AMERICAN CULTURE: American Culture is portrayed as a distinct blend of African and Indigenous beliefs with western hierarchies and religion. This is clear in Mother Yoruba being compared to the virgin Mary in ch. 39. Black culture is seen by whites as a contagious disease, whereas practitioners of voodoo view it as a national movement.

ANTHROPOLOGY: Racial history and culture are viewed through an African lense, rather than a white one.

TRANSCENDENTALISM: Loas represent the divine aspects of elemental forces, showing divinity and significance in everything.

MATERIAL CULTURE: The text is filled with advertisements, photos and snippets of news which emphasize the African experience in America.

EPISTEMOLOGY AND ONTOLOGY: The organization of the different POV's provides meaning for the text. The view of history presented by Papa Labas also grounds the text in an Ancient Egyptian past.

THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE: The text takes place during the renaissance and features prominent figures such as Sufi Abdul Hamid, Woodrow Wilson Jefferson (Richard Wright) and others. Reed comments on the problematic elements of the Harlem renaissance here by pointing to the white patrons which many black writers were influenced by at the time. He also highlights the interesting and diverse people who participated in the renaissance through figures like Abdul Hamid

IRONY & PARODY: Western society has demonstrably been influenced by the African magical tradition, yet seeks to destroy it. Conspiracy theories which were previously used in an anti-semitic context are subverted and parodied in order to show black agency in history.

TRANSCENDENTALISM: The Handdara find meaning in both light and darkness. Everything has a divine property.

BILDUNGSROMAN: The protagonist realizes the meaning inherent in Winter as a place of dualism and monism.

POST SECULARISM: Prominent religions with clear benefits to society are presented, yet Le Guin does not write of a theocracy and neither religion has a real world hierarchy. Yomesh is simply a god head to the Yomeshta. Anyone can be part of the Handdara.

ANTHROPOLOGY: Le Guin criticizes 19th and early 20th century anthropology through the protagonist Genly. It is perhaps impossible to fully understand another culture without being raised within it.

LYRICISM: "Light is the left hand of darkness and darkness the right hand of light. Two are one, life and death, lying together like lovers in kemmer, like hands joined together, like the end and the way" (233). The individual and the collective are emphasized through the lyricism of the text, reflecting the overarching paradox within the text.

RACE: Genly Ai's people and the Hainish empire introduce racial thinking and any kind of evolutionary or racial commentary, reflecting a western imperialist view of the world. The Gethen's themselves simply view Genly as a pervert among them, distinct yet alike to them.

EPISTOMOLOGY & ONTOLOGY: Meaning is found in the text primarily through Genly Ai's organization of the different journal entries (povs) and myths within the novel.

MATERIAL CULTURE: Le Guin's worldbuilding necessitates a building of culture through material items, such as the unique technology, food, and weapons of Gethen.

MATERIAL CULTURE: The prominent feature of racist paraphernalia in this novel showcases the racism inherent of American Culture: "A grinning doll of orange-and-black tissue paper with thin flat carboard disks forming its head and feet and which some mysterious mechanism was causing to move up and down in a loose-jointed, shoulder-shaking, infuriatingly sensuous motion, a dance that was completely detached from the black, mask-like face"(431).

RACE: The entire text is a commentary on the ways in which African Americans work through and subvert the preestablished hierarchies of society.

IRONY: The many instances of irony in "Invisible Man" mark moments in which the narrator's awareness grows and in which their identity changes. Paul de Man's metaphor surrounding irony in his commentary on Baudelaire's theory of irony illustrates these moments well: irony can be described as a man tripping, realizing he is tripping in the moment, and laughing at himself as he trips. This is particularly clear in scenes such as the narrator's last encounter with Dr. Bledsoe as well as the Brotherhood's betrayal of the narrator.

AMERICAN CULTURE: This text features a distinct snap shot of New York as a place where African American culture has taken roots, while still remembering its past in slavery. The narrator arrives to other black characters both criticizing and hailing him for his southern identity. It is also a place where a myriad of political thought and action is taking place, as well as violence, in the case of the Brother Hood and Ras the Exhorter.

LYRICISM: Like Bellow's novel, the lyricism present in Ellison's "Invisible Man" attempts to show the relationship between the individual and the collective, playing on the main theme of invisibility and visibility. This is done through Louis Armstrong's lyrics. Of this, Ellison said "The delicate balance struck between strong individual personality and the group during those early jam sessions - was a marvel of social organization" ("Living" 229). By engaging in music, characters are able to connect to a collective consciousness, but can also be appreciated as spires and individual entities within this collective consciousness.

THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE: This text is in some ways a response to the work of Harlem Renaissance writer Richard Wright, specifically the text "Native Son" which, though groundbreaking, situated its main character in a white frame of reality and stereotypes, thus eliminating the act of self determination. Ellison's narrator, speaking in the first person rather than third, wills his existence into being. He does not attempt to raise himself to a white standard of existence.

BILDUNGSROMAN: Through the ironic realizations of the narrators life, from his years in highschool to his time after the riots of New York, Ellison writes a Bildungsroman about a black man's revelation of his invisibility and visibility, and the states of being which exist in between. This novel is, to some degree, a coming of age text which features a large amount of rebirth paradoxes and moments of profound transformation bordering on the religious. The narrators ultimate revelation is that he may use his invisibility for the benefit of others, rather than himself.

SOCIOLOGY: Ellison responds to sociologists of the 19th and early 20th century, such as R.E. Park and E.W. Buress who attempt to identify commonalities in African and other racial identities. "The Ne**o is, by natural disposition, neither an intellectual nor an idealist, like the Jew; nor a brooding introspective, like the East Indian; nor a pioneer and frontiersman, like the Anglo-Saxon (136)." Ellison writes a character which subverts imposed identities in order to counter and criticize this line of thinking.

AUTONOMY: The narrator's self determination and distinct will to subvert control are key concepts in the novel. The first person voice of the novel affirms this.

INVISIBILITY & VISIBILITY: The narrator of "Invisible Man" encounters individuals throughout the novel who are able to exist in states of either full, or semi-invisibility. Reinhart and other hipsters are primary examples. Embodying the existentialist element of the novel, fully invisible characters are able to use and subvert existing societal hierarchies to their own ends, or the benefit of others.

BILDUNGSROMAN: The protagonist goes through a series of revelations, although their final state of being is ambiguous.

LYRICISM: Names indicate meaning, yet seem designed to tease any effort at meaning making.

EPISTOMOLOGY & ONTOLOGY: Meaning making is attempted through organization and provenance of texts and first hand accounts of the shadow Tristero organization.

AMERICAN CULTURE: The American culture showcased in Pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49" is one which is full of distinct yet connected subcultures. Pynchon uses the symbol of the muted post-horn as a way of showing the connection between subcultures, while describing each one in distinct terms.

IRONY & PARODY: As opposed to other texts such as "Invisible Man", the protagonist Oedipa in "The Crying of Lot 49" does not have any distinct revelations about the irony of her search for truth. Instead Oedipa, as well as every subject of the novel, is parodied at every opportunity. Other targets include far right groups, corporations, beatniks etc. Pynchon spares no one in this text.

MONSIM & DUALISM: Each nation distinctly represents the individual and the collective together. Karhide is a nation of distinct hamlets and feudal towns, yet the Handdara religion accentuates a collective experience. Orgoreyn is a nation obsessed with collective experience, yet the primary religion of Yomeshta empathizes the messiah figure Yomesh.