The point of view in Ralph Ellison’s “Battle Royal” comes strictly from his trials and tribulations that he has overcome as a young black writer that began before the nineteen Fifties. Ralph Ellison was a black writer who was born on March 1, 1914 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma only seven years after it had actually became a state. After completing the lengthy research of this man and his works I found that Ellison once had considered becoming a classical music composer after getting the idea from a nineteenth century opera composer named Richard Wagner. The reading of “Battle Royal" from “Literature An Introduction to reading and writing” by Edgar V. Roberts and Robert Zweig Tenth Edition was actually the first chapter of Ellison’s novel “The Invisible Man.”
Throughout his life those trials and tribulations spoken of gives this writer no doubt in his mind that the point of view of the reading is explained in length in “The Invisible Man.” Ellison endured many hardships throughout his life as a youth and an adult. After researching and finding an interview that was conducted with Ellison by Vilma Howard and Alfred Chester in a place where Djuna Barnes actually had written a novel called “Nightwood.”The name of this establishment was called Café de la Mairie. Ellison states from the start of the interview that this particular work wasn’t an autobiography. One reason for this is that unlike the boy in “The Invisible Man” Ellison was not thrown out of school. He became interested in writing around nineteen thirty- five after reading Thomas Stearns Eliot’s “The Wasteland.” Eliot was a British poet who lived from eighteen eighty-eight to nineteen sixty-five. After other readings Elliot wondered why he hadn’t ever had read anything by...
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... as if they had been badly beaten and had tumbled to the mat. Ellison becomes nauseated soon after this.
Once this occurs Ellison, for the first time since the beginning of the fight, begins thinking about his speech again.
Work Cited:
Julia Sun-Joo Lee;African American Review (Fall 2006) p461. Word Count: 7313. From Literature Resource Center.
Ralph Ellison, Vilma Howard, and Alfred Chester. Paris Review. (Spring 1955): p53-55. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter and Deborah A. Schmitt. Vol. 114. Detroit: Gale Group, 1999. Word Count: 5478. From Literature Resource Center.
Wang, Qun. Masterplots, Fourth Edition, November 2010, p1-3. (Work Analysis) Author Name: Ellison, Ralph
Lee, A. Robert. Masterplots II: African American Literature, Revised Edition, December 2008, p1-4. (Work Analysis) Author Name: Ellison, Ralph
Hines, Ellen, and Hines, William, and Stanley, Harrold. The African American Odyssey. Fifth Edition. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2008. Print.
Morel, Lucas E. Ralph Ellison and the Raft of Hope: A Political Companion to Invisible Man. Lexington: University of Kentucky, 2004. Print.
Heberle, Mark. "Contemporary Literary Criticism." O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. Vol. 74. New York, 2001. 312.
Ellison begins "Battle Royal" with a brief introduction to the story's theme with a passage from the Invisible Man's thoughts: "All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was . . . I was looking for myself and asking everyone questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: that I am nobody but myself. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man!" (Ellison, 556). In this passage, Ellison reveals the identity crisis faced by not only the Invisible Man, but by the entire African American race as well. He builds on this theme as he follows the I.M. through his life experiences. ...
Gates, Henry Louis Jr. and Nellie Y. McKay. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. New York: W.W. Norton & Company
Although the world is filled with air, it is perceived to be invisible. Only when one is thinking about air does it become considered visible. As the protagonist develops throughout the novel, Battle Royal, created by Ralph Ellison, he quickly witnesses how microscopic his achievements are to the “Big Shots” in his dominantly white community. To discover that he was just as human as the white men, he had to learn that he could only become visible to them when they wanted him to be. He will never get that constant gratitude of being an individual, instead, like air, he will only seem important when thought of. On his grandfathers deathbed, his father was told to tell him to never be a traitor to not only his culture but more importantly himself.
Gates Jr., Henry Louis, and Nellie Y. McKay. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton and Company , Inc. , 2004. Print.
...cy." Western Journal Of Black Studies 28.1 (2004): 327-331. Academic Search Premier. Web. 18 Sept. 2013.
In contemporary America, the blacks have searched for companionship, success, and freedom, both physical and mental. Even after several years of [the] abolition of slavery, the blacks were not able to see [a white=whites] eye-to-eye. They were still [a puppet=puppets] for the white men?s show. During this era, several blacks tried to achieve success and bring themselves up to the level of whites by conforming to their direct or indirect, reasonable or unreasonable, and degrading or respectful commands. [Focus more on the rebellion/conformity aspects and the specifics of the story as you explain the issue.] In this chapter (?Battle Royal?) of [the] novel [?Invisible Man,?=title format] the narrator conforms to all humiliating orders to get a chance to express his views on ?social equality? and ?social responsibility?. Good thesis statement. The first chapter is like the worst nightmare for the narrator who is a young, graduating Negro boy. He timid[ly] and obedient[ly] comes to a white men?s gathering in a Southern town, where he is to be awarded a scholarship. Together with several other Negroes he is rushed to the front of the ballroom, where a [blonde frightens them by dancing in the nude=ambiguous. They are not afraid of her. They are afraid of the white men who demand that they look at her. That could mean beatings or even death for black men in times past]. Blindfolded, the Negro boys stage a "battle royal," a brawl in which they batter each other to the drunken shouts of the whites. After such [a] humiliating and ghastly experience, the terrified boy delivers a prepared speech of gratitude to his white benefactors.
Rose, Arnold. “The Negro in America”. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Incorporated, 1964. Print
Karenga, Malauna. Introduction to Black Studies. Los Angeles: University of Sankore Press Third Edition, 2002.
Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Linda Pavlovski. Vol.
To understand the narrator of the story, one must first explore Ralph Ellison. Ellison grew up during the mid 1900’s in a poverty-stricken household (“Ralph Ellison”). Ellison attended an all black school in which he discovered the beauty of the written word (“Ralph Ellison”). As an African American in a predominantly white country, Ellison began to take an interest in the “black experience” (“Ralph Ellison”). His writings express a pride in the African American race. His work, The Invisible Man, won much critical acclaim from various sources. Ellison’s novel was considered the “most distinguished novel published by an American during the previous twenty years” according to a Book Week poll (“Ralph Ellison”). One may conclude that the Invisible Man is, in a way, the quintessence Ralph Ellison. The Invisible Man has difficulty fitting into a world that does not want to see him for who he is. M...
"Battle Royal", an excerpt from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, is far more than a commentary on the racial issues faced in society at that time. It is an example of African-American literature that addresses not only the social impacts of racism, but the psychological components as well. The narrator (IM) is thrust from living according to the perceptions of who he believes himself to be to trying to survive in a realm where he isn't supposed to exist, much less thrive. The invisibility of a mass of people in a society fed the derivation of IM's accepted, willed, blindness. The reader must determine the source of what makes IM invisible. Is part of IM's invisibility due to his self-image or surrender to the dominant voice in the United States? The answer lies in whether or not the blindness and the invisibility were voluntary or compulsory.
Williams, Michael, W, ED. The African American Encyclopedia Second Edition. Tarrytown, NY: Marshall Cavendish Corporation, 2001. Print. The African American Encyclopedia Vol. 6.