Battle Royal by Ralph Ellison
"Battle Royal" by Ralph Ellison is a short story that explores themes of identity, racism, and social inequality through the experiences of a young African American man. The narrative unfolds as the mature narrator reflects on the profound advice given by his grandfather, urging him to navigate a world that is hostile to him with cunning and resilience. The story opens with the protagonist preparing to deliver a graduation speech to white community leaders, which initially appears to be a significant achievement for him and his peers. However, the occasion quickly devolves into a brutal and humiliating spectacle where high school classmates are blindfolded and forced to participate in a violent boxing match for the entertainment of a white audience.
The narrator's experience highlights the complex dynamics of race relations, as he grapples with the expectations placed upon him and the dehumanizing treatment he endures. As the fight unfolds, he finds himself torn between traditional notions of humility and the harsh reality of racial subjugation. Ultimately, the story culminates in a moment of ironic realization when the narrator delivers his speech, inadvertently revealing his true thoughts on social equality, only to be met with applause for conforming to societal expectations. This poignant tale serves as a critique of the societal norms that dictate African American existence and raises questions about the cost of assimilation and the struggle for dignity in a racially divided world.
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Battle Royal by Ralph Ellison
First published: 1947
Type of plot: Social realism
Time of work: 1947 and the late 1920's
Locale: Unnamed rural area in the American South
Principal Characters:
The narrator , an African American manHis grandfather The school superintendent Tatlock , a young man whom the narrator fights
The Story
The story consists of a frame in which the mature narrator remembers the advice that his dying grandfather gave to his son (the narrator's father) and his remembrance of a cruel betrayal that confirms the grandfather's advice.
The grandfather tells his son to "keep up the good fight," to continue the black people's war by guerrilla tactics, to be a traitor and spy in the enemy's country as he himself has been. He tells his son: "Live with your head in the lion's mouth. I want you to overcome 'em with yeses, undermine 'em with grins, agree 'em to death and destruction." The narrator and his alarmed family puzzle over the old man's last words, especially because the narrator has been praised by the town's powerful white men for his meekness and cooperativeness. He is secretly concerned that without meaning to he is already somehow carrying out his grandfather's advice.
The battle royal episode begins when white leaders ask the narrator to deliver a high school graduation speech on the virtues of humility to a gathering of leading white citizens, a "triumph" for the black community. The event, held in the ballroom of a leading hotel, turns out to be a "smoker," a male-only affair involving whiskey, cigars, and smutty entertainment. The latter begins with the battle royal of the title, a free-for-all boxing match in which blindfolded combatants punch at one another wildly. Because the boxers are all high school classmates of the narrator, he is recruited to take part.
Before the boxing match begins, a drunk woman does a nude dance before the equally drunk men, who try to grab her. After she escapes, the narrator and nine other African American high school boys are blindfolded and pushed into a ring, where they pound at one another to the blood-thirsty screams of the audience. By pushing his blindfold partly free, the sweaty and bloody narrator escapes some blows. He sees the other boys leaving the ring and realizes that he is being left alone with the biggest fighter, Tatlock. Because the custom is for the last two boxers to fight to the finish, the narrator tries to bribe Tatlock to take a dive, but he fails and is knocked out. Afterward, he and the other boys are invited to collect gold coins scattered on a rug for their payment, but the rug is electrified so they must endure shocks as they entertain the white men. The coins turn out to be brass advertising tokens.
Finally, the other boys are paid off and sent home, and the narrator is told to give his speech—which is a florid and conventional appeal to African Americans to be friendly toward whites and to accept the status quo. After gagging on blood from a cut in his mouth caused by a punch, the narrator inadvertently utters the phrase "social equality" instead of "social responsibility." The room goes quiet until he corrects himself. His return to meekness and humility is rewarded with thunderous applause, a calfskin briefcase, and a scholarship to the state college for Negroes. His family and neighbors are delighted, but he himself dreams about his grandfather, who shows him a message deposited in his briefcase: "Keep This Nigger-Boy Running." He awakens remembering the sound of the old man's ironic laughter.
Bibliography
De Santis, Christopher C. "'Some Cord of Kinship Stronger and Deeper than Blood': An Interview with John F. Callahan, Editor of Ralph Ellison's Juneteenth." African American Review 34, no. 4 (2000): 601-621.
Hersey, John. Ralph Ellison: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974.
Hobson, Christopher Z. "Ralph Ellison, Juneteenth, and African American Prophecy." MFS: Modern Fiction Studies 51, no. 3 (2005): 617-647.
Jackson, Lawrence. Ralph Ellison: Emergence of Genius. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2002.
McSweeney, Kerry. "Invisible Man": Race and Identity. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1988.
Nadel, Alan. "Ralph Ellison and the American Canon." American Literary History 13, no. 2 (2001): 393-404.
Porter, Horace A. Jazz Country: Ralph Ellison in America. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2001.
Warren, Kenneth. So Black and Blue: Ralph Ellison and the Occasion of Criticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Watts, Jerry Gafio. Heroism and the Black Intellectual: Ralph Ellison, Politics, and Afro-American Intellectual Life. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.
Yuins, E. "Artful Juxtaposition on the Page: Memory Perception and Cubist Technique in Ralph Ellison's Juneteenth." PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association 119, no. 5 (October, 2004): 1247.