Preview

Effective Use Of Allegory In Ralph Ellison's Battle Royal

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1075 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Effective Use Of Allegory In Ralph Ellison's Battle Royal
Battle Royal by Ralph Ellison (1952)

Ralph Ellison’s short story “Battle Royal” (Ellison 278-288) is about a young African American protagonist who is so well spoken that he is invited to a prestigious hotel ballroom to present the speech he had given the night before, at his high school graduation to an all white men’s club. Instead, he asked to participate in a “Battle” against the other 9 men who were paid to come there for the evening’s entertainment. The short story is effective because it really helps the reader to understand the struggle African American men were going through for equality and identity in society throughout history. Instead of writing a story with facts about discrimination and statistics on them, he
…show more content…
“There was nothing to do but what we were told.” (Ellison 281par.3). This imagery of the white blindfold is an allegory and it is effective because it strips them of their identities, or their place in society. Each man is now for himself, or so it seems. “It was complete anarchy. Everybody fought everybody else. No group fought together for long.”(Ellison 283 par.1). Little to the narrators knowledge all of the other men have made an agreement amongst themselves as to who would be left to duke it out in the …show more content…
His speech about humility while he felt he was better than any man there of color. It sent a contradictory message to me, because he felt better than but still allowed the white men to control his actions of the evening by doing what they told him to do; just to get the money instead of standing up for himself and what he felt was right. Then he took the briefcase of money and was so happy about it, but they were only sending him to a school for black men. Where is the pride, or dignity in that? If they had really been doing him a favor they would have allowed him the same education their children where getting. Now that is what I feel would’ve been fair. He spoke of “cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white man” (Ellison 286 par.6) and yet these relations of the evening were far from friendly. This is also another

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    In the short story, “Battle Royal”, Ralph Ellison uncovers a boy’s fight to maintain his dignity in a world of racial injustice. The first person narration portrays a naïve view of the boy’s values of what he believes is important in life that is only questioned by his grandpa’s firm conviction of dignity. On page 39, starting with paragraph 99, the text depicts the differences between the two segregated worlds of black and white.…

    • 933 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Author Ralph Ellison once wrote, “I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who hunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood movie ectoplasms.” Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” is an extremely profound read. Although the entire book explores how perception can be distorted by sight, I feel that chapters seven through ten explore this concept extensively. These pivotal chapters illustrate this when the narrator takes a position in a paint plant. The reader is also introduced to Optic White Paint in these chapters. In this analysis, I will explain in detail the events that occurred at the…

    • 685 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In “Battle Royal,” the main character has a skewed sense of identity. Instead of embracing who he is as a black man and identifying with other black men, he tries to be a part of ‘club whitey.’ He thinks that by acting a certain way and being educated that he will have a voice in the white community, but he is wrong. He has to experience the struggle of the battle and the harassment of the white men during his speech in order to fully come to terms with his identity and find his voice. His grandfather ends up being the catalyst to finding his voice even though he doesn’t quite realize it in the beginning. Initially he views the other black men as an obstacle in his determination to give his speech, but by the end he realizes that he is one of those black men. Not realizing his true identity in the beginning makes him his own obstacle.…

    • 849 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    That was until he started to realize he said "African Americans had fewer rights than Caucasians". His conflict was he started to give up. He didn't have hopes or dreams! He didn't know what he wanted to do with his life. The conflict made him realize he needed to change his bad behavior. It made him realize fighting and acting atrocious won't get you nowhere in life and you have to set an example and make a good change not only for yourself but for the world!…

    • 643 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The narrator’s defiant attitude during early confrontation lays the groundwork for the underlying message to African-Americans; that despite what “they” may say, it is ok to be the best that you can be; even if it means outperforming a white rival. Indicative of the “Black Power” movement, by using a footrace, Raymond’s Run” illustrates the cry that African-Americans challenge traditional submissive thinking and assert themselves with their “best foot”…

    • 492 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout this semester in African American Literature we have read and analyzed many different literary works from The Norton Anthology of African American Literature by Henry Louis Gates Jr. We have discussed several of them in class either as a whole or in groups. I thoroughly enjoyed gaining useful knowledge about my own culture and heritage. This course also furthered my knowledge of the African American Experience. A few literary works stood out to me in particular; I’ve Been to The Mountaintop by Martin Luther King Jr., “What to a slave is the Fourth of July “ by Frederick Douglass and Long Black Song by Richard Wright. These powerful works of literature really allowed me to hypothetically “put myself in…

    • 720 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The white people do not care that the blacks are being humiliated and injured. They still enjoy this brutality. The men continue yelling," Slug him, black boy! Knock his guts out! Uppercut him! Kill him! Kill that big boy!" (310) By pushing the blindfold partly free, the sweaty and bloody narrator escapes some of the blows. The only thing the narrator knows is that the white folk loves every bit of this…

