Battle Royal Poem Analysis

During the time of the Harlem Renaissance, literature written by “colored folks” tended to have similar tones, messages, and visuals. These connections can be seen between the poems “We Wear The Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar, “If We Must Die” by Claude McKay, and an excerpt from Invisible man by Ralph Ellison, “Battle Royal.” A common tone between the three pieces would be pride. In “Battle Royal” the speaker is incredibly proud of his speech, to the point of delivering it despite coughing up blood and being ridiculed after the traumatic event that he had been put through. Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote his piece with a tone of pride in a sense of colored people not showing when their hurt but holding their heads up high and masking their pain.
Meanwhile, The poem “We Wear The Mask” directly requests that the colored folk join the fight of the mind and fight back against those who keep them down with smiles despite their tormented souls. This message of a war of minds also appears in “Battle Royal” as the speakers grandfather's last words: ”I want you to overcome ’em with yeses, undermine ‘em with grins, agree ‘em to death and destruction…” Physically and emotionally, the visuals in these three poems were violent. “Battle Royal” gave this to readers in a more straightforward way as the speaker was thrown into a ring, blindfolded and forced to fight resulting in multiple injuries as a crowd of wealthy white men ridicule the fighters and relished in their pain. “So that our precious blood may not be shed in vain;” a powerful quote taken from Claude McKay's “If We Must Die” as the speaker describe a scene in which a hurt and cornered black community fights back against the “mad and hungry dogs.” Such pain is also described in “We Wear The Mask” as the speaker talks of hiding their bleeding hearts with smiles so as to not let their suffering be seen by those who put them