Setting
Invisible Man takes place in the American South, specifically Harlem, New York during the 1930s. Here the narrator feels somewhat a decrease in social tension, he believes the “superior” will have no tolerance of African Americans, only to have a few encounters where he fits in. However, during this time, many blacks were facing racial segregation from the white culture, which makes the setting all the more realistic. The narrator soon realizes that his skin color determines how he is viewed by others in society, and since he is living in Harlem, he is seen as just another African American that is up to no good in the North. Harlem was home to a large population of African Americans, where unemployment doubled around the 1930s; Harlem is viewed as the “slums” of New York due to its tightly packed apartments filled to the brim with poor African Americans unable to pay the high rent demanded in the area at the time. Added together, the setting as well as the narrator’s skin color, paint him as the typical black man with no high intellect to offer to the white man.