I beleive that the narrator is invisible because of his circumstances. He is a young black man at the bottom of the racial hierarchy. People tend to not take the narrator seriously and put him in sitatutions that make it difficult for him to suceede.
The scene in the begginging of the novel where the narrator plans to give a speech about equality to the group of men, but winds up being forced to fight and then get electruced for the humor or others shows the unfairness of the situtation. The narrator is just another "dumb black boy" to them and one that they can make fun of and take advantage of.
The majority of what is being portayed in this story is very specific to to specific time and place in American Society. If these sort of events were to occur in America today, Reverend Al Sharpton and a bunch of other people would be leading a protest down the middle of the street. People would be up in arms. But when the narrator lived, no one else cared. He was alone and invisible in a white man's world.
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I really disagree. This phenomenon of invisibilty that the narrator experences is not specifc to a black man in Harlem durng the 1950s. The narrator's experencie is universal. The things that the narrator experiences still happen today, especially today. In the US today there are numerous groups of people who could be termed as invisible. They are those who you pass on the street , but do not acknowledge. Those who clean our dorm, build the memorials we admire, and even those who you never realy know who they are. Today's society is full of invisible people. People are invisible when we never get to know them, or when they simply become part of the landscape. You would be amazed at the number of people who see a clean room, but don't see those who are there cleaning. Or even more common, seeing the cunstruction or finsihed masterpiece of architecture, but never see the workers.
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