The style of music used in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man plays a key role in helping the reader understand the mood of the novel. Slow jazz and the blues typically focus on sadness or a general lament. Blues reveal the amazing ability of black musicians to create striking and impressive imagery through both music and words. Love, death, and the sense of loss are the most commonly used themes in the blues. In Ellison's writing, the blues can be characterized as "an autobiographical chronicle of personal catastrophe expressed lyrically" (114). When viewed in this fashion, it becomes easy to see the correlation between the blues and the central mood of the novel. Invisible Man's life parallels this idea throughout the novel. His invisiblity holds him in a sort of hopeless bondage and creates a sense catastrophe in Invisible Man's life. The blues are often viewed as "a transportation of a catastrophe through the agency of art" (114). By using this definition of the blues, it becomes easy to see the reasoning behind its use in Ellison's novel. Similar to this idea is the correlation between jazz and Invisible Man. In the beginning of the novel, the narrator says "without light I am not only invisible, but formless as well; and to be unaware of one's form is to live a death." Although Invisible Man is formless, he does retain the awareness of form. Similarily, jazz soloists perform solos that, most often, are free of form. However, to perform in this fashion, the soloist must be aware of form. Invisible Man's decision to live a formless, invisible life parallels the jazz soloist's solo.
by Nate Dougan