Identity

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Ralph Ellison’s “Battle Royal,” is a short story of a talented young black male’s struggle to find his identity through the lies and racism of the whites, and his own people, who believe his actions, are those of a sell out, of African-Americans. This is true in a way because the narrator does take advantage of the white sponsored education, but in another sense, he is also taking advantage of the education to elevate himself in the white society and ultimately suppress white authority more effectively. Although the narrator was deceived into giving a speech at a gathering of the town’s leading white citizens, mislead into fighting in “battle royal,” a boxing match, and tricked into gratitude of the white’s gift of a scholarship to a “college for Negroes,” in the end he will discover his own identity and that neither the whites nor the blacks hold the key.

When the narrator showed up hotel to give his speech, he was told that he might as well take part in battle royal, which came before his speech. He was lead on the front of the ballroom, and in front of his stood a naked, blonde, white woman with an American flag painted on her stomach. The narrator was attracted to her, “had the price of looking at her been blindness, I would have looked,” but at the same he despised her. She was there to tease the men, both blacks and whites. The blonde represented something that the narrator couldn’t have, in more ways than one. He couldn’t have her sexually, because at the time, a black man couldn’t be with a white woman. Another reason that she represented something he couldn’t have was because the American flag on her stomach represents freedom. The narrator didn’t have true freedom yet. But in a sense the narrator can relate to this woman. At the time, both the blacks and women were treated as property and not humans.

After the blonde left the room, the boys were all ordered to get into the ring. “All ten of us climbed under the ropes and allowed ourselves to be blindfolded with broad bands of white cloth.” The boys literal blindfolding in the ring parallels the men’s metaphorical blindness as they watch the fight. The men view the boys not as individuals, but as inferior beings, as animals. The blindfolds also represent the boys’ own metaphorical blindness-their inability to see through the false masks of goodwill that barely conceal the men’s racist motives as they force the boys to conform to the racial stereotype of the black man as a violent, savage beast. The narrator, blind in so many ways, has not yet learned to see behind the masks, behind the surfaces of things, behind the veils put up by white society.




One by one the boys began to leave the ring leaving only the narrator and Tatlock, the biggest of the gang. The blind folds were removed and the narrator was forced to fight Tatlock. The narrator clinched with Tatlock and told him to fake a knock out and Tatlock would be able to keep the prize. Tatlock didn’t agree, at that point he didn’t care about the prize, he was after the narrator. “I’ll break your behind,” he whispered, “For them?” “For me, sonofabitch.” He was after the narrator because he was light skinned, in that time, known as ginger-colored, aiding in the fact that his own people, African-Americans, think he’s a sell out. The narrator believes that he is superior to the other boys there. He views himself as a guest of the white people; while the other boys are there because of the money that they may win from fighting in battle royal. As the narrator started to fight back, he had a chance to knock out Tatlock and win the fight. However, when he was about to move in for the win, he heard a voice in the audience yell out, “I got my money on the big boy.” The narrator almost dropped his guard, he started to get confused, wondering whether he should go against the voice, isn’t it going against his speech? And in his doubt the narrator was knocked unconscious, and lost the fight. As the narrator lied on the floor, he blood soaked onto the floor. “And I lay there, hazily watching a dark red spot of my own blood shaping itself into a butterfly, glistening and soaking into the soiled gray world of the canvas.” Just as a butterfly dies shortly coming into the world from its cocoon, a part of the narrator dies because the voice of the white man caused him confusion and he started to doubt himself. He wasn’t able to show who his truly is, and what he is capable of.

The narrator still has not learned to see behind the veil of the white society, and lunged on the rug for a gold coin. Only too late does he discover the falsity of the supposedly gold coins and of white generosity, the painful electric current ran through the rug, it was electrified. He tried to avoid touching the rug, but the men began to push him onto it. “It seemed a whole century would pass before I would roll free, a century in which I was seared through the deepest levels of my body to the fearful breath within me and the breath seared and heated to the point of explosion.” Just as he is rolling through the rug, his ancestors had endured such pain, and much greater, when they were slaves.

Finally, after enduring the pain of the naked blonde, Tatlock, and the rug, the narrator is allowed to make his speech. “Whenever I uttered a word of three or more syllables a group of voices would yell for me to repeat it. I used the phrase “social responsibility” and they yelled “What’s that you say, boy?” After having to repeat the word so many times, and trying to swallow the blood in his mouth, the narrator accidentally and unconsciously said, “social equality.” The crowd began to get unpleasant, and shouted hostile phrases at him. They started to put him back in his place. “We mean to do right by you, but you’ve got to know your place at all times.” The moment he exhibits an individual opinion, the men demand that he reassume the good slave role. By rewarding him with the briefcase and scholarship only when he does so, the men restrict his social advancement to their terms.

As the narrator matures, he will develop new conceptions of race relations and come to a new understanding of how to assert his own identity within and against these relations. Each one of our journeys through life is different. Accordingly, there are no hard and fast rules to guide those of us who seek a better understanding of ourselves and life in general. Much of what we are is beyond our power, such as our genetic inheritance. However, we all have the same drives such as those for power, food, and social contact. These drives all vie for satisfaction and their varying strengths and weaknesses determine our core characteristics. Advances in technologies in the past centuries have increased each persons ability and likelihood of interacting with people of cultural backgrounds quite different from his own. However, it is still ones own duty to cope with the growing world, and to discover one’s identity.



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