Comparing Kurtz 'Battle Royal' And Porphyria's

The world is a place that is shaped by stories. Whether it be stories told by individuals or those found in a newspaper, we hear them and, inevitably, they shape our opinions. However, the majority of these headlines have a darker undertone and are related to the atrocities people have committed, not the good. Based on these headlines it is natural to assume that people are inherently evil. This assumption is not true. Although people are born with a sinful nature, the way that they are raised and the environment they are raised in determines whether or not they are truly evil. When people are born it is with the ability to sin, and as Psalm fifty one verse five says, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived …show more content…
The works of this unit showcase a few of the types of people that result from living in these environments. Kurtz represents selfish ambition, and anger, Porphyria’s lover represents sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, and anger, and the men from “Battle Royal” represent quarreling, dissension, division, and drunkenness. All of these characters can serve as examples of the larger human population and all show how being stuck in a brutal environment negatively affect you and make you …show more content…
However this story is unique as it is not one of the main characters that becomes truly evil, but those around him. The story is about a young black man that has been invited to a club to present his speech to some of the town’s prominent white men. Once he arrives he is forced into taking part in the battle royal and at this point we see those around him starting to become evil. Division, dissension and quarreling are obvious as soon as the boys began to fight as everyone in the room begins to yell out insults against the boys and fight with each others over elements of the fight. Not only are the white men insulting the different blacks in the ring but the men in the ring itself are fighting without remorse. As the narrator says, “ Everyone fought hysterically. It was complete anarchy.”(Ellison 227) The fight itself though, although wrong does not make the people in the room evil. Instead, it is the act following the fight that exemplifies the difference between sinful and evil. The men put the boys cash on an electrified rug and make them fight for it, even going so far as to throw one boy directly onto the rug. This is an act of true evil because they were taking people who were dependent on them for the money they needed and torturing them for fun. The environment contributed directly to the men becoming evil. They were drunk as