Introduction
The ‘Battle Royal’ is a story written by Ralph Ellison in 1952 with an aim of bringings forth the real social context and experiences of the black people in the post-slavery American society. The writer exhibits the social imbalances experienced by the black people through a story in order to inflict the reality through a different perspective. Though the story is a fiction, the reader understands the narrator’s plights as well as his fellow counterparts through a comprehensive dimension. Therefore, the story is all about racial conflict, where the whites marginalized the black people by oppressing them and depriving them the platform to progress. This conflict exhibits through narration and it begins when the narrator’s late grandfather asserted that the society would always battle the narrator’s father and his race and still prevent them from rising socially. This predicted conflict later became a reality, when the narrator experienced humiliating experiences in the battling event that he calls the “the royal battle” (Ellison, 284). The “royal battle” later triggers more humiliating experiences of the black narrator in the hands of the white men in the ballroom event. In this regard, the paper outlines racism and social inequality as the major conflict in the story.
The plot structure
The major conflict in the story
The major conflict in the story is the racial battle, where the black individuals feel oppressed by their white counterparts. The narrator entails that the black community realized that white people deprived them social equality and at the same time blind-folded them so that they could not attain the platforms of curbing the conflict. The conflict integrates with the setting of the story because it was written in the 1950s, where slavery and vast racial practices was dominant in the US. This forms the basis of the argument that racism and social oppression is the central plot of the story. During this period, the black people lived as second class citizens, but the emergence of other generations led to the realization of recognition and equality in the society. The difference in conflict approach exhibits through the narrator’s grandfather, when he tells the narrator’s father ‘I want you to overcome ‘em with yeses, undermine ‘em with grins, agree ‘em to death and destruction, let ‘em swoller you till they vomit or burst wide open” ( Ellison, 284). Though no one clearly understood what the old man meant, the narrator later realized the truth behind the old man’s wise words, when he won the hearts of the whites’ through humility speeches and conduct. This depicts when the narrator claims that “on my graduation day, I delivered an oration in which I showed that humility was the secret, indeed, the very essence of progress” (Ellison, 285). Therefore, the central point of conflict in the entire story is about racial battle, where the black people meant to strategically fight social imbalance.
The part of the story that reveal the conflict
Though the first part of the story begins by the old man’s advice about social equality battle, the reality erupted in the later part of the story. The episode began when the narrator is requested by the white leaders to deliver a speech on humility virtuous during a high school graduation. This chance came by because the narrator was renowned by the entire community for his advice to his race to advance through humility and submission by shunning their rebellious character. The narrator heeded to the speech delivering invitation, and the event was held at a ballroom of a leading hotel. Unlike the narrator’s anticipation, the event turned out to be a male-only affair with all types of entertainment and merry (Ellison, 285). The narrator was then lured and persuaded to take part in a fight before he could begin his speech. The fight meant to entertain the drunken crowd, which he obliged to because the narrator’s main objective was to deliver a speech. He was blindfolded and forced to fight nine of his blind folded classmates, who were also black. The narrator fought until his opponents were only two.
The two remaining contestants alongside the narrator were humiliated further by being ordered to pick their payment from an electrified rug. To even embarrass them further the white men tossed the black boys on the electrified rug in order to see them dancing in pain. Nevertheless, the battle ended and the narrator won his first reward of a scholarship in the Negro college, which was presented in a calf-skin briefcase. The second award was that the narrator managed to get the chance to give his speech irrespective of his bruised and exhausted condition. Though the drunken white men did not listen to his speech, the narrator delivered his point, which was subsequently disrupted by the whites especially when he mentioned social inequality. A master of ceremony also interrupted by telling him to know his place at all times by not crossing borders and uttering such words like social equality (Ellison, 293). In summary, the entire episode of the battle outlines different levels and forms of racial oppression, which is why the battling event depicts the major conflict of the story. Therefore, the battling part of the story that was full of humiliation literary depicted the reality of racial and social conflict in the American society.
How the conflict contributes to the story’s meaning
The battling episode full of humiliation and physical suffering depicts the humiliation that the black people faced in the community due to their skin color. This means that the battle, which stands for the racial conflict and social status imbalance significantly contributes to the story’s meaning. For instance, the title of the book is ‘battle royal’, which stands for the battle that the narrator was lured into, and at the same time the black people’s battle towards recognition and equality. Therefore, the battling episode, which is the core meaning of the story, demonstrates the conflicting aspects exhibited by the story and at the same time faced by millions of black people in America. In another dimension, the battling conflicts align with the narrators’ grandfathers words, which insisted on the battle for social recognition of the black people (Ellison, 294). The conflict also arouses the quest for freedom of future black generation towards social recognition and other liberties, which contributes to part of the story. This contribution exhibits when the narrator overcomes all his battles and realizes the need for the same victory on his fellow black people. Therefore, the conflicts encountered in the story contribute to the meaning of the story in diverse ways.
