Do The Chapters Advance The Story ?

There are 25 chapters and the story progresses through each chapter. Is there something else that you meant?

Each chapter in the Invisible Man leads into the next. Near the beginning of the book, the narrator brings Mr. Norton to the old slave quarters and the Golden Day. This symbolizes how the narrator is not yet strong enough to make himself visible, but he is able to bring out his past to others. Then, further into the book, the narrator begins to make himself more visible by publicly speaking to an audience. He has now overcome the fear he had in the beginning of the book, and is able to make himself more visible.

However, the death of Tod Clifton also foreshadows the narrator's possibally deadly fate. Clifton was shot by an officer by protecting himelf (stepping out of his "place" as an African American). So, now that the narrator is becomeing visible, and speaking out for himelf and others like him, he is also in danger of becoming invisible once more . . . permanently.

So, as the chapters advance, so does the story. You will probably see that things from the narrator's past are being brought up agian further into the novel. Ralph Ellison wants to keep the reader guessing.