A Study Guide for Ralph Ellison's "Shadow and Act"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Ralph Ellison's "Shadow and Act," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Nonfiction Classics for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Nonfiction Classics for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Sep 20, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535832946

Book preview

1

Shadow and Act

Ralph Ellison

1964

Introduction

In his introduction to Shadow and Act (1964), Ralph Ellison describes the essays to come as an attempt to transform some of the themes, the problems, the enigmas, the contradictions of character and culture native to my predicament, into what Andre Malraux has described as 'conscious thought.'

This collection consists of essays written over two decades, spanning Ellison's growth as a literary and social critic, his rise to recognition as a serious fiction writer, and his establishment as a thinker and teacher. The essays are divided thematically into three sections; as the author summarizes, they are concerned with literature and folklore, with Negro musical expression—especially jazz and the blues—and with the complex relationship between the Negro subculture and North America as a whole.

The bulk of the collection consists of the first section, The Seer and the Seen, in which Ellison uses interviews and essays to address his personal experience of being what he calls Negro American, of African descent, but specifically American. He draws on classic American authors, particularly Twain, Hemingway, Faulkner, and Richard Wright, and both lauds and criticizes them in an effort to represent his experience. Sound and the Mainstream explores the way music is fundamental to his life and chronicles the careers and influence of several