Ralph Ellison, 1914-1994
By Paula Caudle, Naomi
Lancaster, and Andy Stamper
Students, University of North Carolina at
Pembroke
Ralph Waldo Ellison was born on March 1, 1914, in Oklahoma City,
Oklahoma. From his birth, Ellison’s parents knew he was bound for
prosperity. His father even named him for the great writer Ralph Waldo
Emerson in an effort to ensure such success. As Ellison himself says in
reference to his parents, “no matter what their lives had been, their
children's lives would be lives of possibility.” Mrs. Ellison, a maid,
would bring home books, magazines, and record albums that had been discarded
in the homes she cleaned. Ralph and his brother, Herbert, were supplied
with chemistry sets, toy typewriters, and a rolltop desk so that they would
have the tools to succeed.
When he was a teenager, Ellison and his friends daydreamed of being
“Renaissance Men.” Therefore, they studied the values and attitudes of
Native Americans and whites, as well as blacks. Ellison revered and
admired the musicians of his area. At Douglas High School, Ellison
followed his inclination toward music. From there, he went to Tuskegee
Institute on a scholarship and dreamed of writing a symphony. After
there was a mix-up with his scholarship, Ellison chose to go north in order
to save money for tuition. Arriving in New York, Ellison found it
difficult to find work and even harder to find work as a musician. The
result was a succession of odd jobs at Harlem’s YMCA with a
psychiatrist. There Ellison acted as a file clerk and a receptionist,
and held various other jobs around town. During this time, Ellison met
the writer Richard Wright, who encouraged him to be a writer rather than a
musician.
From this point on, Ellison followed a life of writing in which he earned
many awards. His best known work is the novel Invisible Man,
though he also wrote several short stories. He began a second novel
that has recently been published posthumously. Students at Rutgers, New
York University, and Bard College were lucky enough to have Ellison as a
professor. Ellison died on April 16, 1994, of pancreatic cancer, but he
continues to be published. In 1996, Flying Home: And Other Stories
was published after being discovered in his home.
Ellison is often criticized for not using his writing as a propaganda tool to
elevate the "black man in society." For instance, critic
Richard Corliss writes, "The unfashionable fact is that Ellison's
writing was too refined, elaborate, to be spray painted on a tenement wall.
He was a celebrator as much a denouncer of the nation that bred
him." Ellison defended himself by saying "I wasn't and am not
concerned with injustice but with art."
In Invisible Man, Ellison depicts a black individual searching for his identity
or place in society. For example, when the young black men are in the
Battle Royal, they are forced to watch a nude white woman dance. The
white observers abuse these young black men for not watching and also abuse
them for watching. These black fellows do not know how they are
expected to behave; therefore, they do not know their place in society.
Ellison has the characters in this novel deal with the problem of incest,
which is not a racial problem, but a social problem. Both the black man
Trueblood and the white man Mr. Norton grapple with the problem of having
sexual feelings for their daughters. They realize that these feelings
are unnatural and that the act of incest is not socially
acceptable.
Symbolism is a tool Ellison uses often in his writing. For example, in Invisible
Man, the blindfold symbolizes man's inability to see who he is within
society and the reality of society. Another example could be the
contrast between light and dark. Light can symbolize understanding as well as
the "good" of society, whereas dark can symbolize confusion
and the "lower scale" of society.
Bibliography
Busby, Mark. Ralph Ellison. Boston: Twayne
Publishers, 1991.
Relatively timely, this source
provided an accurate, but incomplete timeline of Ellison’s life. The book was
published before his death so it does not fully cover all his
accomplishments.
Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. New York: Random House,
Second Vintage International Edition, March 1995.
O’Meally, Robert G. The Craft of Ralph Ellison. Cambridge,
Mass: Harvard University Press, 1980.
This was published before his death so it
doesn't fully cover all of the author's accomplishments. This source is
still helpful, but the information is not supplied in clear
chronological order.
Reilly, John M. ed. Twentieth Century Interpretations of
Invisible Man. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1970. 100-102.
Watts, Jerry G. Heroism and the Black Intellectual. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1994.
Valuable Website
Ralph Waldo Ellison
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Major Works
- Invisible Man
- Shadow and Act
- Going to the Territory
Careers/Jobs
- waiter
- freelance photographer
- file clerk
- receptionist
- musician
- book reviewer
- U.S. Merchant Mariner
- editor for Negro Quarterly
- college professor
- writer
Homes
- Chicago, IL
- New York, NY
- Oklahoma City, OK
- Pittsfield, MA
- Rome, Italy
- Tuskegee, AL
Awards
- Chevalier de l'Ordre des Artes et Lettres
- Langston Hughes Medal
- Medal of Freedom
- National Book Award for Fiction
- Rosenwald Grant
- Russwurm Award
Influences (Literature)
- Gettysburg Address
- Ecclesiates
- Joseph Conrad
- Fyodor Dostoevski
- William Faulkner
- Ben Franklin
- Henry James
- Herman Melville
Family
- Grandparents: slaves
- Father:
Lewis Alfred Ellison, construction foreman
- Mother:
Ida Millsap Ellison ("Brownie"), maid & homemaker
- Brother: Herbert Ellison
- Wife:
Fanny McConnell Ellison, executive administrator of American Medical
Center for Burma
Chronology
1914: born on March 1 in Oklahoma City, OK
1917:
father dies
1920:
enters Frederick Douglas School in Oklahoma
City
1933-36: wins scholarship & attends Alabama's Tuskegee Institute
1936:
moves to New York
1937:
mother dies/first work is published, These Low Grounds (review of
W.E.Turpin's novel)
1938:
hired by Federal Writer's Project to research oral history
1942:
becomes managing editor of Negro Quarterly
1943-45: serves in Merchant Marines
1945:
awarded Rosenwald Fellowship to write novel
1946:
marries Fannie McConnell
1952:
Invisible Man
1953:
wins National Book Award for Fiction & Russwurm Award
1955:
lives in Rome
1957:
A New Southern Harvest
1958-61: teaches Russian & American literature at Bards College
1958:
begins second novel
1962:
The Angry Black
1964:
Shadow and Act; teaches at Rutgers & Yale
1968:
house fire destroys over 360 pages of second novel
1969:
receives Medal of Freedom
1970:
awarded Chevalier de l'Ordre des Artes et Lettres by France; becomes Albert
Schweitzer Professor of Humanities at NYU
1975:
elected to the American Academy for the Arts
and Letters; Ralph Waldo Ellison Library in Oklahoma
City
1980:
Southwest Fiction
1981:
theater piece,"Ralph Ellison's Long Tongue,"performed in New
York
1984:
receives NY City College's Langston Hughes Medallion
1986:
Going to the Territory
1994:
at the age of 80,dies of pancreatic cancer on April 16
1996:
Flying Home: And Other Stories is published (after being discovered in
his home)
1999:
John Callahan edits Juneteenth
for posthumous publication
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