Ralph Ellison in His Labyrinth

Eric Sundquist’s “Ellison in His Labyrinth” focuses on the elusive figure of Bliss and his descent from Bliss Proteus Rinehart in Invisible Man through his many incarnations in Three Days. He views Bliss as a version of R.W.B. Lewis’s American Adam. Yet, unlike the Proteus of Homer’s Odyssey, who served as Ellison’s prototype of the American novelist, Bliss cannot be grappled into submission. Surveying the signifying characters and verbal artists in Three Days, Sundquist argues for the Janus nature of Bliss/Sunraider—making him representative of the nation itself and placing the figure in the genealogy of signifying tricksters at the crossroads of time, from Oedipus to Louis Armstrong and ultimately Ellison himself. Reading the second novel through the lenses of Ellison’s essays, Sundquist examines Ellison’s use of the Icarus myth in Three Days, concluding that the trickster figures are all avatars of Sunraider himself, constituting a mystery of identity and history.