African Americans’ Struggle
The use of an unknown narrator in “Battle Royal” by Ralph Waldo Ellison has an important significance in the story. The author is both trying to deliver the message of racism through the story of his character, and in the meantime, he is showing the reader that racism was a fact for every black person regardless who that person may be. It is also important to understand the story from its historical context. The story was written in 1952 in the era of legal racial segregation and when African Americans were discriminated against by the vast majority. Ellison’s short story reflects his experience and the experience of most, if not all black people in the 20th century. Black people were fighting for their rights to …show more content…
The white men present in the room have almost forgotten that somebody has to deliver a speech. The narrator is already in a situation of shame and indignity. The author reveals, “There was still laughter as I faced them, my mouth dry, my eyes throbbing. I began slowly, but evidently my throat was tense” (Ellison). In other words, nobody who is present in that room is really paying attention to what the black man has to say. This situation symbolizes that African Americans were not given any value as if they were invisible men. Although nobody is paying attention, the narrator chooses opportunity over dignity. While delivering the speech, the narrator mistakenly said “social equality” instead of “social responsibility”; all of the sudden everybody starts to yell and curse the narrator. This is an ironic situation because that is what the narrator should actually say, but as the supremacy of white people, black people were not allowed to be socially equal nor to speak about it. Finally, the narrator’s plan of following Booker T. Washington’s philosophy seems to be working for a little while. He delivers his speech and gets his scholarship to pursue his studies, but things do not go as they were planned. The dream at the end gives the story the whole significance. The author says, “That night I dreamed I was at a circus with him and that he refused to laugh at the clowns no matter what they did” (Ellison). The narrator gives to the reader what happens in the story from a point of view as a spectator among the white men. The clowns represent black people; they were nothing but a tool of entertainment for white people. All the scenes that happen in the story are nothing but an entertaining circus in the sight of the white men. The final part of the dream shows to the reader that although all of the fighting and the struggling that the narrator has to endure was rewarded nothing but humiliation and fake compensation. So was the
The use of an unknown narrator in “Battle Royal” by Ralph Waldo Ellison has an important significance in the story. The author is both trying to deliver the message of racism through the story of his character, and in the meantime, he is showing the reader that racism was a fact for every black person regardless who that person may be. It is also important to understand the story from its historical context. The story was written in 1952 in the era of legal racial segregation and when African Americans were discriminated against by the vast majority. Ellison’s short story reflects his experience and the experience of most, if not all black people in the 20th century. Black people were fighting for their rights to …show more content…
The white men present in the room have almost forgotten that somebody has to deliver a speech. The narrator is already in a situation of shame and indignity. The author reveals, “There was still laughter as I faced them, my mouth dry, my eyes throbbing. I began slowly, but evidently my throat was tense” (Ellison). In other words, nobody who is present in that room is really paying attention to what the black man has to say. This situation symbolizes that African Americans were not given any value as if they were invisible men. Although nobody is paying attention, the narrator chooses opportunity over dignity. While delivering the speech, the narrator mistakenly said “social equality” instead of “social responsibility”; all of the sudden everybody starts to yell and curse the narrator. This is an ironic situation because that is what the narrator should actually say, but as the supremacy of white people, black people were not allowed to be socially equal nor to speak about it. Finally, the narrator’s plan of following Booker T. Washington’s philosophy seems to be working for a little while. He delivers his speech and gets his scholarship to pursue his studies, but things do not go as they were planned. The dream at the end gives the story the whole significance. The author says, “That night I dreamed I was at a circus with him and that he refused to laugh at the clowns no matter what they did” (Ellison). The narrator gives to the reader what happens in the story from a point of view as a spectator among the white men. The clowns represent black people; they were nothing but a tool of entertainment for white people. All the scenes that happen in the story are nothing but an entertaining circus in the sight of the white men. The final part of the dream shows to the reader that although all of the fighting and the struggling that the narrator has to endure was rewarded nothing but humiliation and fake compensation. So was the