Ralph Ellison Battle Royal Summary

Summaries/ Reaction: Battle Royal by Ralph Ellison The narrator talks with his grandparents who were freed slaves, and on his grandfathers deathbed he talks about how he felt like a traitor for being kind with the white man. The narrator lives the same with meekness. He then recalls giving his class speech urging humility and such as advancements for black people. The white people in town were impressed and he was invited to a battle royal. Him and other black people are forced to look at a naked blonde woman, the white men blindfold them and make them fight. When there done the man take them to a rug with electric current as they for fort the money. At the the narrator gives his speech they give him a brief case with a scholarship to a black college, he then has a dream of going to the circus with his
grandfather who refuses to laugh at a clown, and he opens the briefcase reading a document that say.
“ To Whom It May Concern..... Keep This Nigger-Boy Running” The beginning with the grandfather he feels like a traitor but you don't really know what for, did he betray his ancestors, his grandson or his family, you never find out. The grandfather wants them to have two identities one behaving like typical slave, and the other full of resentment. The narrator believes he will win respect and praise by obedience. The battle royal, the blindfolding shows how the white men don’t see them as people but as inferior. The white men make them fight each other to show the black men as savages, I guess the narrator doesn't see that that they are playing him yet. When the narrator is giving his speech with quotes form Booker T Washington, he slips up and says social equality for social responsibility, and threatens white supremacy, the hostility and
anger of the white men. The men want him to reassume what he was saying. He doesn't become free from following the good slave role, because the white men give him a briefcase with a scholarship to a black college, restricting his social advancement. When the men tell him the narrator to consider the briefcase a badge of office, that is ironic because it is so supposed to mean something within a job or position. They are basically saying the only office the narrator has is that of a good slave. By forcing him to go to a black college, they are forcing him to stay in that place. When the narrator is dreaming, it sort've mocks the idea of the “American Dream” that if you work hard and pursure your goals and basically saying that is not possible for Black Americans. The Nigger-Boy Running, is basically referring to slavery and how some slaves would run away. Overall I really liked the story, shows the hardships that Black Americans had, and how cruel society was and is.