Ralph Ellison's Essay Battle Royal

Battle Royal In Ralph Ellison's essay "Battle Royal" he describes a Negro boy, timid and compliant, comes to a white smoker in a Southern town: he is to be awarded a scholarship. Together with several other Negroes he is rushed to the front of the ballroom, where a sumptuous blonde tantalized and frightens them by dancing in the nude. Blindfolded, the Negro boys stage a "battle royal, " a free-for-all in which they pummel each other to the drunken shouts of the whites. "Practical jokes," humiliations, terrors—and then the boy delivers a prepared speech of gratitude to his white benefactors. Any person with values and morals would be appalled and ashamed by that the way the white men behaved. The nightmare
In this event, the narrator and several of his classmates must fight blindfolded until only one person remains standing. While the drunken crowd of respected bankers, lawyers, judges, doctors, and even a pastor finds this to be great entertainment, to the participants it is quite humiliating and degrading. Eventually the narrator and one other man are left alone in the ring. The narrator offers to let the other man win, but the request is refused. Therefore, the two continue to fight until the narrator eventually loses. The fact that grown, respected man can watch and be entertained by this barbaric behavior. I believe that these young men were placed on display for these influential white men. These young men were used to amuse them for one night. It is as if these influential white men were watching two chickens go at it or two dogs fighting. Those young men may have been black but they were still men, human. How can we as a society accept or condom this type of behavior? Who draws the line? I suppose at that time these influential men did and that is why to this day we as a society are fighting to regress from our past and to remember as President Lincoln stated "Men are created equal . . .