Literary Analysis Essay on Battle Royal by Ralph Ellison

Introduction

After I finished reading this short story, by Ralph Ellison I felt a lot of things but what I felt most was disgust and sheer hatred for the white characters in the story. A quick note is that I will be raw and dive in the story with total favoritism to the young African American our protagonist, who from now on I will just call him, "The Narrator", with that out the way lets start. The afro mentioned short story was originally found in the novel, 'The Invisible Man' written by Ralph Ellison in 1947 that tackled on the predicament and issues of the black man in America at the time (wasn't about invisibility). As I earlier stated this is a story that is troubling and most of the characters in it are frustrating and are merely easy to feel sorry for, to say the least (Wilcox, 987-1009). This is a story that talks mainly about African American people coming of age in an unfavorable situation that was initially set against them from the start. Most professionals have mainly given Ralph's work positive reviews but 'Book Week' famously stated that this short story was, "the most significant work of fiction between the years 1945 to 1965 that was written by an American. For this paper today we will be trying to analyze Battle Royal by Ralph Ellison with us dwelling in Ralph's bizarre world of "The Hunger Games"(with lack of a better analogy) by dissecting it word by word.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Plot Points in the Story

With a deep love and affection for Ellison's other works as one of the people who defined American literature in the 20th century, I too love Battle Royal and all its themes and commentary of American society in the early 20th century that was so visible in the period and to accommodate it in a work of fiction like this -is simply 'genius'. Battle Royal is a tale that have fantastic multiple plot points, ranging from, a dancing naked woman, people rolling on a electric carpet, our narrator dreaming about what I call his 'grandfather's curse', a speech being given by someone with blood coming out from their mouth, and some of the black characters being forced to fight blindfolded (Ellison, 286-295). So in other words, a little bit of everything, and the strange thing is that black folk are continuing to struggle even in the 21st century more than 150 years after slavery was abolished and more than half a century after ending, 'Jim Crow Laws'.

The Invisible Man

"The Invisible Man" is both the title of the novel that our story originally came from and the narrator in the story, as stated by many analysists and who I agree with. Trying to explain my earlier point is that we find out that our narrator being brought up in the American South and later moving to Harlem in New York City. Where the narrator calls the neighborhood, "the center of black culture" because of being locked up in the south and constantly following the white's man rule and now moving to Harlem witnessing how blacks live in Harlem and deliberating this as freedom (Sanders, 217-228). One of the things he finds incredible and refreshing is seeing black police officers' directions being obeyed by white drivers. Furthermore, the narrator who now seem to experience joy and freedom in New York compared to his home in the south, by stating that black people in Harlem seems to be the drivers of their own destinies. Why do I call him the invisible man? Well in the narrator's mind he sees himself as invisible when been plunged into the white society and being allowed to uncover his true self.

Themes Explored in the Narrative

This short story eerie as it is, remains a work of art to be desired and drooled over by critics, published in 1947 it was set as a reminder at the time of how dominant the concept of institutional and complete racism had persistent through, even the in period of publication is almost a century after slavery was abolished. This novel especially the first story in the book 'Battle Royal' came at a perfect time especially for the civil rights activists of the 1940s and 50s who read it and mirrored it as sweet medicine to their struggle of equal rights in the United States (Spaulding, 481-501). There are several themes explored in the story, ambiguity as an example(even if a minor one), at the beginning of Battle Royal we are introduced to our protagonist the narrator as he recalls his grandfather dying words.

Symbolism as a Theme

"...after I'm gone I want you to keep up the good fight, our life is a war... " this is the narrator's grandfather's last words and as he dies the narrator is left perplexed by what the meaning is. Both the narrator in his confusion and the reader bewilderment of his grandfather's warning and the narrator's ambiguous understanding leaves us feeling of humility for the grandfather. The biggest theme in the book is symbolism and its everywhere from the naked woman who symbolized the American Caucasian woman who is constantly assaulted by her white husband but where black men are not supposed to look at her, therefore, the blindfold and if caught looking you are were going to be given a beating hence talking about lynching. Another form of symbolism is when the black men are told to fight blindfolded and the rolling on an electrified carpet, this signified paradoxical nature of the black man's life in the U.S where the system is set against you right from the start.

Conclusion

In conclusion, there are a bunch of other themes talked about in the story like racism, freedom and institutional and which are equally as important as the ones dwelled in this review. This story Battle Royal is always timeless and with a truly magical twist can be retold with rather different characters but have the same outcome. This story talks about the long struggle of blacks in America and the many advances made in today's world but also serving to remind us real change is yet to come.

Work Cited

Ellison, Ralph. "Battle royal." The compact Bedford introduction to literature (3rd ed., pp. 286-295). New York: Bedford/St. Martin's.(Original work published 1947) (1994).

Sanders, Archie D. "ODYSSEUS IN BLACK: AN ANALYSIS OF THE STRUCTURE OF" INVISIBLE MAN"." CLA Journal13.3 (1970): 217-228.

Spaulding, A. Timothy. "Embracing Chaos in Narrative Form: The Bebop Aesthetic and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man." Callaloo 27.2 (2004): 481-501.

Wilcox, Johnnie. "Black Power: Minstrelsy and Electricity in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man." Callaloo 30.4 (2007): 987-1009.