Ralph Ellison's short story "Battle Royal" provides commentary on civil rights in the early 20th century. It describes a young black man who is asked to give a speech to prominent white community members but is first forced to participate in a "battle royal", where black men fight blindfolded for money. Though physically freed after the Civil War, the black community still faced social slavery and oppression from powerful whites. The story illustrates how blacks were still reliant on and controlled by whites, even after emancipation. It calls readers to continue fighting for true equality and freedom from unfair racial hierarchies.

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Lucas Somma
English 102: Parlato
Essay 1
24 February 2016
Contemporary Slaves
In the modern era, black lives are being terminated at alarming rates, black students are
not entitled to a quality education, and black adults make up the majority of the unemployed.
Nevertheless, protest and outrage surrounds police brutality and unfair treatment of minorities. In
simpler words, while the black population is dumbed, deadbeat, and dying, contemporary society
is focusing on a few shootings and the Grammy’s. Ralph Ellison, too, faced a similar issue in his
day. Blacks in his era were technically free, but still reliant upon the provision of powerful white
men. Although a fiction piece, Battle Royal, is full of rich symbolism that leaves readers jaw-
dropped with a dose of implicit ideology. Every aspect of Ralph Ellison’s, Battle Royal, provides
groundbreaking commentary on civil rights in the century since the Emancipation Proclamation.
Initially, Ellison paints a painfully ambiguous scene. Battle Royal opens with the
thoughts of a young boy, who is searching for meaning and how this relates to his family lineage.
Not much is mentioned about the boy’s father. Instead, Ellison decides to focus on the
grandfather’s last words to the unnamed boy. The grandfather, who was a freed slave devoted to
a modest, quiet life, says these words on his deathbed:
Son, after I’m gone I want you to keep up the good fight. I never told you, but our
life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy’s

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country ever since I gave up my gun back in the Reconstruction. Live with your
head in the lion’s mouth. 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 bust wide open. [Teach this] to the young-uns (Ellison 226).
The grandfather, who is dismissed due to his dementia, has never been more lucid. The
grandfather had lived his life quietly, careful not to make waves. His success as a black man in
the late 1800s did not come by activism, but rather, by silence. Here, in the end of his life, the
grandfather who is regarded as leaving behind a valuable legacy, is explicitly stating that he is a
traitor. Both the reader and the boy himself understand what the grandfather is really saying. His
life was regrettably pointless, since he refused to stand against post-war white-tyranny and
racism. The grandfather, content with pats on the back for remaining a humble and silent
“leader”, focused on living without changing the status quo.
Battle Royal then shifts away from the grandfather and onto the main character, an
unnamed black boy who delivers a speech at his high school graduation on remaining obedient
and humble in order to create social progress; this very speech was considered a “triumph for
[his] whole community” (Ellison 227). Because of its popularity among white, civic and social
leaders, the unnamed boy is asked to give his speech at a wide scale event that hosted the loftiest
and most valuable white members of the community. As the day approaches and the unnamed
boy arrives at the event to give his speech, he learns that he must first participate in an opening
act, of sorts. The unnamed boy, who is the guest of honor at this event, is required to participate
in a Battle Royal… an event where nine men are blindfolded and shoved in a boxing ring to duke
it out.

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At this Battle Royal, the unnamed boy stands in competition against nine black peers to
compete for a prize of a grotesquely low $10. The unnamed boy, fortunately, performs with skill
and ability—partly in thanks to a discrepancy in his blindfold. Towards the end of the match,
only two men remain—the unnamed boy and a big black boy. The unnamed boy, who appears to
be a diplomat by nature, begs the big black boy, “fake like I knocked you out, you can have the
prize” (Ellison 231). The big black boy takes offense to this request, and despite the unnamed
boy’s offer of additional payment, he eventually knocks him out.
The losing men are then stood alongside a rug that contains various currency. The cruel
MC even turns receiving payment for services into a sadistic main event. The men wrestle to
gather currency, only to find that the rug contains live electricity at disturbingly high voltage. At
one point, the unnamed boy is shoved onto the rug and temporarily paralyzed. After obtaining a
variety of serious injuries, ranging from a concussion to a bloody jaw, the boy finally gives his
speech regarding humility and leading social progress by a gentle example.
During his speech, the unnamed boy briefly mentions “social equality”, but immediately
retracts his opinion. The white men in the room cannot stand for social equality, so it is left out
of his speech. After giving a profoundly bland speech, the white men award the unnamed boy
with a genuine leather handbag and a scholarship to a state college for Negros. It is only until a
dream that the unnamed boy realizes how retroactive and anti-progressive his beliefs and actions
are. The grandfather, in a dream, has the unnamed boy reread the scholarship letter, “To Whom
It May Concern, Keep This Nigger-Boy Running” (Ellison 235).
The grandfather’s dream-state words place the entire piece into perspective. As Wilfred
D. Samuels of the University of Colorado points out, “the entire Battle Royal scene [is] an
extended metaphor for the brutality of chattel slavery” (1). This story takes place two generations

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post-Emancipation, so it is apparent that the type of slavery that Samuels speaks of supersedes
physical bonds and chains. Rather, the slavery that the unnamed boy, his grandfather, the nine
black boys, and the blacks of that era faced, is a social slavery.
The grandfather, a gentle and modest black man who resembles the unnamed boy’s
personality, was liberated during his lifetime. However, since he remained complacent and
unwilling to turn with the wheels of social progress, he was still, proverbially shackled. He was
no man’s property, but he certainly behaved as so. The nine boys who entered the Battle Royal
for monetary reasons, still lived on the white man’s provision. The central character, the
unnamed boy, was provided with a platform that would reach hundreds of legislators, ministers,
and aristocrats, yet shoved aside what he believed in for the sake of providing moral reassurance
and entertainment for unjust men. This slavery is far worse than shackles and last names. Black
culture of the early 20th century obtained a counterfeit form of freedom and were still in bondage
to vicious, harsh, and powerful white men. As Harriet Tubman writes, “I freed a thousand slaves.
I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.”
One thing is for certain, progress has been ongoing. America has an African-American
President in reign, illiteracy and mortality rates have decreased among minorities, and explicit
racism is viewed as unsettling. However, black culture must remain on guard. Black culture that
is not advancing, ordinary townsfolk and average Joes—white, black or mulatto—that are no
longer contributing to the fight for the disruptive concept of “social equality”, are in slavery. As
the grandfather writes, “live with your head in the lion’s mouth” (Ellison 226). Ellison’s Battle
Royal, rich with ideology and chock-full of meaningful characters and symbolism, provides a
call to action that still resonates with readers nearly 100 years later.

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Works Cited
"Abortion Surveillance — United States, 2006." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 27 Nov. 2009. Web. 22 Feb. 2016.
"Ethnic and Racial Minorities & Socioeconomic Status." American Psychological Association.
American Psychological Association. Web. 22 Feb. 2016.
Meyer, Michael, and Ralph Ellison. The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading,
Thinking, Writing. Tenth ed. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2014. Print.
Samuels, Wilfred D 1984, 'Ellison's INVISIBLE MAN', Explicator, vol. 42, no. 4, pp. 49-51.