Invisible Man Characters

Throughout the course of the novel, our nameless narrator is mistaken for a reverend, a pimp, a gambler, a fink, a unionist, a Southern Negro, a New York Negro, a rapist, a lover, a doctor, and a g...

Dr. Bledsoe is the president of the narrator's college, and the narrator looks up to him until he turns out to be a big phony. While Dr. Bledsoe preaches a doctrine of hard work and humility as the...

A wealthy white man who helped found the narrator's college, Mr. Norton is described by the narrator as a "symbol of the Great Traditions." Although he is convinced of his own liberalness and phila...

Brother Jack, our main contact with the Brotherhood is a pretty mysterious character. A white male, he easily enters the narrator's life and offers him a ton of opportunities off the bat: money, a...

When we meet Brother Tod Clifton, he at first seems like a possible rival for the narrator – he's young, bright, good-looking, and has been working for the Brotherhood for three years. It bec...

Ras the Exhorter is a "mahn" (as he puts it) from the West Indies. He is a black nationalist and strongly opposed to Brotherhood activities. Where the Brotherhood is for integration with white soci...

Sybil has basically one scene in the entire novel, but boy, is it intense. Drunken Sybil wants to be raped by a black man, and it somehow comes across as touchingly vulnerable. Like the narrator, o...

A poor, uneducated black man who lives on the outskirts of the narrator's college campus, Trueblood fits the negative black stereotype to a tee – and is amply rewarded. He is ashamed to admit...

Reverend Barbee is a religious man from Chicago who details the Founder and Dr. Bledsoe's quests to found the college. He gives an incredibly impassioned speech that leaves the narrator feeling lik...

The son of a wealthy white man, Emerson is the only white guy in the novel who seems to genuinely care about racial progress and helping the narrator. And let's not forget his attempts to have a fr...

A kind and motherly woman who sees plenty of potential for the narrator to contribute to racial progress, her only flaw, as far as the narrator is concerned, is that she talks too much. She takes t...

OK. So the real Rinehart never actually appears in the novel. Details, details. After the narrator dons some colored glasses and a hat, just about everyone in Harlem begins mistaking him for this R...

In Chapter 23, we finally meet the man responsible for the narrator's training. Brother Hambro turns out to be a tall lawyer who (no surprise here) thinks in incredibly macroscopic terms. He's the...