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had never experienced at home, he did appreciate the chance to raise his own consciousness concerning the rest of the country he lived in. During this time, he read T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”, which would particularly influence him. Due to financial problems, Ellison moved to Harlem, New York in 1936. Ellison enjoyed living in New York for its energy and reputation of energy and freedom, and Harlem was a tremendously vibrant cultural center in the 1930s and 1940s. In fact, he lived here for most of his rest life. During this time, there was a significant incident for Ellison. Through the connections of his music teacher in Tuskegee, Ellison met Langston Hughes and Richard Wright who would have a large literary influence on him. This meeting along with his inability to find a steady job by playing the trumpet led Ellison to immerse himself more in writing.

In 1938, Wright aided him in getting a job with the Federal Writers’ Project. During this time, Ellison came into contact with many interesting interviewees from which he gleaned an interest in folklore and the distinctly African-American collection of rhymes, games, stories and so on. The glimpse into personal lives enriched his knowledge of American culture and added to his stock of experiences. Between 1937 and 1944, he published over twenty book reviews, including his first short stories, such as “Slick Gonna Learn”, “The Birthmark”, “King of the Bingo Game” and “Flying Home”. The time Ellison wrote his reviews was very much a growing time for him. The quality of his writing reached masterful skills by the end of World War II. He had learned the writing skills of Twain, Faulkner, Dostoevsky, and Hemingway used into his work. His own voice arose in full power.

The Great novel Invisible Man was published in 1952. There were some simple examples to support the significance of this book. By the late 1960s, it has reached its 19th printing. It received the National Book Award for fiction in 1953, and was acclaimed by a 1965 Book Week poll of two hundred prominent authors, critics, and editors as “the most distinguished single work published in the last twenty years”. (Phillips, 1997: 6)
 
Ellison received many awards for this single work, including the National Book Award (1953), the Russwurm Award (1953), the Academy of Arts and Letters Fellowship to Rome (1955-1957), the Medal of Freedom (1969), the French Chevalier de I’ Ordre Artes et lettres (1970) and the National Medal of Arts(1985).
 
  1.2 An Overview of Invisible Man
 
At its appearance in 1952, Invisible Man was immediately acclaimed as a landmark work—not only the best in the history of African-American writing, but also an important contribution to modern American literature. Critic Schwartz even said that: “the language of literary criticism seems shallow and patronizing when one has to speak of a book like this…it is a book which ought to be reviewed by William Faulkner, the author of Light in August.”(Mc Sweeney, 1998: 56) With the universality of its theme and its exquisite art, Invisible Man has acquired the status of a major classic in American literature.

Invisible Man is a record of an African-American journey through contemporary America, from south to north, naive faith to disenchantment. The hero starts off with the statement “I am an invisible man”, tracing back to his pre-visible days. Being an African-Ameri本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。