Also influenced by the likes of Sophocles, Homer, Dostoyevsky, Freud, Jung, Wright, and others, he began to think about black leaders and wondered why they ignored their constituents but often bent over backwards for the white man. He spent time reading Lord Raglan's The Hero which discusses African-American mythical and historical figures. He took a sick leave as the War wound down in 1945 and moved with his wife to recuperate in Vermont. He contracted a kidney infection and became depressed. While in the Merchant Marines during World War II, Ellison struggled with writing a prison camp novel. This event provided the background for the climax of the novel, the race riot, which finally succeeds in driving the narrator underground in The Invisible Man. In 1943, he was hired to cover a riot in Harlem. Another experience which was later encapsulated into his novel was his work in freelance writing. This quotation is verbatim out of his FWP encounters. For instance, Mary Rambo's character advises the narrator of the novel to not let New York corrupt him. Many of the conversations he recorded he then used when he was writing The Invisible Man. Through his work, he came into close contact with a variety of people and thus became better adept at producing realistic characters in his writing. Ellison gained valuable writing experience while working for the Federal Writers' Project between 19.