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Battle Royal
The small town in the south in which the young narrator lives is shown to be a racist and patriarchal location, firmly in the control of the older white men who have the money and the power. We...
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Battle Royal
“Battle Royal” is written in the first person, as the narrator tells the reader what happened to him in the past. The language used by the narrator is fairly plain, as the author does not use many...
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Battle Royal
The narrator's grandfather had been a slave, and after the emancipation he had lived what looked to be a peaceful life. However, on his deathbed he tells the narrator's father that "'our life is a...
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Battle Royal
Ralph Ellison’s “Battle Royal” was originally published as a short story. Later, the author included the story as the first chapter of his acclaimed book The Invisibile Man. The main character, a...
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Battle Royal
Empathy is the ability to stand in someone else's shoes and feel what they are feeling. It is a deeper emotion than sympathy, because it means being able to imagine how you would feel in the same...
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Battle Royal
The narrator of "Battle Royal" does indeed have difficulty delivering his speech, and it's not hard to see why. He's just been forced to undergo a humiliating experience in front of a crowd of...
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Battle Royal
The central conflict in "Battle Royal" is between the narrator's desire for what he (in a slip of the tongue) calls "social equality," or an equal chance for success in society, and the desire of...
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Battle Royal
The narrator, along with the other African-American boys, is forced to perform a variety of degrading and humiliating tasks for the entertainment of a baying crowd of drunken white men. As well as...
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Battle Royal
Ellison does not mention the narrator's exact age, but he does say that he has just graduated and has won a scholarship to attend the State College for Negros. Therefore, the narrator is probably...
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Battle Royal
There are likely a couple of symbolic images that a reader could pull from this story. One of the most visceral images is the naked white woman that is made to dance seductively before the rich,...
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Battle Royal
In “Battle Royal,” the narrator is concerned with the question of his identity, in how he relates both to himself and to others. He speaks of having been ashamed of how ashamed he felt to be...
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Battle Royal
In Ralph Ellison’s “Battle Royal,” isolation is a pervasive theme that manifests in many nuanced ways. There is the isolation of communities, black from white. The dying grandfather is isolated...
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Battle Royal
There are many different thesis statements which one could use to examine racism in Ralph Ellison's short story "Battle Royal." 1. Racism plays a very important role in the movement of the Ralph...
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Battle Royal
"The Battle Royal" is an initiation story which deals with the main theme of self-discovery. Through the humiliating fight and speech, the naive narrator begins to glimpse his lack of identity...
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Battle Royal
Feel free to explore your own thoughts on this answer, as the narrator doesn't give a definitive explanation about the significance of the smoke. It should be somewhat clear to readers that the...
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Battle Royal
The fact that a young black high school graduate is treated in a way that deceives and humiliates him is an allegory for how he will be treated throughout life because he is black. When the...
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Battle Royal
It seems clear that the grandfather's deathbed warning combined with the narrator's grueling battle experience has unsettled the narrator; his dream contains information about life's beginnings and...
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Battle Royal
In "Battle Royal," the American Dream is presented as an almighty sham, something that only white people can ever attain. Initially, the unnamed narrator is naive; he thinks, that, he too has a...
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Battle Royal
In Battle Royal, blindness is used as a symbol of how those subjected to racial oppression are often not fully aware of just how much society discriminates against them. The boys forced to...
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Battle Royal
One instance of irony is that the white men believe they've put narrator in a position beneath them because he's inferior to them; in reality, he's using their prejudiced beliefs to rise higher...
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Battle Royal
In both "Battle Royal" and "Sonny's Blues," the narrators are trying to come to some understanding of their identities through their personal experiences. In "Battle Royal," the narrator is made...
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Battle Royal
“Battle Royal” is the first chapter of the acclaimed novel The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. The narrator, now a 40 year old man, looks back at his high school graduation speech that was given to...
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Battle Royal
Plot is a principle of Formalist criticism (and later Structuralist criticism) and identifies the movement underlying action. Plot is considered by Formalist theory to be different from story,...
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Battle Royal
One of the things the narrator is trying tell us is that everyone will give us advice, but we have to make our own decisions. Each person has to choose for his or her self what is right and what...
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Battle Royal
The purpose of the naked white dancer is to demonstrate white society's control over African Americans. Historically, black men had been persecuted for even looking at a white woman, so the white...
