“Battle Royal,” by Ralph Ellison was a very difficult piece of literature
for me to understand. As a little background information, Ellison was very much
into music (228). He was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on March 1, 1914 (221).
Different themes are presented throughout this short story, which reflect
different views that Ellison had at the time that he wrote this essay. One boy
is invited to speak at local men’s club where he will deliver his graduation
speech. As I go on, I will discuss the nature of the short story and how it
affected me. The narrator’s view of this entire situation at the men’s club
is kind of humiliating which will later set the stage for events that will
happen in his future. Black people are viewed different in this time period and
the narrator does not understand near the end of the story. The narrator looks
up to his grandfather. He told the narrator’s father to keep up the fight. The
father then tells the narrator what the grandfather told him. This was just
being passed down through the different generations. This to me shows the loving
relationship that the grandson and the grandfather share. Near the end of the
story however, his grandfather’s presence scares him to death. The
grandfather’s advice was a little too much for the narrator to handle. “Live
with your head in the lion’s mouth…overcome them with yeses…let ‘em
swoller you till they vomit.” This scares the boy. These last words that his
grandfather tells him makes him feel like that there is a curse hovering over
him. The family being black had a harder time growing up than the more wealthy
white folks did. He wrote a graduation speech that totally went against his
grandfather’s words that he gave the narrator. The town’s “leading white
people” loved the speech and asked him to deliver it at a local hotel in the
ballroom. This starts a “revolution” in the narrator’s life. The people at
the hotel make the narrator feel very uncomfortable. This group of “town’s
officials” turned out to be the local men’s club. They were smoking and
drinking, paying no attention to what the guests have to say. The leaders of the
club are more interested in the entertainment. At that time, they could have
cared less what the narrator had to say. They had a woman to come out and
“entertain” them. I feel that this is ironic because this showed how the
male portion of the society reacted to certain forms of entertainment. While
their wives were probably at home tending the children, these men at this club
were killing all the dignity and respect that the narrator had at that time.
Generally around the 1950s men would sit around old barbershops and tell their
“big tales” about how they caught the biggest one yet. Women had their
bridge club and also their garden club that kept them busy throughout the day.
This was a way for many men to relax after a hard day at work. According to Mack
Warren, a local barber in my hometown, he states that “tellin’ tales was
more than just a hobby for many men back in the 50’s, it was a way for them to
get away from the stresses of everyday life.” The pride in them (the people of
that era) helped determine the way of the country today. It helped determine the
way their children and grandchildren live today. The narrator being black had a
hard time realizing what the people there were doing. He was being mocked
without him even knowing it. Being black in this time period was very difficult
for the narrator because he wasn’t looked upon as much as the white people his
same age. This was not the case for some other men. Of course some had to be
perverse in some way or fashion. They got their pleasure from scenes such as the
woman dancer in “Battle Royal.” The men at the “smoker” enjoy this form
of entertainment with their drinks and cigars. The narrator has to sit through
all of this. I think that this scene humiliates the author. He is being
subjected to things beyond his control and things he had no choice to see. This
was a cheap and humiliating form of entertainment. The dancing woman was not the
only form of entertainment that night. All the “guests” invited to this
event had to be used as a form of entertainment also. Each of them were
“stripped” of their dignity by being blindfolded. They (the guests) did not
know if they were about to be hit or slapped. They had no idea what was going to
happen to them. Punching and fighting commenced and blood was shed. The narrator
got a blow to the eye. It became swollen. People were hurt and crying. The men
at the club could do no more to totally bash the dignity and pride that the
guests had built up all their life. I think that this episode represents part of
what the grandfather had to say on his deathbed. He was basically letting other
men control what he did. This makes the narrator realize that what he had in his
heart was now gone and that his grandfather was right all along. He knew that
this is not what he believed in. The white men were using the black teenagers as
a form of entertainment. This was wrong. After the beatings, the “men” threw
money in the center of the floor and made the guests fight for it. Whoever got
it first got to keep it. This type of “dog fight” was another humiliating
factor for the narrator. Everyone fought for himself. After all of this
humiliation, the narrator finally got to recite his graduation speech. The crowd
was still laughing at him and all the others that had been brutally beaten. He
gave his well-written speech with some quivering in his voice. The crowd
actually began to listen to him while he delivered his speech. They started to
listen when he said responsible. After the speech was over, the man over the
“men’s club” came up and praised him. To me, this was very ironic because
why would they do that to someone and then praise him for a job well done? I am
thinking that maybe they did this just to test his patience and pride. It paid
off because one of the white men gave him a brief case with a document inside of
it. The document was a scholarship to the State College for Negroes. The
narrator was ecstatic. He then had a dream that night. He dreamed about what his
grandfather had said earlier. He awoke with laughing in his ear. He had no idea
what it meant at that time. This incident with the beating made him realize that
he can stand up for himself and other people in turn making him a better person
for society. He felt some better because he proved them wrong. Black men in that
time period can make a difference and the narrator was out to prove it.