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he winter and lives until spring; then he comes strolling out like the Easter chick breaking from its shell. I say all this to assure you that it is incorrect to assume because I am invisible and live in a hole I am dead. I am neither dead Invisible Man nor in a state of suspended animation. Call me Jack the bear, for I am in a state of ‘hibernation.” (Ralph Ellison 1952: 6) Here, the narrator compares himself to a bear in a state of hibernation, showing his funny way of life and thoughts after series of frustrations and funny experiences. 2.2.2 In the epilogue “No I indeed, the world is just as concrete ornery vile and sublimely wonderful as before, only now I better understand my relation to it and it to me. I‘ve come a long way from those days when, full of illusion, I live in a public life and attempted to function under the assumption that the world was solid and all the relationships therein. Now I know men are different and that all life is divided and that only in division is there true health. Here again I have stayed in my hole because up above there’s an increasing passion to make men conform to a pattern” (Ralph Ellison 1952: 57) The narrator humorously expresses the understanding of the world. He points out that all men are different and decided to stay in the hole. Through these ironic words, Ellison expresses his protest against racial discrimination. “Whence all this passion toward conformity anyway? —Diversity is the world. Let man keep his many parts and you‘ll have no tyrant states why, if they follow this conformity business they’ll end up by forcing me, an invisible man, to which is not a color but the lack of one. Must I strive toward colorlessness? But seriously, without snobbery, think of what the world would lose if that should happen. American is woven of many strands; I would recognize them and let it so remain. It’s ‘winner take nothing’ that is the truth of our country or of any country. Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat. Our fate is to become one, and yet many—this is not prophecy, but description. Thus one of the greatest jokes in the world is the spectacle of the whites busy escaping blackness and becoming blacker every day, and the blacks striving toward whiteness, becoming quite dull and gray. None of us seems to know who he is or where he’s going.” (Ralph Ellison 1952: 577) In the passage, the narrator still argues the diversity of the world, and proves it by disapproving conformity with examples. At last, the narrator points out the whites and the blacks are gradually turning to each other they will lose to themselves. That‘s one of the “greatest jokes”. The narrator asserts that no one is separate from the other in the present world, so race prejudice turns more ridiculous. That’s also Ellison’s view. 2.2.3 In chapter one “ ‘I want to get at that ginger-colored Niger. Tear him from limb to limb’, the first voice yelled. I stood against ropes trembling. For in those days I was what they called ginger-colored, and he sounded as though he might crunch me between his teeth like a crisp g inger cookie.”(Ralph Ellison 1952: 22) The white audience threatened the narrator, as if the opponent would crunch him with teeth like a crisp ginger cookie, because the narrator was called ginger-colored nigger. Here a simile is employed to describe the opponent’s cruelty, showing sympathy on the narrator. 2.2.4 In chapter ten There is