Set in the 1930s, varying between a black college in the south and a place in Harlem, New York, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man takes the reader through the journey of a man who seeks to act according to the values and expectations of his immediate social group, but seems to find himself unable to reconcile his socially imposed role as a black man with his inner concept of identity, or even to understand his inner …showed first 75 words of 503 total…

…showed last 75 words of 503 total…At the end of the novel, the narrator wonders why he has bothered to write his story down, as he feels that his initial attempts to process his anger has been futile. It has only resulted in the diminishing of his bitterness. The narrator decides that he must end his hibernation, "shake off his old skin and come up for breath." He realizes that even the disembodied voice of an invisible man has social responsibility.