    • 550 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Ralph Ellison’s, “Battle Royal” the protagonist is the narrator and the main character. He delivers the story to the reader in the form of a first person narrative. The narrator although black perceives himself as better than those of his race. His personality and the attitudes he exudes is exceedingly confident, blatantly arrogant and prideful. The reader is aware of this elevated sense of pride by observing the narrator’s actions/interactions with others and his thoughts.…

    • 926 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In the story Battle Royal, Ellison struggles with whether he should conform and accept his place in society or fight for equality. I believe he is haunted by the word spoken on his grandfather’s deathbed in which he calls himself a traitor and tells his son, Ellison's father, to always fight. Ellison feels guilty when he is rewarded for doing well as his grandfathers words are always in the back of his mind. Ellison is invited to speak in front of a group of the most important men in the community, when he arrives he is put to fight with a group of other young black men. Throughout the fight he all he can think about is giving his speech.…

    • 250 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Battle Royal Symbolism

    • 884 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The short story “Battle Royal,” written by Ralph Ellison, has a lot of symbolic meanings. It’s about a young African American teenager who had just graduated from High School, and his grandfather had also recently died. He was invited to give his graduation speech in front of a group of white men. He arrived and was told to participate in the battle royal that was to take place as entertainment for the audience. Before the fight started a nude dancer was put in the ring as a distraction. She was mistreated and thrown about the room violently. The boys were blindfolded and told to go at it. The young teen and one other boy were the only two left in the ring, but the other boy won. After the fight there was a rug with money on it to pay the boys…

    • 884 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The white men’s “iron feet of oppression” will reasonably and morally become too demoralizing for a single person to bear, thus, the weariness is inevitable. In addition, it is unanimously recognized by the Negro community that when the Civil Rights Movement is taught in the future, “somebody will have to say, ‘There lived a race of [black] people (…) who had the moral courage to stand up for their rights’” (12). Although Dr. King lacks any solid literary device, he implements his application to pathos, due to the sense of hubris that can be gained from altering history for the better. The unadulterated determination to flourish in an equal civilization, as well as supplement the future history books with a major Negro uprising was enough to initiate the social revolution—and King was well aware of this. In order to solidify the call for action, King persuades the audience that “there comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July (…) and left standing amid the piercing chill of November” (9).…

    • 1213 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In America, centuries have evolved and the people acknowledge that there are continuous issues in the struggle of Black identity. These issues have been witnessed in jobs, schools, restaurants, neighborhoods, etc. Evolving since slavery, leaders in the Black community wrote motivational speeches and literary narratives. These expositions promptly exposed and articulated the inhumane oppression inflicted on the African American race.…

    • 722 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A very notable feature in this speech is the usage of excessive metaphor. Dr. King goes right into the metaphor usage in the first two paragraphs. In the beginning paragraph Dr. King mentions the Negro people as having the Emancipation Proclamation as being a great beacon light of hope to them. In the same sentence he goes to say that the Negro slaves had been, “seared in the flames of withering injustice.” The ending sentence of the first paragraph, “It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity,” is very nicely played out in rhetoric and metaphorical…

    • 859 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Cornel West

    • 1198 Words
    • 5 Pages

    I found the Cornel West speech rather interesting because of the way that he used his words and his expressions during his speech. Cornel West is one of the leading African American individuals that appeared in a lot of programs. He used to be a professor in Albert and now a professor at Princeton University. He is controversial because he is outspoken and is very engaged socially. “Getting to know Cornel West has been one of the genuine pleasures of my life,” Gates said. “I have never met a person who combines genuine passion for the plight of human beings less fortunate than he with intellectual insight and the capacity on his feet to communicate both that depth of comparison and to propose solutions that would cure the suffering that he is describing (Morrison, 45).…

    • 1198 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Sticks and Stones

    • 1541 Words
    • 7 Pages

    The people we surround ourselves with have an influence over our thoughts and our actions. They can build us up, tear us down, inspire or inhibit us. Sometimes, those we do not even know can say or do something that will have an impact on us for the rest of our lives, good or bad. One of the biggest groups of people that have been directly affected by the actions of others is the African American race. For centuries, they were in the hands of the white man, as slaves. Forced and brought over from their homelands of Africa, and were subjected to hard labor and physical and emotional abuse. Even after slavery was abolished in the 1860’s, African Americans were still not seen as equals. They would have many years of persecution and segregation ahead of them. The types of treatment they received, vicious or subtle, were unfair as well as psychologically and physically damaging. It is true that once something is said, you cannot take it back. One word can stick with you for an entire lifetime. The poem “The Incident” by Countee Cullen demonstrates how one word has the power to affect someone greatly and can change the way they perceive the world by using the innocent narrative of a little black boy in a new town. The feature film Men of Honor, based upon a true story, shows the trials and hardships of another African American trying to pursue his dream of becoming a Navy Master Diver using negativity from those who opposed him, because of his race, to push himself harder. The structured groups of the Navy, family, and race help to illustrate the way it was like to live and try to move up in the world as an African American.…

    • 1541 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays