After Ellison served in World War II, he won a Rosenwald Fellowship, which he used to write Invisible Man. The first chapter of the book was published in the 1948 volume of Magazine of the Year. The novel itself was published in its entirety in 1952. The book itself was based directly on Ellison’s experience of jazz performance that’s why it ranges from a tone of realism to extreme surrealism, it also ranges from disastrous to brutal satire to almost slapstick comedy. The novel emphasizes the “true” black experience in America and the human struggle for individuality. The novel was obviously very popular as soon as it published because it spent sixteen weeks on the best-seller list and won the National Book Award in 1953. Invisible Man was praised by writers like Saul Bellow (who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts for his literary works). Some critics even claimed that Ellison’s book was the most one of the most important novels to appear after World War II. While the novel Invisible Man is not autobiographical, the plot, settings, characters, themes, and point of view show the influence of people, places, and stories from his childhood. Since the books setting is around the 1930's, it shows the arising Civil Rights Movement and the fight for equal rights throughout the black community. Invisible Man was heavily influenced by a variety of 20th century writers known as existentialists (people that emphasize individual existence, freedom and choice; humans that define their own meaning in life, and try to make rational decisions despite living in an irrational universe). The overwhelming success of Invisible Man led Ellison to never publish another novel in his lifetime.
