My Extended Essay (EE), titled “An Investigation of White Power in Invisible Man”, was submitted for the partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of International Baccalaureate (IB) from the American School of Paris (ASP), Saint-Cloud, France.
I worked on this extended essay project during my final year at ASP in 12th grade, guided by my English Higher Level (HL) teacher, faculty advisor, and project guide, Mrs. Maryama Antoine. I focused on the research question: “How is the extent of white supremacy and power revealed in Ralph Ellison’s ‘Invisible Man’ through the protagonist’s struggle?” The novel “Invisible Man” is set in the Jim Crow system, prevalent in the United States of America in the early 20th century, amidst a backdrop of innumerable social and intellectual issues and types of discrimination faced by African Americans.
My extended essay aims to investigate how white supremacy is portrayed in Ralph Ellison’s literary masterpiece novel “Invisible Man” and how the struggles of the protagonist, an unnamed black man, reinforce the notion that the white population controls the entire social system wherein he evolves. It examines the narrator’s experiences of being discriminated against, suppressed, and manipulated throughout his life. The system created by the superior whites is one in which the individuality and freedom of black people are lost. They have a collective identity of being Negroes, like a label slapped upon them. Their identity is not determined by who they are but by the requirements of society, which is ultimately controlled by the powerful whites. The invisible man does not realize that he is being used and that his identity is being shaped by others until it is too late.
