In the short story “Battle Royal” the story is set during an era of slavery after the Civil War. The narrator is reminiscing about his last moments with his grandfather and how his grandfather calls himself a traitor and a spy on his deathbed. The narrator begins to remember a moment during his youth where he was meant to give a graduation speech in an all-white male atmosphere of the town’s leaders and the surprising turn of events before he could even give his speech. When the narrator and the black boys walk into the venue for the event, they find out they are part of the entertainment for the evening. The black boys are sent to the back to change into boxing shorts and gloves and made to stand at one side of the boxing ring. While they are standing we find out there is another part to the entertainment. There is a blonde, fully naked white woman who is made to give an erotic dance for the white men’s viewing pleasure. The blonde woman holds a lot of significance in the story. Just like the black boys, she too has been brought in for the white man entertainment. She proves to be just a worthless as the black boys. We see that both the black boys and the blonde woman are represented as toys to the white men. Both the woman and the black boys are undermined as "things", “The hair was yellow like that …show more content…
In “Battle Royal” the American Dream is one of freedom, liberty, and equality, which is symbolized by the flag tattoo on the naked blonde. Due to the corruption of this dream, American values have been replaced by the relentless pursuit of money, sex, and power. During the story the black boys are blindfolded and sent to opposite sides of the ring, where they’re told “See that boy over there...I want you to run across and at the bell and give it to him right in the belly. If you don’t get him, I’m going to get you. I don’t like his looks.”
Randy Roberts, author of the article “Jack Johnson wins The Heavyweight Championship” sheds light on the fight of Jack Johnson with Tommy Burns; he highlights the racial attitude in the twentieth century. Roberts opens his article by mentioning about the concerned whites, as the author proceeds, according to the whites it was a tragic and saddest day of their lives as the race won. Dixie was agitated, firstly, because Booker T. Washington dined at the White House and, secondly, the victory of Jack Johnson. However, blacks rejoiced all over the United States with this news. Roberts mentions about a journalist report, it stated that the genuine satisfaction the blacks experienced with the single victory of Johnson was not being observed in forty years.
They say things in the young men’s ears like, “I want you to run across at the bell and give it to him right in the belly. If you don’t get him, I’m going to get you. I don’t like his looks” (229). The men are repeatedly called “nigger” instead of by their actual names. They are turned against their own kind. The nameless character makes it to the last of the battle royal. He keeps trying to bargain with his opponent to let him win and he’d pay him. But the man had it in his mind that he wasn’t fighting for the guest of the evening but for himself. This is so untrue. He wouldn’t have even been there had he not been forced to attend and perform. Nothing could represent black ignorance more than the train of thought of these two men. The nameless black citizen just wants to look good in front of the men that put him in the ring and his opponent really believes he’s in control of what’s going on.
In the summer of 1944, General George S. Patton and his 3rd Army successfully broke through heavy German Forces resistance from the Normandy invasion. German forces were in total disarray by the end of August 1944. Patton pleaded with his boss, General Omar Bradley, that if 3rd U.S. Army could be allocated as little as 400,000 gallons of fuel, he could be inside Germany in two days. Time was crucial before the inevitable reaction by the Germans to shore up their defense, preventing Patton from advancing. General Bradley refused Patton's request for more fuel; Unfortunately, General Patton advanced to Germany. Morale ran high throughout Patton’s Army, and there was no sign of heavy resistance before the German border. Consequently, by early September, the 3rd U.S Army had ground to a virtual halt along the flooded Moselle River. In places, Patton's tanks and vehicles ran out of fuel on the battlefield and their swift momentum outran their supply lines (Fugate, 1999). Lack of logistics allowed the German forces to take advantage of Patton’s Army and initiate one of the largest tank battles of World War II, the Battle of Arracourt.
Curley, Suzanne. “Bullies, Baseball Caps, and Black History.” Latimes.com. 13 Feb. 1994. Web. 25 Feb. 2010.
The narrator in “Battle Royal”, by Ralph Ellison, is too naive and meek to challenge his place in a society ruled by whites. He is a young, black man trapped in a world blighted with social inequality with limited opportunity to advance in life just because of his race. He is torn apart by his grandfather's advice and by his desire to please members of white society. Ellison uses satire and symbolism to depict the narrators struggle for equality and identity.
He wants her and at the same time wants her to go away, "to caress her and destroy her". The black boys who were to take part in the battle were humiliated, some passed out, others pleaded to go home. But the white men paid no attention. The white men end up attacking the girl, who is described as having the same terror and fear in her eyes as the black boys. Once the girl escapes, the black boys get in the boxing ring and are blindfolded for the battle royal.
