“Music cannot be touched – it only exists when it is apprehended – and yet it can profoundly change the way we perceive the world and the place that we occupy there. » (“Preface” 7).1 Music is an art form enjoyed by millions of people every day. It is an art that has continued over the decades and can be seen in different ways. This is why Ellison chooses to illustrate his novel with jazz. The jazz music in Invisible Man gives feelings that Ellison could never explain in words. In Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, the narrator's search for his identity can be compared to the structure of a jazz composition. To see the parallel between the novel and jazz, we must first see how Ellison integrates jazz music into the novel's prologue. . Not only does it set the scene with jazz music in the background, but it also gives the narrator a deep understanding of the music. The music the narrator listens to is "Black and Blue" by Louis Armstrong, which is appropriate because Armstrong is a prominent African-American jazz musician who protests the treatment of African-Americans through his music. The narrator embraces each line of the song and gives an apt description of its message: The unheard sounds passed, and each melodic line existed on its own, stood out clearly from all the others, said its piece and patiently waited for the others voice. talk. That night, I found myself hearing not only in time, but also in space. Not only did I enter into music, but I descended, like Dante, into its depths (Ellison 7).2 The allusion to Dante refers to the poem “Divine Comedy,” which tells the story of a man traveling in the depths of hell. The narrator takes a deep metaphorical journey through each line that makes up this song. He likes Armstrong because...... middle of paper......, 2012. 11-13. Print.Ellison, Ralph. The invisible man. New York: Random, 1952. Print. Margolies, Edward. “History Like the Blues: The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison.” Native Sons: A Critical Study of Twentieth-Century Negro-American Authors. JB Lippincott Society, 1968. 127-148. Rep. in contemporary literary criticism. Ed. Daniel G. Marowski and Roger Matuz. Flight. 54. Detroit: Gale, 1989. 115-119. Print. “Ralph Ellison.” Survey of American Literature. 1992. atu.edu. Arkansas Tech University, nd Web. January 21, 2014. Shmoop editorial team. “Ralph Ellison: Writing The Invisible Man.” Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., November 11, 2008. Web. January 26, 2014. SparkNotes Publishers. “SparkNote on the Invisible Man.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC, 2002. The Web. January 21, 2014. Sundquist, Eric J. “Ralph Ellison, Jazz and Louis Armstrong.” Bloom's literature. Facts about File, Inc., 1995. Web. January 9. 2014.