. One could say that Invisible Man itself is somewhat of a coming-of-age story - sure, he’s well into his thirties or even forties by the end, but this is a story of how the narrator went from being a bright naive high schooler to a shrewd, ominous, underground vigilante trope. Nonetheless, it's a strange, yet oddly philosophical bond that these texts share, whilst being from completely different times and people.