Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man: Secularizing the Fortunate Fall and Apocalypse

This essay shows how Ellison secularizes the notion of the Fortunate Fall—vis-à-vis Genesis, Revelation, Augustine, and Milton—in order to deepen his novel’s characterization and socio-political meaning in relation to American history and its flawed founding and early fallenness based on slavery and racism. Gradually, the Invisible Man develops a potentially fortunate vision of his own life and American democracy, blending realism that respects diversity, division, and responsibility and idealism that seeks secular (i.e., broadly political) forms of transcendence.