RALPH ELLISON'S BATTLE ROYAL ON SYMBOLISM OF RACISM

Ralph Ellison's Battle Royal on symbolism of racism



Ralph Ellison's Battle Royal on symbolism of racism

Introduction

The most consequential American book of 1952 was undoubtedly Ellison's Invisible Man, the year's most significant literary debut turns out in retrospect to have been a slender, poorly reviewed novel about a half-crazed itinerant evangelist who preached the gospel of the Church Without Christ, a book whose all-but-unknown author was a young woman whose home was not New York but a small town in rural Georgia (Anne, 2000).

Invisible Man explores the theme of a man searching for his identity and place in society, as seen from the point of view of an unnamed black man in New York in 1930. Unlike his contemporaries such as Richard Wright and James Baldwin, Ellison created characters, dispassionate, educated, and articulate and self-consciousness. Through the protagonist, Ellison explores the contrasts between Northern and Southern varieties of racism and alienation effect. The narrator is "invisible" in a figurative sense, is that "people do not want to see" him, as well as the experience kind of dissociation (Anne, 2000).

A novel by Ralph Waldo Ellison's "Invisible Man" (1952), recognized as one of the most significant works of literature of XX century the United States, is a terrific autobiography unnamed protagonist. All his attempts ended in the collapse of the social self, and he refused to society as a whole, voluntarily locked himself in a dungeon, and was the "invisible man". This is a protest of "invisible" against society, who did not want to see him as a person, constantly displaces it from social life.

Battle of Royal

Battle Royal is extracted from the novel Invisible man of Ralph Ellision, he won the National Book Award in 1953. This novel focuses on the intellectual as well as the social issues which were being faced by the African American in the 20th century. The story basically consists of a narrator who after graduation was asked to deliver his grand fathers speech to major white citizens. The vision of his speech was to discuss the issues of racism, injustice and equal rights of African American. The grandfather advised his son to keep up the good fight and to spy the enemy country.

The narrator recalls his delivering of the speech at high school in which he discussed the humility and submission and humility as the key in enhancing the importance of Black Americans. He received an overwhelmed response by the speech such that the people in the town arranged him to address the people of the community of white people and tell them the importance of them. The narrator after receiving instructions took part in the battle royal. He along with his friend's entered the ring. A naked, blonde white woman parades about with a flag painted on her stomach, at this the white man demanded the black boys to look at them and if they don't so they would be threatened (Gregg Crane University ofMichigan and author, ...