BATTLE ROYAL

Ralph Ellison
Throughout history black people were always seen as different from us and thus
they have always been somehow outcasts, being mistreated by their fellow human beings.
Ralph Ellisons story, Battle Royal is a highly symbolic work, which presents the
nightmarish battles of black people in a world, where they are looked down on.
The action being rooted in reality, the symbolist nightmare that spans the whole
story, presents the struggle of a nave young boy within the harsh world of white
contemptuous people. This battle is doomed to failure even from the beginning, as stated
in its first pages: There was nothing to do but what we were told. This sentence
suggests the idea that black people were suppressed, being enslaved because of their
origins.
As stated above, the oppression under which they were bound to live was
unbearable, because they were mocked at in a filthy manner. The first and most obvious
method of mockery was the names they were called: niggers, which suggests a total
disdain from people. Secondly, the images of Battle Royal, in contrast to its name,
royal, are of the most debasing ones. In these images people, niggers tend to lose their
identity, their own selves to some kind of animal level. It is important to notice the verbs
used in the scenes of the fight: uppercut, kill, crawl- all elements which suggest the low
level into which niggers are dragged in.
Similarly, the sentence Everybody fought everybody else. suggests the idea that
the suppressed ones fight even against one another in order to achieve something. Their
identity as a group in this mass of unfair acts is lost when thinking about the possibilities
they have to win. This image of fighting against one another points back to the idea of
being dragged into an animal level by people who lead them.
Furthermore this idea of total suppression and annihilation of their selves is
revealed by the scene when they wait for their money: These niggers look like theyre
about to pray! Niggers are subjugated not only metaphorically, meaning psychically,
but physically, too. From this moment they are not humans any more, they are eagles
waiting to put their hands on the catch.