Symbolism In Battle Royal

     In Chapter 1 of Invisible Man, Ellison's unnamed protagonist relates the "Battle Royal" scene.  The narrator describes the white female dancer, saying "She seemed like a fair bird-girl girdled in veils calling to me from the angry surface of some gray and threatening sea" (Ellison 19).  With this metaphor Ellison suggests the lure that the white female represents to the young black boy.

The main theme of Battle Royal occurs again with the incident of the electrified rug. After the battle has ended, the boys are allowed to pick bills and coins off of a rug. As they try to take the money off the rug, they are jolted with electricity. Even though the pain factor involved in picking the cash off the rug is very high, the boys force themselves to carry on. This brilliantly captures the economic hardship faced by the black community and the negative effect of this hardship on social harmony. Once more, a theme of suppressed dignity emerges. It shows that even after their biggest fight for respect ended, African Americans were forced to endure racism and prejudice in other

The electrified rug is another important piece in this story. The boys are given the opportunity to take bills and coins off of a rug, after the battle royal has been completed. As they grab for the money they receive jolts of electricity from the rug. The boys find it extremely hard not to reach for the money even though they will go through much pain in doing so. These activities again represent the African American's struggle for equality. Even though segregation became an eventual realization the blacks had to suffer much. Blacks attending schools with whites still had to endure racial prejudices and misjudgments by much of the population. The boys in "Battle Royal" were given the opportunity to get money, but they had to endure the physical pain of being electrocuted in the process. The white men again are amused by these activities just as men throughout the years were amused by the activities of African American's. The blacks were given things but with a price attached to it just as the boys were.

Ultimately, the narrator realizes because of racial stereotypes, people see him for how they want to see him; he decides to be invisible. During the battle royal scene, the black men, including the narrator, transform into the racial stereotype of a violent animal, “The boys groped about like blind cautious crabs crouching to protect their mid-sections, their heads pulled in short against their shoulders…” (23). The men don’t realize they are acting like servile savages because they are wearing blindfolds; they are blinded by the truth. In addition, when the African-Americans try to collect the fake coins on the electrified ground, again they

The point of view in Ralph Ellison’s “Battle Royal” comes strictly from his trials and tribulations that he has overcome as a young black writer that began before the nineteen Fifties. Ralph Ellison was a black writer who was born on March 1, 1914 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma only seven years after it had actually became a state. After completing the lengthy research of this man and his works I found that Ellison once had considered becoming a classical music composer after getting the idea from a nineteenth century opera composer named Richard Wagner. The reading of “Battle Royal" from “Literature An Introduction to reading and writing” by Edgar V. Roberts and Robert Zweig Tenth Edition was actually the first chapter of Ellison’s novel

The electrified rug is another important piece in this story. The boys are given the opportunity to take bills and coins off of a rug, after the battle royal has been completed. As they grab for the money they receive jolts of electricity from the rug. The boys find it extremely hard not to reach for the money even though they will go through much pain in doing so. These activities again represent the African American’s struggle for equality. Even though segregation became an eventual realization the blacks had to suffer much. Blacks attending schools with whites still had to endure racial prejudices and misjudgments by much of the population. The boys in "Battle Royal" were given the

The treatment of blacks is frightening. The white society really believes that blacks deserve no better. In his article “Imagery in the ‘Battle Royal’ Chapter of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man,” Norman German states, “the animal imagery graphically highlights Ellison’s theme that when one sex or race treats another as an object or animal, both become dehumanized or bestial” (1). Ellison stated, “Much of the rhetorical and political energy of white society went toward proving to itself that we were not human” (German 2). The white men in “Battle Royal” not only treat the young black men as animals, or objects, but also the stripper. Therefore, they become animals themselves.

Battle Royal was published in 1952 and was about the “invisible man” to carry out his grandfather’s dying wishes about the progressing fight African Americans face. During this time period racism was a heavy symbol of this nation’s creed and impacted African Americans every day. Ralph Ellison used reader’s animals to depict characters in situations to give readers more understanding to the story.

