Essay Database

Ralph Ellison used shock therapy to symbolize the current status of society in his novel Invisible Man. It symbolized: society’s lack of morals; the white men’s need to control black men and erase their identities, and the way people often lose themselves in technology. Electro-convulsive therapy has been a controversial procedure, ever since its introduction by Dr. Cerletti in 1938. ECT is a treatment for severe mental illness in which a brief application of …

…seemed to have lost all sense of proportion...(Ellison 238)”. Ellison is saying that humans lose sense of where they end and where the world begins by living in such a scientific environment. Man becomes lost and alone in a world of machines. In conclusion, Ellison depicts shock therapy in a negative manor. He used it to portray white mans control over black men and their identity, society’s flawed morals, and the burden of technology.