Peer Review Essays

Battle Royal

As far as the literary illustration of racial inequality goes, Ralph Ellison’s invisible man is considered a masterpiece and is a timeless depiction of the injustices faced by a group of African Americans in a Southern village. Battle Royal constitutes the first chapter of the novel and provides the tone for the rest of the story. The story is based on a boy who tries to fit in an overwhelmingly white neighborhood and remembers the words of his grandfather “live with your head in Lion’s mouth” (Ellison, 7). From the start of the story, we see that the grandfather of the protagonist wants to find a way to merge into society by hook or by crook. This is perfectly described in a dialogue in which the grandfather tells the boy “overcome ’em with yeses, undermine ’em with grins, agree on ’em to death (Ellison, 15). One of the most intriguing aspects of the author’s writing is that it is replete with symbolism. The audience cannot help but notice that the author wanted to correlate the struggles of the boy with the hardships of the larger African American community. The setting of the story is also important in understanding its true meaning. The narrator was born and spent all of his life in a small village in the South of the United States. He moved to Harlem New York which is regarded as the melting pot of black culture in the country. The narrator’s astonishment at the culture of the North is another point of note in the story. We see that he is completely mesmerized by the fact that there are black policemen who are giving orders to white taxi drivers in the streets. The freedom that the narrator experiences in the North is another reminder of the blessings he has in life. Ellison has done a brilliant job in establishing a psychological ingenuity about the character. We feel that he defines himself by how others perceive him. This is where the concept of invisibility cloaks him and he admires the fact that he can operate whatever way he likes in a society that is completely different from him. The audience also realizes that Ralph might be speaking of his own accord in the story and how he felt as a black man in different geographical landscapes of the country. The writer’s experience during a very tumultuous time in the United States must have inspired at least some parts of the invisible man.

As Ralph Ellison was a renowned lover of Jazz, the concept of battle royal was conceived as an equivalent to the music genre. In fact, we see the author making several of his concepts in the whole of the invisible man based on jazz music. Battle royal is significant because it tells us the injustices faced by a whole community through the lens of a single individual. The narrator in the novel is a human representation of suffering and pain and constitutes the embodiment of racial persecution. Glimpses of the author himself are all over the story as we see that the invisible man was considered to be the smartest young lad of his community who was also given a chance to speak in front of some of the most respected people of the white community. He undergoes several harsh treatments along the way which is also symbolic of the cruel history of the African American community in the United States. The reader is completely shaken away at one point in the story in the Battle Royal when the boy has to undergo a ton of humiliation to secure a scholarship. This is a remnant of the fact that even the tiniest accomplishment and success have to be earned by forgoing self-respect by the African American community. The text of the story is written in an extremely descriptive manner and the narrator does not shy away from describing everything the way he sees them to be. The story is to be perceived more than reading because the author has used numerous symbols. Even though the story could have easily been turned into something melodramatic, the narrator uses a frank and thoughtful tone which allows the story to have a more reflective edge. The audience also feels that the invisibility of the character is also important for a better understanding of the times. Ellison is trying to convince the reader that the best way to endure hardships is to rationalize them and make them important to your struggle for success. Similarly, we can learn a lot about people and society just by looking around and observing. The molding of the character and the identity of the narrator tells us that everybody can learn a lot by countering the deceit and corruption that exists in society. The battle royal is a perfect name given to the chapter because the narrator has to fight many internal and external battles in his pursuit of identity.

Power through viewership is another major theme in the story because it gives us the relationship between how certain people have the power in a situation by just being external observers. The white people are shown to hold power in several situations because of their ability to pass judgments on their subjects. This is evident in the part of the story where black people are confused about whether to look at the dancing women in front of them or to look away. The white men ridicule the children to a point where they are confused about how to carry themselves. Internalized racism is another theme that describes the confusion the character goes through in the story. For instance, the invisible man remembers the harsh words of his grandfather about settling in a white neighborhood and the hardships people of his color have to go through to be on an equal footing with white people. We also feel this at the beginning of the story when the narrator is confident in fighting kids whom he thinks are intellectually inferior to them. This is a perfect example of how a black person is made to feel a certain way about a specific type of people from his own race. The narrator experiences these hardships to a full extent as he is humiliating time and time again. But the invisible man feels a contrast to the treatment he received in the South when he travels to the North of the country. This confuses him to such an extent that he wonders about his own character and personality and the effect external settings have on his life. This is an important symbol that can be attributed to the wider African American community because this problem is extremely common in the black people of the country (Walsh, 34). The struggle for identity is the most profound theme in the story and the narrator struggles between the option to comply with the advice given to him by his grandfather or to find his way in life with pride and dignity. Battle Royal can easily be described as a masterpiece because it prepares us to think about contemporary issues from the lens of the persecuted people in society. It also helps in understanding the different barriers in our social-cultural domain and the effects they have on generations of people.