Figura of a Negro Problem

Abstract

When Ralph Ellison’s short story “Invisible Man” was published in the British literary journal Horizon in 1947 it did not meet with much fanfare. This is not to say that critics who read Ellison’s story did not praise it.² However, it was not until “Invisible Man” appeared under the title we now associate with it — “Battle Royal” — in the January issue of 48’: The Magazine of the Year that Ellison made his first big literary splash. The success of “Battle Royal,” however, would soon be eclipsed by the publication of his novel in progress, Invisible Man, which would propel Ellison to literary stardom. Looking back on “Battle Royal,” the short fiction that preceded it, and Ellison’s book reviews and literary criticism, one can see that he was a writer in transition. In a letter to Karl Menninger about “Battle Royal” this transition is evident. For all its detail, Ellison concludes in his letter, “Battle Royal” is not naturalism but “realism — a realism dilated to deal with the almost surreal state of our everyday American life” (218). Ellison, like many of his peers, was re-evaluating his relationship to the literary styles and techniques as well as the cultural politics of the 1930s. More often than not reconsiderations of naturalism and realism were the avenues through which literary critics in the post-World War II period engaged those cultural politics.

The literal meaning or historical reality of a figure stands in no contradiction to its profounder meaning, but precisely “figures” it; the historical reality is not annulled but confirmed by the deeper meaning.¹

-Erich Auerbach, “Figura”