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Battle Royal
“Battle Royal,” published as a short story and then as the first chapter in The Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison presents the main character, the unnamed young, black narrator. The story takes place...
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Battle Royal
In "Battle Royal," chapter 1 of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, young black men are forced to fight each other for the entertainment of a crowd of wealthy white men. As the fighters are pushed into...
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Battle Royal
The first chapter of The Invisible Manby Ralph Ellison presents symbolically what the narrator learns throughout the novel: The black man has been exploited and continues to be "invisible" as a...
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Battle Royal
"Battle Royal" is chapter one of Ralph Ellison's novel Invisible Man. Many of the themes that run throughout the book are present in chapter one. The two themes that I will discuss from this...
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Battle Royal
“Battle Royal” is the title to chapter one of Ralph Ellison’s book Invisible Man. It is possible to identify the climax to this chapter using a standard plot chart. Let’s start by listing some of...
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Battle Royal
The narrator and the other black boys involved are lured to the site of the Battle with other bait--for instance, the narrator has been told he is there to read his essay/speech which is deemed the...
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Battle Royal
The significance of these names is open to interpretation. Both are mentioned in the Battle Royal scene in the novel's first chapter, which is sometimes extracted from Invisible Man and read as a...
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Battle Royal
Near the end of Ralph Ellison’s short story “Battle Royal,” a young, unnamed, African-American protagonist gives a speech to an audience of powerful white men in a Southern town. The protagonist...
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Battle Royal
"Battle Royal" is part of Ralph Ellison's novel Invisible Man in which Ellison likens being black to being invisible to white race. There are several themes running through this short story, but...
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Battle Royal
The “Battle Royal” episode of Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man can be examined in terms of such literary techniques as irony, tone, and diction and also with regard to the theme of the influence...
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Battle Royal
The hero's journey is a pattern commonly found in narratives throughout history involving the hero—the main character the story follows—and his or her growth as a character through a series of...
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Battle Royal
The last words of the grandfather in this short story to the narrator focus on something of a revelation and a disclosure, as they belie the way in which the grandfather has lived his life as a man...
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Battle Royal
The protagonist in "Battle Royal" is the narrator. The other nine African-American youth do not "care too much" for him and are, therefore, not pleased that he will be at the fight, so they feel...
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Battle Royal
Ralph Ellison's initiation story "The Battle Royal" is the first chapter in his novel Invisible Man. The unnamed narrator and other black young men in "The Battle Royal" fight blindfolded in front...
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Battle Royal
Two specific events from the excerpt "Battle Royal" expressive of the African-American experience prior to the Civil Rights Movement are (1) the dehumanizing exploitation of the young men as mere...
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Battle Royal
Ralph Ellison's short story Battle Royal is a serious indictment of those who sought to play 'the white man's game' in the misguided belief that such conduct would somehow ingratiate...
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Battle Royal
“Battle Royal” is rife with symbolism and allusion, especially through the section of the story that depicts the degradation of the narrator and other young African American men. The naked white...
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Battle Royal
The narrator is at first quite honored to find that the superintendent of schools is among the men at the gathering in the hotel. Then when the white men's behavior becomes rude and offensive...
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Battle Royal
The term battle royal refers to fights to the death between gladiators in ancient Rome. The term later applied to the pre-Civil War period in the United States when slaves, frequently blindfolded,...
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Battle Royal
The theme of all initiation stories is self-discovery. Initiation stories are measured in irony and "thrownness": a naive protagonist is thrown into a "trail by fire." At the beginning of...
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Battle Royal
The narrator in “A Rose for Emily” describes how the townspeople thought of Emily and her father as a “tableau”: a pair of figures riding in a buggy, Miss Emily in white, her father holding a whip....
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Battle Royal
The story “Battle Royal” by Ralph Ellison, although originally published as a stand-alone story, eventually evolved into the first chapter of Ellison's novel The Invisible Man. It is the story of...
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Battle Royal
Relating these two stories to a shared depiction of (or commentary on) the South seems like a rather tenuous proposition. There are, however, some ways to draw a connection between the stories....
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Battle Royal
Known as the "New Negro Movement" the Harlem Renaissance was characterized by a racial pride exhibited in literature, art, and music that challenged the pervading racism and stereotypes to promote...
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Battle Royal
The first thing to do with this question is figure out which them you are trying to find quotes for. This story has more than a single theme, so start with picking a theme. I tend to emphasize the...
