In The Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison creates and portrays Dr. Bledsoe, several members of the Brotherhood, and Mr. Norton not as they seem, but selfish, "mask" wearing, racist jackals educated by the wily slave owners of years ago. These characters are nothing but a reflection of slavery and the old slave master. They are blind, invisible men, without true identity, without integrity, and they are not self-sufficient. They are mere existence in the minstrel tradition, the minstrel stereotype that veiled the humanity of the slaves. The "mask" and the stereotype of the minstrel are symbols of the time of slavery. The “Mask” was worn by slaves as a means to survive and protect themselves from the unpleasant and morbid reality of the miserable world of slavery, like the slave Jim in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The minstrel stereotype was used to repress the slave owner's awareness of his moral identification with his own savage acts of inhumanity towards another human being and the human ambiguities hidden behind the “mask.” The “mask” is worn by men who have not learned what it means to be a man. In Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison introduces Dr. Bledsoe as the president of a prestigious black college funded by rich and powerful Caucasian men whom he hates with a passion. “…the whites don't control this school…they support it, but I control it…The only ones I pretend to please are the great whites, and even those I control more than they control me” (Ellison 142). He has earned their utmost trust and loyalty by being deceitful, using deceptive tactics, and is a hypocrite. Under the disguise and facade of false pretenses and hypocrisy, he appears to have taken college to dizzying heights, an all-star... middle of paper...fe, understanding human nature and himself, and his search for his true identity and self-confidence. This is what he talks about: “…a circular view of life…the end is in the beginning” (Ellison 6). Like the Invisible Man, Mark Twain's Jim, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, constantly encounters the element of surprise which leads to confusion, helplessness and desperation. In The Invisible Man the "mask" is worn by individuals who choose to maintain a facade to obscure the true self, the dark side, their inhuman behavior, hatred, deception and hypocrisy. The “mask” is worn due to historical events that occurred many years before, historical consequences, “…the end is in the beginning”. “We wear the mask that smiles and lies. It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes, this debt we pay to human cunning; indeed, let them only see us, while we wear the mask. ~Paul Dunbar