Ralph Ellison has been claimed and interpreted by existentialist theorists and critics, since the mid-1950s. The early existentialist readings of his novel, Invisible Man , look naive today because in their emphasis on the universal dimensions of the narrator's predicaments, which are read as existentialist predicaments, they ignore the extent to which Ellison was addressing white racism. This requirement blocks the use of universalist claims to protect, conceal and sanitize continuing racism in public action and unspoken belief. The unacceptability of generalizations from black experience, which do not acknowledge the effects of racism on that black experience, to all human experience, is mirrored by the unacceptability of generalizations from white experience to all human experience. In both cases, racism against blacks is not identified as something distinctive, unjust and uncommon in the broad range of normal human experience.
Racism is ignored in both cases.
If existentialism is a universalist type of humanism, this raises the question of where exactly in Invisible Man Ellison's existentialism can be read. Throughout the novel, the narrator explores typical existential modes of authenticity, alienation, absurdity, and anxiety. But he transcends the shameful object that he is by affirming it, so that he is no longer a source of shame to himself. As someone who loves roasted sweat potatoes, he would still be a shameful object under white eyes but what he is under white eyes is something that he has to apprehend through his own eyes. And, he does not have to accept the vision of himself held by whites, or other blacks who see themselves through white eyes.