The narrator of Invisible Man is a nameless young black man who moves in a 20th-century United States where reality is surreal and who can survive only through pretense. Because the people he encounters "see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination," he is effectively invisible.

He leaves the racist South for New York City, but his encounters continue to disgust him.

Ultimately, he retreats to a hole in the ground, which he furnishes and makes his home.

There, brilliantly illuminated by stolen electricity, he can seek his identity.