Ralph Ellison concludes the novel, The Invisible Man, with the following question: "Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?" (p.568) The general consensus of scholars and critics of the novel is that this final line is ambiguous and enigmatic. Ambiguity and lack of opacity in the final words of a distinctive novel is not a pleasurable sensation for a number of readers. For other readers, this ambiguity is perceived as in line and in step with the narrative style and motifs present throughout the piece.
One challenge in substantial comprehension of this question lies in the grammar and syntax Ellison chooses. This answer will begin analyzing and understanding this question by focusing on sections of the question and then returning focus back to the question as a whole.
To begin: "Who knows..." Often when people ask, "Who knows?" they are indirectly stating that they themselves (the speaker/asker of the question) do not know the answer to the question asked. The question "Who knows?" in a way is an admission of lack of knowledge and lack of answers. Ellison is directing his question to the reader, as he directs the entire novel to the reader, and is directing the question out into the universe, to the, as yet, unknown party who does know the answer to his question. Ellison knows neither if his answer is true, nor the identity of the party who knows the answer to this question.
Shifting focus to: "...but that, in the lower frequencies..." From Ellison's perspective outlined in the text, there is power and privilege for those who are visible. Here, Ellison may be speaking to the power and privilege of those who are invisible when he uses "lower frequencies." Those who are visible have obvious power and privilege; visible people are seen, heard, and afforded access. While seemingly counterintuitive, the same can be said about those, like the narrator, who are invisible. They do not have the same power, privilege, and access as his counterpoint, "a visible man," but there is power, privilege, and access of a kind, nonetheless, of those who are invisible.
Invisible people, such as the narrator, have a unique perspective of society and the world. Another example of inviisble people might be those who are homeless. The perspectives of the invisible yield specialized, marginalized insights on societies' problems and potential solutions. Inclusion of a spectrum of perspectives benefits society on individual and collective levels, with respect to systemic, positive growth. Visible people, like celebrities for example, are constantly in the public eye, and have diminished opportunities for privacy and anonymity, whereas invisible people have privacy and anonymity in greater quantities. Visibility is a form of labor--again, think of celebrities--wherein there is less opportunity and/or more labor requred to be free from the gaze of others, and to be free from acting as a representative of the visible population. Invisible people can access parts of societies that are secluded, amazing, undisturubed, and sometimes disturbing.
"Lower frequencies" may be the spaces where invisible people have power, privilege, and access that visible people do not. "Lower frequencies" may refer to spaces that are unseen and unheard by visible people, as in how lower frequencies in sound cannot be heard by humans without technological assistance, or how once humans reach physical adulthood, there are some frequencies of sound they can no longer hear, but younger humans can. To adults, the sounds youth can hear but they can't, are invisible, yet they exist, just like the narrator. He is invisible to most, but he still exists. The same can be said about "lower frequencies" of light. There are people who experience partial and/or complete color blindness, making some frequencies of light, such as the lower ones, invisible to their eyes. The colors a colorblind person cannot see still exist, but for them they are invisible, again, simiilarly to the narrator and his relationship to society at large.
Finally, moving focus to: "...I speak for you?" The novel is extremely personal and has a highly individualized perspective. This text is very much from the unique view and experience of the narrator. Ellison succeeds in cultivating and sustaining the narrator's point of view that is his own that comes from his life. Yet, the final phrase of this question communicates that this story, this narrator, and this mode of communication could be used to speak for and represent the reader, who is, very much not Ralph Ellison or the narrator. Ellison, through the narrator, posits how someone's unique experience can be used to speak for others who are marginalized and who are invisible in some respect, despite differences in nationality, sex, race, age, time, and more.
The question connects the marginal, individual view to what is universal for all in the human condition. At some point, for some reason, for some particular duration of time, each person feels invisible in life. The question communicates this both directly and abstractly, which may contribute to the lack of clarity or solid finality some readers experience upon reading the final line. One reading of "Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?" is that this is asking, in other words, "I don't know, somehow, somewhere, maybe my story, in some way, is yours, too?" The final line of the novel asks a question the narrator does not and cannot answer.
Throughout Invisible Man, the narrator struggles with the recurrent theme of erasure through labor. No matter what situation the narrator finds himself in—as a driver for Mr. Norton at the novel’s opening, as a machine worker at the Optic White paint factory, or as a speaker for the Party—the Invisible Man finds himself ignored and made invisible by white society that sees him only as a black body capable of fulfilling some sort of labor. One way to interpret the final line of this novel is as a reference to this theme. Because of Ellison’s reliance upon technology as a tool to convey this theme of erasure, it is unsurprising that he uses a final allusion to technology (this time in the form of radio waves) to end his novel.
At the novel’s close, the Invisible Man lives secretly in a house normally rented to whites and siphons electricity (the life force of machines) from the building. When the Invisible Man speaks technologically about using “lower frequencies” to communicate, he reminds the reader of his invisibility as a laboring machine. However, this invisibility is not as oppressive as it was before. By continuing to tell his story and share his experiences while existing where he should not and siphoning electricity, the Invisible Man’s invisibility can be seen as a subversive act that both upends societal norms and reclaims invisibility as a subversive, beneficial trait. Finally, the Invisible Man can escape some of the oppression he experienced throughout the novel by utilizing invisibility to his advantage.
There are a number of different ways of looking at the final sentence. In keeping with the title, the unnamed narrator is invisible throughout to those who patronize, insult, and oppress him. Like many African Americans in society, his experiences of a hostile world are at best ignored and at worst treated with contempt.
Yet the narrator still has a voice. And he still needs to use that voice to communicate the full range and depth of his life experience. But most people, never having gone through the narrator's experience, will never truly comprehend what he has to say. His message, then, is subtle and clandestine. It operates on a lower frequency that will only be picked up if we attune ourselves to it, if we listen carefully and imagine ourselves in the shoes of society's invisible.
On a specific and immediate level, the final sentence of Invisible Man is of course addressed to those who've endured a similar degree of prejudice and racial intolerance in their lives. At the same time, in an increasingly atomized society in which more and more people become "invisible" for one reason or another, it can also speak to anyone who feels themself cut adrift from their fellow human beings.
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