Living in the city, one sees many homeless people. After a while, each person loses any individuality and only becomes "another homeless person." Without a name or source of identification, every person would look the same. Ignoring that man sitting on the sidewalk and acting as if we had not seen him is the same as pretending that he did not exist. "Invisibility" is what the main character/narrator of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man called it when others would not recognize or acknowledge him as a person. The narrator describes his invisibility by saying, "I am invisible ?óÔé¼?ª simply because people...
who sees him holds a unique perception of him, even if that is not what he believes to be the truth. This perception is a unique identity which is held by each person who views him, and it is real simply because it exists. As the saying goes: the truth is in the eye of the beholder. Without people around, a person would not have an identity to live by. That is why the narrator has become invisible: because "after years of trying to adopt the opinions of other [he] finally rebelled. [He is the] invisible man." p. 573