Battle Royal by Ralph Ellison (Essay Sample)

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Battle Royal by Ralph Ellison
The plot of the story starts with the narrator’s grandfather giving him a piece of advice. He was told to always pretend to be servile, and meek whenever he was with the white men, so that one day he would undermine the social class. He is then invited to party where he happens to be blindfolded, and thrown in a boxing ring with American boys. In the ring he’s is beaten up badly. Later after the battle, he collected some coins in form of reward that turned out to be brass (Armengol 29-46). After the fight, he managed to give a speech about the importance of education to the black boys and how they should defer from the white boys. The speech enabled the narrator to get a college scholarship.
The principle characters in the story were both the narrator and his grandfather who were trying to defer with the white men. The setting of the story was in the second half of the 20th century when the Americans were still fighting racism, equality, and oppression from the white. The setting of a hotel is also incorporated when the narrator and the other boys are invited to a hotel after fighting in the ring.
The point of view of the narrator was triggered by the suffering and tribulations faced by the young black boys in the hand of the whites. The invisible narrator faced many hardships during his youth which made him emerge strong.
The style used in the story is that of surrealism, realism, improvisational changing style. Themes such racism. Social class, equality, and western culture are well articulated by the story. Having chosen the Marxism philosophy which focusses on the social, economic and political aspects of a society, I find the story having some aspects that are socialist in nature (Habib 48). Economically the whites were better than the blacks, a situation that made them despise the blacks. Mos