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Battle Royal
The author of Battle Royal, Ralph Ellison, was a civil rights era writer who was inspired by a host of literally works and his own experiences as he grew up in the USA. He knew of the black codes; regulations that were the foundation of racial classism and institutionalization of racial poverty (Banks, 896). This paper serves to show the racial oppression as captured in symbolism in his story, Battle Royal
The story is set to open in a southern town during the first part of this 20th century. The writer adopts the retrospective narrative of the first person. He gives an account of the occurrences from graduation in high school to the point at which he began to live in the underground. It was a time to transition from adolescence into the commencement of maturity. The narrator delivers a speech at his high school that impresses the audience. He is invited to address the prominent citizens of the southern town (Hayman, 129). Upon arriving at the venue of the speech, he is hounded together with several of his schoolmates to fight on a stage. A nude lady dances on the scene, and they are forced to stare at her.
After the performance, they are blindfolded and instructed to fight with one another. As the fight continues, the audience drops fake coins on an electrified carpet, which delivers a shock to them when they try to pick. This scene is representative of an artificial world, and the coins suggest the extent of the emancipation of black people. The author utilizes the coins as symbols of identity. These coins represent the image of black people that white people hold during that historical period. In the symbolism of innocent naivety, the coins have implications in the form of shock that only the white audience knows. This description in the book is emblematic of a fake identity. Black people are sequestered to it by their white masters as they are introduced to the barriers that they will never cross (Williams, 275). The narrator is expected to yield to these rational expectations to experience the removal of some of the social barriers.
In a description of racial bigotry, the narrator expresses how he gave a speech to a jeering audience that almost lynches him for using the word equality. He is forced to apologize, and because of his surrender, he gains a scholarship to a local college. Nonetheless, this College is only reserved for black students. The College is a symbol of racial discrimination, and the scholarship is granted to him on condition that he consents to the humiliation. The Battle Royal and awarding of the scholarship serves as the initiation experience of the narrator into the reality of his life (Lecter, 52). This scholarship will allow him to pursue life beneath the existence of white supremacy. The writer’s symbology of using briefcase is meant to express the oblivious self-sabotage that the narrator will face. Other than being a symbol of oppression, the suitcase is also a symbol of self-victimization.
The Battle Royal illustrates, through symbols, that the machinations of white supremacists serve to manipulate black people to fight one another, to undergo manipulations of reality, and to be brainwashed by education. The white supremacists undertake these efforts to form poor leaders out of black people that display potential. The author writes this narrative to open the eyes of the audience to the unwitting self-sabotage of the narrator.
The narrator remains unaware of the challenges that the white racists have inundated his path with as he sets off for CollegeCollege. The narrator has the impression that education will free him from the travails of racism and allow him to gain an individual identity. He does not expect the ignorance that is going to be visited upon him by both the whites and the blacks on his quest towards personal identity. It is used as a device by the writer to give a broader perspective to the narrator. It gives him the benefits of invisibility that he requires to absolve the futility of his actions. The protagonist suffers anguish in the hands of a fellow black man who does not understand why he has not honed the skill of telling lies to white people. This narrative is used as a device by the author in this context to express that the value of education is to give a black person the capability to lie to white people to appease them (Banks, 907). opens up the audience to a contextual view of education as a system to perpetuate the harmful racial discrimination against black people. The entire education system is set up to encourage racial discrimination.
At this point in the story, the protagonist is expelled from his institution and given a letter of introduction to prospective employers in New York. The author employs these tools of oppression to illustrate the moral bankruptcy existent in white societies in that context. After being expelled from CollegeCollege, the narrator has begun perceiving the racial obstacles that are in his path and feels fatigued by the expectation to proceed with placating white racists (Williams, 277). The protagonist discovers that Doctor Bledsoe misled him to secure his expulsion from CollegeCollege. Also, he finds that the letters of recommendation written by the CollegeCollege are essential tools of oppression that were cleverly disguised. They offer employers a description as a device to invoke the oppressive memories that the narrator heard from his grandfather. The grandfather had shown him similar letters that only served as obstacles to his ascendancy; a powerful device reminiscent of the slave trade. The commendation letter is a device the writer used to mirror the notes that were written by slave owners to allow their illiterate slaves to move from one plantation to another.
