[Writer Name]

[Supervisor Name]

A Party Down at the Square

[Date]

"A Party Down at the Square"

Introduction

This paper intends to critique 'A Party Down at the Square' of Ralph Waldo Ellison. Ralph Waldo Ellison was an American based novelist, scholar and literary critic. Some of his best work includes 'Invisible Man' and 'Shadow and Act.' Ellison was one of the most important masters of the first person narratives. He somehow was intimidated in 1940. Ellison preferred working with short stories, most of them being first person narratives and was from the viewpoint of men. All the stories were somehow linked through Ellison by some geographical or situational connections.

Discussion

Overview of the Text

'A Party Down at the Square' has been written as a story of a young boy who has witnessed a 'lynching.' The boy was invited for the party from some men in Deep South. The whole town was invited at the party. Suddenly an airplane landed because of the storm killing a woman out of electrocuted. Besides all this, everyone was focused on the party where the young black man was burned to death. The narrator of the story falls ill after experiencing all this (Ellison, 2997).

Critiquing the Text

Extreme thematic highpoints have been used in the story. The basic theme of the story revolves around violence and death. Ellison story has desensitized all the major events in the story. The technique used by Ellison is exactly right within the context of horrific ordeal of 'Bacote Nigger' and the death of the woman in the plane accident. Ellison has been quite successful in narrating the story from the boy's perspective. Ellison has tried to depict the numbness to the readers which was experienced at the death of the imminent man. The literary theme was to reveal the motives behind such killings. Thematic occurrences of the ...