The novel begins in a small town of the American South in the 1930s,
then moves to a nearby Negro College. After the narrator's untimely expulsion
from the Negro College, he relocates to New York City's Harlem and lives
first in a boarding room then in his own apartment. At the end of the
novel, he lives in a manhole underground. The first and last chapters
take place in the present and frame the past incidents that make up the
body of the story.
The Narrator
In the Prologue and the Epilogue, he is the Invisible Man. For
the central part of the novel, he is a young man, a college student, and
an orator in a Communist group known as the Brotherhood. He is evidently
a charismatic speaker and an uncompromisingly introspective thinker. He
makes a journey in the course of the novel wherein he learns many things
about himself and his place in the world, about racism, and about identity.
He decides to write down his story so it will be forever preserved.
The Grandfather
The narrator's grandfather who exists in the novel as a memory.
On his deathbed, he told the narrator something that has forever haunted
and confused him; he revealed the key to success was destroying the white
man by publicly agreeing with him and privately undermining him.
Dr. Bledsoe
The president of the Negro College. He is a black man who flatters
white men and convinces them of the placidity of blacks in order to get
money from them for his college. He expels the narrator from college and
undermines his efforts to get a job. He represents the insidious attitude
toward young black men of promise that the Invisible Man will one day
fight against.
Reverend Homer A. Barbee
A blind minister who gives a speech at the Negro College.
Mr. Norton
A rich white man who gives money to the black students at the
college and prides himself on his benevolence.
Trueblood
A black sharecropper who impregnates his own daughter. He is
rejected and reprimanded by the black community for his sin, but is strangely
embraced and rewarded by the white community. He symbolizes the white
man's desire to keep the black man from improving himself.
Halley
A black bartender at the Golden Day who is reluctant to serve
Mr. Norton.
Hester
A black prostitute at the Golden Day who generalizes that white
men are better sexual partners.
Edna
A black prostitute at the Golden Day who hates white men.
Veteran
A black veteran of World War II who is in a mental asylum, but
who speaks the truth about the real motivation behind white philanthropy
toward blacks.
Supercargo
An attendant for the insane black veterans.
Crenshaw
The veteran's nurse.
Mr. Emerson, Jr.
The son of an employer who reveals Mr. Bledsoe's betrayal to
the narrator.
MacDuffy
The white manager of the Liberty Paint factory.
Kimbro
Supervisor at the Liberty Paint factory who shows the narrator
how to add a black substance to the paint to make it whiter.
Brockway
A black worker at the Liberty Paint factory who sabotages the
narrator's work and causes him to get fired and forget who he is.
Mary Rambo
A black woman who takes care of the narrator and believes in
the efficacy of hard work and honest living for the success of blacks
in the United States.
Brother Jack
A white leader of the Brotherhood (the Communist Party), who
recruits the narrator and then betrays him; he has a glass eye.
Emma
Jack's white lover. She is attracted to the narrator.
Hambro
A white member of the Brotherhood who advocates the science of
communism for analyzing social problems and who denies the value of the
individual.
Tobitt
A white member of the Brotherhood who is married to a black woman.
Tod Clifton
A popular black leader of the Brotherhood who organizes Harlem
youth and befriends the narrator. He later abandons the Brotherhood and
is shot by a police officer.
Ras
A militant black separatist in Harlem. As a Black Nationalist,
he opposes the Brotherhood as a white-led invasion of the black community.
He becomes an enemy of the narrator and leads a riot at the end of the
novel.
Rinehart
An unseen Harlem character for whom the narrator is repeatedly
mistaken. He represents another invisible man, but one who acts without
integrity to get what he wants.
Sybil
A white alcoholic woman who is married to a member of the Brotherhood.
In the end of the novel, the narrator attempts to use her to undermine
the political machinations of the Brotherhood. She uses him for sex.
Brother Tarp
A black member of the Brotherhood who tells the narrator he was
chained for nineteen years in a Southern prison and who gives the narrator
a link of that chain.
Brother Wrestrum
A black member of the Brotherhood who is jealous of the narrator's
success in organizing. He attempts to organize a purge of the narrator
from the Brotherhood, accusing him of self-aggrandizement.
Maceo
A white member of the Brotherhood who rejects the narrator.
Barrelhouse
A black member of the Brotherhood who is friendly to the narrator
upon his return to Harlem.
Dupre and Scofield
Black rioters who help the narrator when he is injured in the
riot.
Clapsaddle, Diane. "TheBestNotes on A Long Way Gone".
TheBestNotes.com.
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