Date of Award
Fall 1-2-2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
English
First Advisor
MarK Bobrow
Second Advisor
Mark j Miller
Academic Program Adviser
Mark J Miller
Abstract
This thesis evaluates Ralph Ellison’s account of rhetoric’s role in establishing, disguising, and contesting racism in the early- and mid-twentieth-century United States. The thesis is structured around four pivotal public orations by the protagonist of Ellison’s 1952 novel Invisible Man. Drawing on Ellison’s private letters and essays to further illuminate his concern for the relationship between speech, public engagement, and self-perception, I propose that Ellison’s novel dramatizes some ways that shifts in speech style, technique, and addressee enable intellectual development and political efficacy. Even techniques that initially appear self-sabotaging and “blind,” Ellison suggests, have the potential to develop into politically effective subaltern public speech. In Invisible Man, the protagonist’s shift from a rigid, scripted rhetoric addressing an audience of white elites to a more spontaneous, improvised rhetoric addressing his fellow African Americans helps the marginalized speaker perceive, and productively engage with, his own marginalization in dialogue with his public. I use W.E.B. Du Bois’ “double consciousness” and Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s “Signifyin(g)” to historicize the protagonist’s intellectual and rhetorical techniques, arguing that the protagonist combats covert rhetorical oppression by utilizing age-old strategies in African American rhetorical discourse that enable him to transform his self-awareness by speaking to popular concerns and moving a crowd.
Recommended Citation
Ibrahim, Asif, "Rhetorical Awareness and Vision in the Four Speeches of Ellison’s Invisible Man" (2026). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/hc_sas_etds/1429
