In Battle Royal, an unidentified African American protagonist elucidates upon the inhumane nature of racism and segregation in the

south. In the story, the young invisible man deals with betrayal, lack of self-identity, and racist, and sexist themes. The Invisible Man faces the betrayal of white people through lies regarding freedom, and even some white people that he thought he could trust. The narrators lack of self-identity is rooted with his grandparents, specifically his grandfather. His trek with racism and view sexism is most prominently symbolized in the story. Although slavery had been abolished for about eighty years, the laws and the justice system did not protect African Americans from the betrayal of segregation and racism at the hand of white people. There was still lynching and the senseless mistreatment and even murders of African Americans by whites. In Battle Royal, Ralph Ellison displays the behavior African Americans had to adopt, that was considered desirable to white people, to survive. But, these behaviors were also seen as a betrayal to the black race. Much of the narrators experience with betrayal came by the people and ideals that he trusts. In the story, Ellison uses imagery and a sort of twisted metaphor to demonstrate the ideological power of white supremacy that he himself had to endure. The narrators arrival at the hotel introduces betrayal, broken promises, and game-playing themes. The narrators speech introduces a pattern of irony and duality that pervades the story. In doing so, he establishes a pattern of simply doing what others expect of him, without examining his motives, establishing his own value system, or considering the consequences of his actions. The narrator is mocked and criticized by respected white men when he attempted to give his graduation speech. His speech in some way gives an

example of how the white men have trained him to believe the racial responsibility, but not racial equality. Although as a young high school graduate he navely assumed he had some choice in whether to participate in the battle royal, looking back on the incident, he realizes that he had no choice. I suspected that fighting a battle royal might detract from the dignity of my speech. (137) Through his work, Ellison suggests that bigotry hinders the development of selfidentity. Reading of Ellison's novel suggests that the theme of invisibility has different dimensions: (a) Invisibility suggests the unwillingness of others to see the individual as a person. The narrator is invisible because people see in him only what they want to see, not what he really is. Invisibility, in this sense, has a strong sense of racial prejudice. White people often do not see black people as individual human beings. (b) Invisibility suggests separation from society. While the narrator is in his hole, he is invisible. He cannot be seen by society. He is invisible because he chooses to remain apart. Invisibility, in this sense, is associated with hibernation, with the narrator's conscious choice to remain in his cave and think. (c) Invisibility suggests lack of self-hood. A person is invisible if he has no self, no identity. (So Black and Blue: Ralph Ellison and the Occasion of Criticism by Kenneth W. Warren page 89) Throughout this story, Ellison is concerned with the masks, roles, and labels people impose on one another in this particular society. The narrators question of self-identity is not restricted to the mere twenty years of his own life but to the lives of his grandparents, who were born as slaves and freed eighty-five years before. This was a freedom that made them rhetorically part of a United States, but that in the social sphere kept African-Americans separate from

whites like separate fingers on the hand. About eighty-five years ago they were told they were free, united with others of our country in everything pertaining to the common good, and, in everything social, separate like the fingers of the hand.(137) The battle royal scene symbolizes a racist, sexist, social, and political power struggle. Central to this struggle are the issues of race, class, and gender, three concepts the narrator must come to terms with before he can acknowledge and accept his identity as a black man in white America. To underscore his message that blacks forced to live in a segregated society are denied their human rights, Ellison uses two powerful symbolic elements to symbolize racism: the white blindfolds and the brass tokens. The white blindfolds symbolize how the narrator was blinded by white. Inundated by white racist propaganda concerning the inferiority of blacks. Because none of the boys can afford to buy the cars advertised, the tokens underscore the economic inequity between blacks and whites. The tokens also suggest the worthless, empty gesture inherent in tokenism, which is the practice of including a select few blacks into white society without granting all blacks social equality as well as social responsibility. (Shadowing Ralph Ellison by John Wright pg 56) The battle royal is a brutal rite of passage that thrusts the nave narrator into a violent, racist, chaotic world where the rules that govern a society do not apply, there are no rounds [and] no bells at three-minute intervals(141). By participating in the battle royal, the narrator learns that life is a struggle for survival, but at this point he still believes in the philosophy of Booker T. Washington: that blacks can achieve success through education and industry. Symbolically, the scene introduces the theme of struggle among blacks through racism for an elusive prize that often remains out of reach. The

economic structure of the spectacles implicitly criticizes ways in which money and economic power sustain the expression of racial hatred. As the schoolmates fight each other for coins, trying not to get shocked, it seems that Ellison is proposing a parody of what it is like to try to succeed in a segregated society. And, in this segregated world, economic success makes the African-American individual a target to both other African Americans and to whites that are threatened by such success. The story offers an ironic display of self-realization that both highlights and critiques the forces of racism, and discrimination. The imagery description of the naked white woman in the middle of the room as having hair that is yellow like that of a circus kewpie doll, the face powdered and rouged, as though to form an abstract mask. (139) Here, the white woman is seen as occupying a similar social station to that of the young black men. Like them, she is not treated as a human being, but as an inanimate object, a doll, brought in as a toy or plaything, part of the circus-like entertainment for the enjoyment of the white men. The narrator ultimately seems to be sympathetic to the white woman. Yet, he describes her eyes as hollow and smeared a cool blue, the color of a baboons butt. (138) This is certainly an odd descriptive image. However, the association of the naked white women with a baboons butt explains his both disgust and disdain for her. With further reading, the narrator sees the woman as delicate, and vulnerable, indicating his feelings of sympathy for her, as she is also being humiliated and exploited by the roomful of white men, who appear intimidating as some gray and threatening sea. So, as the story mainly exploits the racist themes, general discrimination towards blacks and white women shows the true heartlessness of the racist, sexist, white men in the story.

In Battle Royal by Ralph Ellison, the Invisible Man is moving away from his idealism, and is becoming a realist. The narrator later associates himself with an animal, one that is delicate, vulnerable, and beautiful: a butterfly. As he lies knocked to the floor, he watches a dark red spot of my own blood shaping itself into a butterfly, glistening and soaking into the soiled gray world of the canvas. Even in the moment of utter pain, humiliation, and defeat, the narrator maintains the sense of self-worth to envision himself as something beautiful. Further, butterflies are associated with change and rebirth, as the beautiful butterfly emerges from the plain cocoon. In some ways, this experience is a sort of rebirth for the narrator, as he gains a deeper, albeit more troubling, perspective on the nature of racism, and his own position in a white, racist society. The narrator experiences an awakening during his bout in "Battle Royal" that causes him to stray from his initial attitude of submission, and develop an aggressive, but cautious approach to the circumstances that plague the African American community. He alludes to this epiphany proclaiming, " I finally pulled erect and discovered that I could see with my eye partly opened now there was not so much terror. I moved carefully, avoiding blows, although not too many to attract attention, fighting from group to group." (141) The narrator has seemingly stumbled upon the essence of his grandfather's dying request, by being aware he is able to embark on a plan of action that would undoubtedly appease his grandfather. He recognizes the white man's strategy, but pretends to still be blind. By pretending this, the narrator does not draw attention to himself, thereby freeing himself to navigate the minefield of being betrayed, greatly effected by racism, perceiving sexism, and finding who he really is.

A Battle To

Remember:

Battle Royal

AaLona Allen September 6, 2008 ENG 120