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Invisible Man, a la Shmoop. Do we all feel invisible at times... without

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the advantage of being able to sneak into locker rooms?

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As the wisest person on the planet once said . . .

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. . . everyone wants to be validated. We all have a need to be heard . . .

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. . . and accepted for who we really are . . . But with 7 billion of us taking up breathing

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space . . . . . . it can get a little tricky.

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In Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, our unnamed protagonist feels unseen by others in society

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. . . . . . because, as he says, they refuse to

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see him. They slap on plenty of labels . . .

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. . . like 'liar' . . . . . . or 'trouble-maker' . . .

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. . . but never get beyond assumptions to understand who he really is.

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Kind of makes us wonder . . . . . . if we all aren't feeling a little bit

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invisible. You would think that with all the opportunities

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to get to know one another . . . . . . feeling "seen" would be less of a problem

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than it used to be. But it seems like just the opposite.

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People have simply invented new ways of ignoring each other . . .

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. . . while continuing to wrap each other up in convenient packages.

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Our protagonist in Invisible Man, for example, gets more labels slapped on him than a package

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headed for Timbuktu. Strangers see him, and instantly make judgments.

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And usually they're not very accurate ones. Being reduced to a bunch of adjectives can

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make anyone feel invisible . . . . . . and certainly doesn't make our Oprah

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happy. But maybe it's not just society's fault.

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After all, we're not always honest about how we represent ourselves.

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Our boy in the book takes on a couple of different identities.

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A total waste, in our opinion, because if you're going to have multiple identities,

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it would be nice if at least one of them was a superhero.

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Who knows - maybe we're afraid we won't be liked if people know who we truly are . . .

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. . . so we invent someone who will get us what we want . . .

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. . . even if we know we'll have to face the music someday.

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So, why can't we feel comfortable showing people who we really are?

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And why do we care so much about what other people think?

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Does it have anything to do with the labels we're so quick to slap on each other?

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And would we all feel less invisible if we stopped doing it?

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Shmoop amongst yourselves.

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