Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man depicts a realistic society where white people act as if black people are less than human. Ellison uses papers and letters to show the narrator’s poor position in this society. Many papers seem to show good fortune for the narrator, but only provide false dreams. The narrator’s prize of a brief case containing his scholarship first illustrates this falsehood: “take this prize and keep it well. Consider it a badge of office. Prize it. Keep developing as you are and some day it will be filled with important papers that will help shape the destiny of your people” (32). The narrator is filled with joy from receiv