Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man explores the importance and search for identity in one of America's most heated political climates. A black man in a time of racial inequality, the invisible man faces empirical struggles on a day to day basis solely based on his ethnicity. However, by the novel's end, he rises above the obstacles he is faced with, ultimately using the racism that was once brandished against him as a defense.
Throughout the novel, the nameless man encounters numerous situations and individuals that test his strength. After being publicly humiliated when awarded a briefcase full of fake cold coins, the invisible man makes the decision to carry the briefcase with him as he searches for a sense of identity in his travels North. He eventually comes upon a bank depicting an offensively disproportionate and ill-portrayed black man, a symbol for racism's prevalence in this time period. He places this bank in his briefcase to carry it along as he searches for a greater sense of self. When later confronted by the violent nationalist Ras the Exhorter, the invisible man finds strength stored away within his briefcase. Due to their opposing viewpoints in the way of achieving equality with the white population, Ras targets the man. To defeat him, the invisible man beats him with his briefcase containing the bank, using the racism that once harmed him as a means of protection. In choosing to keep the bank, the invisible man made the decision to properly acknowledge a history of racism that has hurt him in the past. By coming to terms with this painful history, he attains enough strength to defeat even the notoriously deadly Ras and to a greater extent, the sense of identity he has been searching for.
