With this chapter, IM explains the reasons why he has chosen to tell his story. He is in the same setting as he was during the prologue. In this chapter he explains how he has been using his hibernation, which was not truly a hibernation because his mind could not sleep, to reflect on his life. In relating what he learns he ties in the rest of the book. This completes the story with the circle that is life; everything connects and the beginning is the end.

He explains that his invisibility made him conform to those around him to those who looked through him and only saw their own ideas. As a result he has had a hard time discerning honesty and dishonesty, good and evil. He relates how he was hated for telling and showing the truth about the brotherhood and to Mr. Norton. Yet, when he parroted the beliefs of others, the brotherhood and the rich men at the Battle Royal, he was loved by others, but not by himself. His way to rebel against the conforming voices was to become invisible without an opinion, but he is "invisible, not blind" (576) and his mind draws conclusions.

He reflects on his grandfather's last words and decides that his grandfather believed in the principles of America, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, and not necessarily the people. IM realizes that perhaps blacks are more able to help carry on these principles because they know what it takes "to live in the world with others..." and because in the oppression of blacks they have lost a small portion of their greed and pettiness.

IM also realizes that while he dreams of being kept running and of letting people make him run, that blacks and whites are all running. He realizes that everyone is influenced by exploiters like Jack and condescension from those like Norton. He realizes that everybody is a part of each other and thus each person is in his own way invisible.

He speaks of embracing diversity and mocks those who wish to make him white, a color which is literally and figuratively colorless. He says the diversity will make America a whole that is at the same time divided into many. He says that the "whites busy escaping blackness become blacker every day." This relates back to Liberty Paints, where in order to achieve a brighter white they combined black, instead of trying to remove it. He urges, despite his anger, bitterness and hibernation, not to accept that the world has limited possibilities. He realizes that during his lifetime the world has ceased to change, he is merely realizing his place in it.

Then IM tells of meeting Mr. Norton in a train station and he realizes that some things never change fundamentally. Mr. Norton will always be the same man who wanted to go to the Golden Day. People cannot change who they are.