The Implications of Social Equality in Ellison's Battle Royal

Ralph Ellison's "Battle Royal" is more than a short story about the hardships faced by an individual African-American male. Although the story only relates the experiences and thoughts of the narrator, the narrator is anonymous, allowing the conclusions drawn from "Battle Royal" to extend beyond this character and speak for an entire society of African-American people.

Ellison utilizes the events experienced by his naive narrator in "Battle Royal" as symbols to depict the struggles and humility of African-Americans attempting to progress and to achieve success, and the satisfaction derived by white society in controlling and intimidating the black community. The foremost symbol in the story is the battle royal itself. The battle royal symbolizes the difficult struggle for equality for the black culture. The fight illustrates Black America's efforts to overcome oppression and fear spawning from the violence of slavery and the persecution of segregation. By participating in the battle royal, the narrator learns that life is a struggle for survival; however, at this point he still believes in the philosophy that blacks can achieve success through education and hard work. The scene symbolically introduces the theme of struggle among blacks for an evasive prize that often remains out of reach.

The battle royal also represents the enjoyment and empowerment gained by white society through keeping black men unknowledgeable and in a constant state of confusion. Forcing the black boys to fight against each other gratifies the white men's sense of superiority. In addition, the battle royal makes a statement directed towards black society when the narrator states, "everybody fought everybody else. No group fought together for long." The battle represents the infighting of African-Americans; they do not unite against a common enemy, instead they fight one another to gain money and status.

The blindfolding of the fighters is another symbol of enslavement and repression. It serves as a way for the white men to keep the black fighters in a state of anxiety and uncertainty. The narrator states, "blindfolded, I could no longer control my motions. I had no dignity. I stumbled about like a baby or a drunken man." By preventing the black fighters from seeing, they are reduced to nothing more than animals. They cannot make conscious decisions or make plans past the moment in which they are living. Moreover, Ellison utilizes the blindfold as a symbol of the lack of focus of many African-Americans in their struggle for equality and how many of them blindly fight, not always knowing who to fight against or how to fight them.

After the battle royal the fighters are told to retrieve their money from an electrified rug, where they are shocked when they attempt to grab coins. This event becomes another important symbol in "Battle Royal." Even though they are continuously electrocuted, the fighters reach out for the money, and the electrified coins become a symbol for the African-American pursuit of economic success and equality. The rug and the coins demonstrate how the black community is easily controlled by white society. Even though the fighters were destroyed and dehumanized, they forget this once the money is laid out before them. The narrator says, "I trembled with excitement, forgetting my pain. I would get the gold and the bills. I would use both hands. I would throw my body against the boys nearest me to block them from the gold." Here again, the black boys fight against each other as opposed to fighting with each other.

"Battle Royal" is a short story by Ralph Ellison about social responsibility and the struggles of African-Americans in their pursuit of equality. The fighting, confusion, and humiliation of the narrator were basic elements of and reactions to the civil rights movement of the 1920's. Despite this humiliating encounter with white society, the narrator, who is representative of African-American culture and society during the 1920's, still believes in white superiority within the social order, and he continues the handicapped methods by which black society attempts to progress in the eyes of a White America.