Men during the time of the slavery were faced with many obstacles and treated with a substandard below even your regular household dog. To truly understand this, let this marinate into your mind and understand if “I was flogged up; for where I should have received moral, mental, and religious instruction, I received stripes without number, the object of which was to degrade and keep me in subordination. I can truly say, that I drank deeply of the bitter cup of suffering and woe. I have been drag-ged down to the lowest depths of human degradation and wretchedness, by Slaveholders” (Bibb, pg 13-14). To begin trying to break down the hardship of this treatment is hard to understand and even harder to understand how these enslave males would understand what a man is or how to be a man. Just being whipped wasn’t enough to be completely downgraded “…[S]laveholders…wish to have a little sport … they go among the slaves and give them whiskey, to see them dance, "pat juber," sing and play on the banjo. Then get them to wrestling, fighting, jumping, running foot races, and butting each other like sheep. This is urged on by giving them whiskey; making bets on them; laying...
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work. The story “Battle Royal” by Ralph Ellison displays a few specific themes through the story which are easy to depict. A few themes from this story are, first racism and finding his self identity, then the danger of fighting stereotype with stereotype, and last blindness. These themes play an important role in the story to better help the reader understand it.
There was one symbol in the story that stood out especially in my mind and that was the stripper. She was a tall blonde-haired woman with a tattoo of the American flag on her stomach. I think the stripper symbolized the perfect American white woman, something a black man can strive for all his life to obtain, but would never receive. This was a symbol of the many things that a white man could have whereas a black man could not.
The first major symbol in this story is the battle royal itself. The battle royal symbolizes the struggle for equality in the black community. The fight shows how the black Americans try to overcome the brutal treatment and the fear that comes from the violence of segregation and slavery. When the narrator is in the elevator with the other fighters, he thinks that he has the option in participating in the battle, but in reality he has no choice. This event introduced another theme of a reward that cannot be attained. This battle is also a representation of how the white men feel dominant and feel pleasure in keeping the black men fearful of them. In addition to the white men’s sense of dominance over the black men, this event is also pointed towards black society when the narrat...
Just a few pages into the book, words had already begun to jump out at me, capturing my attention. “The kids in Newark, black and brown, speaking Spanglish, hoods over their heads, wheeling their stolen cars over to the local chop shop -- they were aliens in America. Strange, forever separate and separated from the American ideal. But these Glen Ridge kids, they were pure gold, every mother’s dream, every father’s pride. They were not only Glen Ridge’s finest, but in their perfection they belonged to all of us. They were Our Guys (page 7).” This is a story about White Privilege, I thought. After reading the next two pages, I changed my mind. “...I wanted to understand how their status as young athlete celebrities in Glen Ridge influenced their treatment of girls and women, particularly those of their age.....I was especially curious about what license they were permitted as a clique of admired athletes and how that magnified the sense of superiority they felt as individuals (pages 8-9).” Oh! This is a story about jock culture, I thought.
In the beginning of the novel, it becomes known that the narrator is a black boy living in the south. He is discriminated against by everybody around him. He is seen as nothing. The narrator is chosen to take part in the Battle Royal, which is a fight between ten black boys used to entertain the white men of the town. The narrator describes this experience by saying “But now I felt a sudden fit of blind terror. I was unused to darkness. It was as though I had suddenly found myself in a dark room filled with poisonous cottonmouths. I could hear the bleary voices yelling insistently for the battle royal to begin” (21). This quote explains that the narrator is being put in a position that he does not want to be in. He is being treated like he is less than all of the men gathered to watch the fight. Once the fight begins, the narrator also explains “Blindfolded, I could no longer control my motions. I had no dignity. I stumbled about like a baby or a drunken man” (22). This quote states that the narrator feels humiliated. He is being treated like he is nothing. The fight is discouraging and humiliating for the narrator to ha...
At first, the boys are taken to a room where a nude woman is dancing. When the boys turn their heads away, they are yelled at for not looking. The tone of the rebuke implies that the blacks were not entitled to most of the ‘good’ things being white could bring them and that they weren’t really good enough for them. The boys then compete in the Battle Royal. This classic example of symbolism shows the fight African Americans have been putting up against an unfair system over time and how it was necessary to persevere and have courage even when hope diminished. The boys fiercely beat one another. This may perhaps also represent in some small part the extent to which a united community’s harmony may be disrupted and damaged...
However, it is irresponsible to assert that the narrator “learnt” the misogynist outlook solely from the Brotherhood, but rather, the disdain at the women is deemed as a general societal fashion at the time, because the narrator’s attitude toward women remains constant if we recall his reaction in the “battle royal” scene. Much ink is spilled when the narrator sees the blonde in the ballroom. He “desire to spit on her”; “destroy her” and even “murder her” (Ellison 19). However, if we scrutinize the scene more carefully, it is underlined that the narrator’s feeling is remarkably conflicting. As a matter of fact, the narrator is also “strongly attracted”; he also wants to “caress her” and “love her” (Ellison 19) in the scene. Apparently, the
Miller, Patrick B. Wiggins, David K. Sport and the color line: Black athletes and Race relations in Twentieth-century America. 2004. The Journal of Southern History 70 (4) (Nov 2004): 990.