Themes of Invisible Man

Some of the themes in The Invisible Man was Racism, playing pretend and doing whatever it takes to make it.
        
         Racism was shown when The Vet said, "They? Why, the same they we always mean, the white folks, authority, the gods, fate, circumstances, the force that pulls your strings until you refuse to be pulled any more. The big man who's never there, where you think he is." He was referring to "white men or people" that thought they had complete control of every aspect of African American lives.      

         Playing pretend was shown when the Vet told narrator to "Come out of the
fog, young man. And remember you don't have to be a complete fool in order to succeed. Play the game, but don't believe in it that much you owe yourself. Even if it lands you in a strait jacket or a padded cell. Play the game, but play it your own way, part of the time at least. Play the game, but raise the ante, my boy." Saying to him that he had to play the game that the he was supposed to play in order to get the success that he wanted to have.

          The presence of doing what ever it takes to make it is visible when the narrator decided to leave the south and go up North in order get what he needed to ultimately reach a goal that he had sit for his future. 

                     Connections:
           Racism can be connected to the poem "I, Too" because the are both based on events that have taken place around the same time. When Langston Hughes says, " they send me to eat in the kitchen when company comes." Is the same as when The Narrator says that the back of the buss was reserved for "Them" as in the Black's. This in both cases are racist because they are being treated without equity.
           Playing pretend can be connected to the poem Refugee in America when it is written that, "when the words like Liberty that almost make me cry. If you had known what I knew you would know why." He is saying that unless you have what he has then you would know why having freedom and liberty are important. That the Liberty and Freedom that others have are disguised as something else for them that they don't get the same freedoms and have the same opportunities that "whites" have.