Chapter 22 Practice Quiz — Invisible Man
by Ralph Ellison — tap or click to flip
Practice Quiz: Chapter 22
What has happened in Harlem when the narrator arrives from downtown?
A full-scale race riot has erupted. Buildings are ablaze, storefronts are shattered, looters are carrying merchandise through smoke-filled streets, and police are charging through crowds with nightsticks.
What does the narrator realize about the Brotherhood's role in the riot?
The Brotherhood deliberately engineered the riot by withdrawing resources from Harlem, reassigning the narrator, and neglecting the community's grievances. They wanted the crisis to advance their broader political agenda.
How has Ras the Exhorter transformed in this chapter?
He has become "Ras the Destroyer," riding through the riot on horseback dressed as an African warrior chieftain, carrying a shield and hurling a spear. He has moved from passionate oratory to apocalyptic violence.
What does Ras accuse the narrator of being?
Ras denounces the narrator as a traitor to his race, calling him an agent of the white Brotherhood who has sold out his people. He orders his followers to seize the narrator and hang him.
Who are Dupre and Scofield, and what do they do during the riot?
They are community members who methodically organize the burning of a dilapidated, rat-infested tenement building. They ensure residents are evacuated and approach the destruction with careful, almost ceremonial deliberation.
Why is Dupre and Scofield's arson significant to the chapter's themes?
Their careful, organized destruction underscores the irony that what outsiders see as mindless violence actually contains coherent grievances and its own brutal logic. The tenement represents years of exploitation by absentee landlords.
What happens when the narrator puts on dark sunglasses?
He is repeatedly mistaken for a man named Rinehart — a figure who is simultaneously a preacher, a pimp, a numbers runner, and a lover. This case of mistaken identity deepens the novel's exploration of invisibility.
What does the Rinehart episode reveal about identity in the novel?
It reveals that identity depends entirely on who is looking and what they expect to see. Rinehart occupies multiple contradictory identities simultaneously, suggesting that all identity is a kind of performance and that invisibility might offer a paradoxical freedom.
How does the Brotherhood's betrayal of Harlem connect to earlier betrayals in the novel?
It completes a pattern that began with Dr. Bledsoe's manipulation at the college, continued through the Liberty Paints factory's dehumanization, and now reaches its climax: every institution that promised to help the narrator has used him instead.
What is the symbolic function of fire in this chapter?
Fire functions as both literal destruction and symbolic apocalypse. The flames illuminate what has been hidden — the Brotherhood's treachery, Ras's extremism, the community's suppressed rage — burning away every pretense and revealing the truth.
How does the narrator escape from Ras the Destroyer?
The narrator flees through the riotous streets while Ras's spear narrowly misses him. He uses the chaos and darkness of the riot to evade both Ras's followers and the police.
What does Ras's spear symbolize in the confrontation with the narrator?
The spear represents the demand that every Black person choose a single, absolute identity — warrior, victim, or traitor. The narrator's refusal of that demand is the novel's most important assertion of individual freedom.
How does the narrator's understanding of the Brotherhood change in this chapter?
He finally understands that the Brotherhood viewed Harlem's people as expendable pawns. His own organizing work was never valued as an end in itself but was merely preparation for this moment of orchestrated destruction.
What contrast does Ellison draw between Ras and the Brotherhood in this chapter?
Both Ras and the Brotherhood treat Harlem's people as instruments of their ideologies rather than as individuals. The Brotherhood sacrifices the community for political strategy; Ras demands absolute racial allegiance. Neither sees the actual people.
What is the narrative significance of the riot as the novel's climax?
The riot destroys every external structure the narrator might rely upon — every affiliation, ideology, and imposed identity. This total dispossession paradoxically enables his journey toward underground retreat and genuine self-discovery.
How does Ellison's prose style shift during the riot scenes?
The prose shifts between documentary realism and surrealist vision, reflecting a world that has moved beyond ordinary experience. Realistic descriptions of looting and violence alternate with dreamlike imagery such as Ras on horseback in warrior regalia.
What does the narrator observe about ordinary Harlemites during the riot?
He encounters people looting with grim determination, others trying to protect their homes, and some simply trying to survive. He sees acts of both desperation and dark comedy, with the destruction taking on an almost carnival quality.
Where was the narrator before arriving in Harlem for the riot?
He was at Sybil's apartment downtown. He leaves her apartment and heads uptown toward Harlem, where he discovers the riot already in progress.
What is the central irony of the Brotherhood's relationship to the riot?
The organization that claimed to fight for Harlem's liberation deliberately engineered its destruction. They viewed the community's suffering as a strategic resource — a necessary cost of advancing their political theory.
How does the eviction scene from earlier in the novel connect to Chapter 22?
The narrator observes that rioters have been "dispossessed of their illusions." This connects to the early eviction scene where an elderly couple was physically dispossessed. Here the dispossession is psychological — the community's illusions about justice and institutional support have been stripped away.