The Battle Royal symbolizes the way African Americans have been treated throughout history. The fight is between 10 African Americans in a ring, being controlled and yelled at by wealthy white individuals. As the fight begins to progress the men begin to yell racist and offensive words and remarks to the ones fighting, such as: “black bastard” and “nigger”. This is a representation of our nation’s white population point of view towards black people. During the Battle Royal, it gives an insight on exactly how belittled and talked down to African Americans were. The men treated the fighters as if they were there superiors and found a sick sense of amusement in the fact that they could control the black-on-black

The brain children of Harlem Renaissance “Battle Royal”, “Oblivion”, and “The Weary Blues” all used sleep as an example of release of the issue of life. “Battle Royal” from Invisible Man has one example of the narrator falling asleep and that is at the very end of the story. When the narrator went home after giving his speech and receiving an acceptance to a college, later that night he had fallen asleep and dreamed about a circus with his grandfather. His grandfather has passed away at the beginning of the story, comforting him in the narrators’ dream. His grandfather had told him to open the briefcase that the narrator had gotten and it contained a letter that had another letter inside with a stamp on it

(ES) He doesn't know what he wants to do with her perplexed by his inner emotions and feeling as though that only he can protect her from the eyes that surround him. (ES) The white men surrounding them can also be a metaphor for how we feel when we feel this way, looking, and subsequently feeling as though you have done something wrong and not looking and then feeling that temptation arise from within oneself. (ES) She doesn't just affect the protagonist, she also affects society's highest class causing them to go insane over her having given into the vices surrounding them. (MP) The “gold” coins are symbols of tools used to deceive and lie. (SS) “But what had excited me, scattered here and there, were the gold pieces.” (Ellison 283) “I did not even mind when I discovered that the gold pieces I had scrambled for were brass pocket tokens” (Ellison 287).(ES) The brass tokens were simply used to deceive the boys into fighting one another for the pleasure of the white men perversely watching the boys being electrocuted, laughing and enjoying themselves at watching the boys being in pain and desperation.(ES) This was all a lie though to the boys as the gold coins were actually brass tokens, another way of these white men were appearing to help the boys but in actuality were only helping themselves and causing pain to the black youth.

men being beaten nearly to death as a form of entertainment. He does this to

The women of the story are not treated with the respect, which reflects their social standings. The first image of the women that the reader gets is a typical housewife. They are imaged as “wearing faded house dresses and

The short story, Battle Royal by Ralph Ellison, a blindfold is used as one of the major symbols of the story. The blindfold symbolizes the narrator’s inability to see the battle he is truly up against. The African American narrator of the short story is invited to give a speech at a gathering of some of the towns white citizens after successfully delivering the same speech at his graduation. When the narrator arrives he is subjected to doing horrifying things. One of which is having to blindly and brutally fight some of his black schoolmates all of whom are also blindfolded. While the narrator is in the ring taking hard hits, his thoughts return speech. He is so focused on delivering a speech of quality that will win over the white audience. The narrator states, “The harder we fought the more threatening the men became. And yet, I had begun to worry about my speech again. How would it go? Would they recognize my ability? What would they give me” (Ellison 6)? The narrator is so blindly focused on receiving admiration from the

While the Battle Royal scene illustrates issues concerning white power over black men, it also demonstrates the white patriarchy’s power over women regardless of race. The exotic dancer is in a similar position as the black boys in this scene as she is dehumanized and objectified. This is demonstrated by the “small American flag tattooed upon her belly” (Ellison, 19) which Isiah Lavender III argues “asserts the white man’s ownership of her, invalidating her personhood, rendering her invisible” (147). Additionally, that the dancer is never named asserts her invisibility and aligns her with the nameless protagonist. The protagonist recognizes