摘要

《看不见的人》1952年第一次出版时，就被称为“划时代的小说，是现代美国黑人生活的史诗”。它深入挖掘有代表性的本土主题：“一个非中心的个人，通过幻觉的流动和冲突，走向仍未揭示的中心。”作者埃里森通过对一个黑人青年的成长经历的描写，深刻揭示出美国黑人的主要痛苦不是来自于白人的物质剥削，而是来自于白人精神上的歧视，即在白人眼中他们的不可见性。
本论文通过对小说主人公丧失自我和寻找自我的心路历程分析，重点论述了处于边缘状态的美国黑人是如何在不被理解，不被尊重，甚至不为人所视的精神歧视下一步一步丧失自我，以及如何在各种“试图被人看见”的幻想破灭后寻找自我的，最后论文指出美国黑人丧失自我的根源在于白人的精神歧视，而黑人只有回归自己的文化，在黑人文化中找到自己的身份根基才能获得精神上的自由，才能最终寻找到真正的自我。

关键词：看不见, 美国黑人, 自我身份, 精神歧视

ABSTRACT

Invisible Man, when it was first published in 1952, was acclaimed as “the epoch-making novel” and “an epic of modern African American life”. It depicted “the adventures likely to befall a centerless individual en route through the flow and conflict of illusions toward some still unclosed center”. Through the description of the experience of a black youth, Ralph Ellison points out that the afflictions of African Americans come not mainly from the white’s material exploitation, but from their spiritual discrimination, which finds best expression in the metaphor of “invisibility”.
This paper firstly discusses how African Americans as a marginal group in the United States gradually lose their self-identity under the spiritual pressure of not being understood, respected or seen by the white. Then it focuses on how African Americans begin to search for their self-identity after their attempts to be seen failed. Through the analysis of the protagonist’s psychological experience of losing and seeking for his self-identity, the paper finally points out that it is the spiritual discrimination that leads to African Americans’ loss of self-identity and they can only find their spiritual freedom and self-identity in the black culture.

Key words: invisibility, African Americans, self-identity, spiritual discrimination

1  Introduction
1.1. The Life of Ralph Ellison
Ralph Waldo Ellison was born in 1914 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the 46th state in the United States which had no tradition of slavery and whose patterns of segregation were not so rigid as to prevent easy contacts between black and white. Hoping that he would be a poet, his father named him after the famous American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson (王蕾, 2007). His father died when Ellison was three years old, leaving the family very poor. To support the family, his mother worked as a domestic stewardess. Ellison is a good example for those African Americans in the way how his family assisted him in breaking out of cultural isolation. His mother particularly supported his training in music and writing by bringing him such specific resources as magazines, opera records discarded by a white family for whom she worked.