When reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, I was struck by how closely the themes reminded me of 1) the movie Ex Machine and 2) Sophia the new AI bot. Overall, Do Androids explores the question “what makes us human?” While there is no definite answer in the book, it seems that the concept of emotions play […]
This is a bit of a stretch, but while reading the first few chapters of this novel, all I could think about was the movie, The Lorax. The book The Lorax does not go into as much detail as the movie adaptation, and the movie adds a lot more to the plot since it is […]
Ralph Ellison deals with the divide in the black community that isn’t often talked about. The notion that one group speaks for the whole race and they rest of the community is told what to think and do by said group. They become pawns of the group that views themselves as the only true voice […]
Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man is wrought with symbols that accurately depict the conditions African American’s faced in 1930’s Harlem. One of the most iconic symbols from the novel is the Sambo Doll, a pitch black puppet, manipulated by the strings attached to it. Tod Clifton masterly manipulates this symbol of the degradation of the ‘stereotypical’ African American […]
Something that struck me during my reading of Invisible Man happened before I even got to the actual story. I didn’t realize why the term “Battle Royale” stuck out to me in the introduction, written by Ellison in 1981, but after reading through more of the novel, and spending all of Spring break in […]
“Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison deals with a wide range of issues African Americans face in the early 1900s. The novel presents us with a character who is invisible because of his race. The issues presented in the novel of racism that the characters face, gives us a very real look into a lot of […]
This novel is a complex novel that covers racism in almost every light, north and south, light and dark. In this novel however, there is a stark difference in the racism our narrator experiances in Harlem, rather than in the deep south. In Harlem he is littered with micro-aggressions. The most prominent example being in […]
Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man draws attention to racial issues faced by blacks in the 1900’s and continues to be a relevant text today. Ellison comments on the reactions of whites and how the black community has adapted and conducts itself. We’ve discussed this in class, but one of Ellison’s biggest themes is the clash between the ideas […]
Today, many hip-hop and rap enthusiasts refer to Kendrick Lamar as the new Kanye West. In other words, as the new god, the new genius of rap. The reasons vary far and wide for why so many attest to this but perhaps the most prevalent is his explication of the black experience. Lamar uses his rap […]
The prologue of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man jarred me. It is written retrospectively, after the main action of the book has already occurred, so the reader is instantly thrown into the mindset of a man who they won’t meet again until near the end of the novel. The narrator is extremely angry at the world, […]