Behind the ‘Battle Royal’

A sanction of violence, uprising, gullibility, and realization Ralph Ellisons short bill Battle Royal depicts a different story that embroils the philosophical depths behind concepts of racism and suffering. It is about pleasing people that results to losing your own identity. It is a foreshadowing historical cataclysm as the fabricator attempts to transport his readers from idealism to realism and finally relating to the true meaning ones social identity.In the beginning of the story, a nameless, first-person narrator instinctively intimates that for the first twenty years of his life, he has looked at others to answer forefronts of self-definition. Identity issues could instantly be implicated as he entraps that it is only him who can embodiwork forcet out who he really is. In order to do this, the narrator must first discover that he is an invisible man As the story unfurls, it transfixes a scene in which he muses that its non only him whos blind but also, those who abus e the narrator by belittling him as chaste stereotype and erasing his individuality and human di custodysion.The primary objective of the narrator in the story is just to carry a good speech. Uneasy about it, he was really worried. While blindf matureed and being beaten(a) in the Battle Royal, he is still going over his speech inside his head. Symbolically, hes blind to the attackers that he must fend off. This is a stark depiction of the narrators utter blindness to racism happening around him and the all the dehumanizing acts that he is forced to participate in. Then, the narrator is softly remembering his grandfathers death. The narrator overhears him imparting some words to his father.Those words pursue the narrators psyche for years to come. On his deathbed, the narrators grandfather gives him a rather disturbing advice. The old man said Son, after Im gone I want you to keep up the good fight. I never told you, but I have been a traitor all my innate(p) days, a spy in the en emys country ever since I gave up my crampfish back in the Reconstruction. Live with your head in the lions mouth. I want you to pommel them with yeses, undermine them with grins, agree them to death and destruction, let them swallow you till they vomit or bust enormous open. Learn it to the young ones.Using personification, Ellison represents the lion as the duster man, who will roar throughout the duration of the story. The men roared as the narrator will struggle for the coins on the electric rug. When he tries to pull a white man onto the rug, the man raise up roaring with laughter and kicks him in the chest. During the narrators speech, the men yell for him to repeat the polysyllabic social responsibility and the room fills with the uproar of laughter. Clearly, the narrators question of identity could be traced back to the weary lives of his grandparents who were born as African slaves and freed years before.Rhetorically, this freedom bestowed unto them and do them part of a United States. But in the closer analysis, in the social circles during their time and as what the narrator experienced, African-Americans are still separated from whites it is somewhat like the separate fingers on the hand. Ellison descriptively used animals to symbolically represent people because in the course of history white men traditionally treated the black people as animals. In the first place, they were slaves. Also, when white men see au naturel(p) white women as sexual objects, ironically the white men transform themselves to animals.One instance in the story depicted a man who watches the woman dance and holds his arms up like an intoxicated panda bear. Although the symbolism of the animal imageries is not very obvious, how Ellison showcased these symbolism reinforced his themes. It adds up to the life and vitality of moral pictures demonstrating the vividness of Ellisons storytelling. Works Cited Ellison, R. W. Battle Royal. In Literature Reading, Reaching, Writi ng. Compact Fifth Edition by Kirszner & Mandell, p. 174 -185.