paper motif on Invisible Man

Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man depicts a realistic society where white people act as if black people are less than human. Ellison uses papers and letters to show the narrator’s poor position in this society. Many papers seem to show good fortune for the narrator, but only provide false dreams. The narrator’s prize of a brief case containing his scholarship first illustrates this falsehood: “take this prize and keep it well. Consider it …

…reached inside the case for something else” (555). The fact that the doll is so hard to burn shows that his race will always be used and manipulated by puppet masters. On the other hand, the anonymous warning letter burns very quickly, illustrating that he and his race can become as big in the world as they can imagine: “It was the anonymous letter, which burned so quickly that as it flamed I hurriedly unfolded another.. (555).