Defining Yourself in The Invisible Man Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man is a novel that embodies the universal theme of self-discovery, the quest to understand who you really are in life that we all undertake. Throughout the text, the narrator constantly questions who he really is and evaluates the different identities he takes on for himself. He goes from being a promising student with a bright future to being just another poor black worker in New Your City, to being a fairly wealthy spokesperson for a powerful political group, and finally to being the "invisible man" who he finally realizes that he is. always has been. The deepest irony in this text is that for a significant portion of the story, the narrator is unaware of his own invisibility, believing that others can "see" him, he is essentially invisible to himself. Only through a long and arduous journey of self-discovery, fraught with constant and unexpected tragedy and loss, does he realize the truth, that his perception of himself and how others perceived him had been backwards his entire life . The story opens with the narrator participating in a "battle royal" before giving a speech about the humility and progress of black people. These are the days when he is still a promising scholar, calling himself a “potential Booker T. Washington.” At this point he is living the life that others have told him he should live, and defines himself as he believes he is seen through their eyes, as an icon of what a person of color can achieve, and as a role model for his people. The abuse and degradation he is subjected to in the battle royal gives him his first inklings that all is not as it seems, but he fails to do anything to change the narrator's perception of himself. It is quite possible that, if given the chance, the narrator could have continued living the life that society had pre-selected for him, and would never have realized his invisibility, but fate had other plans for him. His whole life was thrown into disarray the day he was assigned to chauffeur Mr. Norton, a powerful white man and founder of the school he was attending, around. The narrator made the mistake of taking Mr.