Synthesis

    From the very beginning of Invisible man, a naked woman is commonly displayed as a symbol of sex. In the prologue, the Invisible Man has a hallucination, of a beautiful girl who stood before slave owners who "who bid for her naked body" (p. 9). From this point of the book on, sex is a motif commonly tied in with Power. The women Ellison writes about lack the power in almost every situation, when sex is discussed, it is forced upon the girl. This idea continues through chapter three, when Mr Trueblood uses a sick story about overpowering his daughters to gain control over the white community. Ellison makes the reader view sex as something extremely negative, showing how it can be manipulated and destroyed by men in order to gain power and control.
    Women are also commonly displayed by Ellison as nothing more than sexual objects for men's pleasure- even as tools for therapy (chapter.3). The men watch women parade themselves around for their entertainment. This portrayal of women by Ellison was done in order to show the way that women are treated in society. While it may be a little less dramatic in real life, women are still often a sex symbol. This was represented with the naked woman walking around with an American flag on her stomach (Chapter 1). A great example of this in real life is strip clubs- men literally paying money to watch women parade themselves around, similar to the Battle Royale scene in IM.
       White woman in Invisible man represent even more. These women, while often over-sexualized and walking around naked in front of men, are forbidden. Even just sitting too close to a white woman has the Invisible Man shaking and scared for his life. This fear of women, a group with almost no power, shows just how little respect African Americans received, and how hard it was for them to find power. If an extremely oppressed group, good for nothing more than the entertainment of men has the power to kill a black man just by screaming- it shows how little power they had in society. Ellison does a great job of showing this fear of white women on multiple occasions.
      Throughout the later chapters of Invisible Man, sex comes up much less often. Perhaps this signifies the Invisible Mans growth, as he moves out of one stage of his life.