The narrative exposes that the latter-day racism-fuelled slavery as an extension of the abolished slavery. The antagonists, in this case, are both white and black people. As the protagonist proceeds on his journey, he realizes that he is unlikely to achieve his goals with each passing day. It takes him some time to discover the racial discrimination implicit in his letter of recommendation. The writer successfully weaves the theme of racism and self-sabotage in his narrative by drawing parallels among the Battle Royal, the CollegeCollege, and his work experiences (Lecter, 58). It is during his struggles to find work that he discovers he was misled and deceived even by his black people. The author uses this collaboration between black and white people to sabotage the cause of the black person as a device to explain the duplicity that is espoused by successful black antagonists in this context.
Subsequently, the narrator secures a job at a paint factory whose slogan, “If it’s optic white, it’s the right, white “is reminiscent of a childhood jingle, but the narrator used to sing “if you’re white. You’re right” (Armengol, 38). The writer cleverly uses this slogan to display the extent of white connivance and the collaboration with self-serving black people in a society. The self-serving black character, in this case, is Brockway, who serves as the supervisor who coined the slogan in the first place.
The narrator spends a significant amount of time at the paint factory but is entirely unable to learn how to make white paint. The author uses this description of the failure to make white colours like a mirror to the lack of self-identity or individual freedom that the narrator displays. It is through an act of rebellion that an explosion happens in one of the furnaces, sending the narrator to a hospital. In the hospital, it dawns on him that the explosion serves as the death of his former personality and a requirement that he has to morph a new character (Hayman, 138). The furnace explosion scene and the hospital scene symbolize the awakening of the protagonist to the reality of intertwined freedom and identity intertwined freedom and individuality. It is at this point that the protagonist realizes that for him to access release, he requires an identity.
After the experience at the furnace, the narrator transforms akin to a rebirth. He rejects Brockway, a fellow black person. He meets Mary, a motherly woman who decides to care for him. Mary helps him reconnect with his roots and introduces him to such idiosyncratic black practices as eating yams on the streets (Armengol, 44). He takes on this identity with boldness and resolution as his newfound freedom. After this instance of self-awareness, the narrator proceeds to join the Brotherhood and gain an identity amongst similar people. After entering the Brotherhood, the narrator moves to give a speech at Harlem, benefiting from his rich vision. He can perceive shackles and themes of oppression. This clarity allows him to be aware of the blindness, of the journey of his people. The writer uses this as a device to display the extent to which the narrator’s sense of racial identity has progressed.
In summary, after the author utilizes symbolism and literary devices to deliver a compelling narrative of racism. The protagonist’s experience throughout the story gives him the realization that Society is skewed towards concealing black people from history. The writer uses the briefcase to symbolize his newfound racial identity that has been shaped and determined by white people. The white people and white institutions that have given the protagonist his now-defunct sense of identity. These relics define a fake identity that Society attaches to clack people. The writer uses them to enhance the messages that the protagonist’s grandfather gave him – to the white people and duplicitous black people; he is a resource to be used.
Bibliography
ARMENGOL, JOSEP M. “Race Relations in Black and White: Visual Impairment as a Racialized and Gendered Metaphor in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and Herman Melville’s ‘Benito Cereno.'” Atlantis (0210-6124), vol. 39, no. 2, Dec. 2017, pp. 29–46. EBSCOhost, doi:10.28914/ATLANTIS-2017-39.2.02.
Banks, Joy. “Invisible Man: Examining the Intersectionality of Disability, Race, and Gender in an Urban Community.” Disability & Society, vol. 33, no. 6, July 2018, pp. 894–908. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/09687599.2018.1456912.
Hayman, Casey. “‘Black Is… Black Ain’t’: Ralph Ellison’s Meta-Black Aesthetic and the ‘End’ of African American Literature.” American Studies (00263079), vol. 54, no. 3, Sept. 2015, pp. 127–152. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1353/ams.2015.0100.
Lecater Bland Jr., Sterling. “Being Ralph Ellison: Remaking the Black Public Intellectual in the Age of Civil Rights.” American Studies (00263079), vol. 54, no. 3, Sept. 2015, pp. 51–62. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1353/ams.2015.0104.
Williams, Dana A. “‘The Next Time You Got Questions Like That, Ask Yourself.'” African American Review, vol. 51, no. 4, Winter 2018, pp. 273–278. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1353/AFA.2018.0043.