FREE ESSAY ON BATTLE ROYAL

BATTLE ROYAL

My Reflection on Battle Royal
After I read the story Battle Royal by Ralph Ellison, I could not restrain my thoughts
about issues of morality and what it has to do with reality, from clashing in to one
another in my mind. As these two completely different ideas were pushing me to the brink
of madness, my mind began to click. At this point I came to the realization that a
person's reality, that is that person's mental reflection of the society and/or time in
which he or she lives, is consistent with that person's morality or standards of right
and wrong. I realize that my concept of a person's reality being consistent with morality
is quite confusing. I also accept the fact that there are always exceptions to rules. The
story Battle Royal is the key in understanding and seeing the relationship between
morality and reality. The characters in this story, namely the grandfather and his
grandson, reveal to us their individuality, principles, morals, and ethics. Doing so they
unfold a map that reveals their mental reality. Because their principals, morals and
ethics reveal to us their mental reality, then their mental reality discloses the reality
of the society in which they live. Battle Royal is a story about a black boy that is
psychologically wakened when he overhears what his grandfather says on his deathbed to
his father. Our hero's journey toward the light (truth) is started a long time ago.
However in the beginning he is unable to get on the right course, due to the wrong advice
he is given by different people; he says it as All my life I had been looking for
something, and everywhere that I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted
their answers too, though they were often in contradiction (223). Because each time that
he accepts their advice he is little by little pushed off the right track. It is not
until he realizes that he is searching for himself, and instead of asking others
questions, he needs to ask the questions to himself. Once he discovers whom to turn to,
he begins a long and difficult journey in which he realizes that he is a unique person.
He puts it as, I am nobody but myself (223). This means that he is unique and he is who
he is, black. However before he comes to this enlightenment he discovers that he is an
invisible man (223). He marks himself invisible because in the society in which a person
is unheard and unseen by others he is invisible. At that point our young friend's problem
is clear. He is a black boy in a White men's world, in which he is not seen or heard. Yet
he still does not know what to do about it until he hears his grandfather's words to his
father: Son, after I'm gone I want you to keep up a good fight. I never told you, but
your life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy's
country ever since I give 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. Learn it
to the younguns. (223) These last words that his grandfather speaks are the
chain-breakers that set the young boy's mind free. These are the words that guide him on
the right path to the realization of who he is, and how he needs to start thinking and
acting. However, this path that his grandfather sets him on, is one that presents many
mind-tormenting problems. This boy and all like him live in a white dominated society,
and the white men in the society can be seen as the puppeteers. In his society the black
people are chained down in a reality in which the white dominating society imposes
certain morals or principles by which the black community needs to act. However unlike
the people around him, he is able to break the chains that imprison his mind and see how
things really work. He first gets a true sense in what kind of society he lives when he
is invited to give his graduation speech at the battle royal. A battle royal is a sort of
a barbarous boxing match in which black boys with blindfolds are forced to fight each
other for the entertainment of certain town's men. Our hero is also made to participate
in this activity. I was shocked to see some of the most important men of the town quite
tipsy, he says when he sees who is there. They were all there-bankers, lawyers, judges,
doctors, fire chiefs, teachers, merchants. Even one of the more fashionable pastors.
(225). After the fight, in front of that drunk and perverted crowd of white influential
males he is going to present his graduation speech, a speech that address Social
responsibility (231). At the end of the story we finally see how his morality becomes
constant with the reality that he lives. The night after the Battle Royal he has a dream.
In it he hears his grandfather give him instructions to read a note that is in the
briefcase which was given to him as an award. The note read, To Whom It May Concern, Keep
this Nigger-Boy Running (233). This is the point that he realizes that the nice things he
has been given are not for his benefit, but he is being about with these gifts. From all
this he now knows for a fact that he lives in a society that does not except him as a
person, but rather more like an animal that does not disserve any human rights. Because
this society is his reality, he now needs to alter his moral ideas so it will compliment
his newly realized reality. Number of words: 1,009