The broader setting of this story is a bit difficult to nail down. It takes place somewhere in the deep South of the United States, but readers are never told a specific state. We are also not told a specific date or date range. The story was published in 1947, so it likely takes place in the early 1940s or sometime during the 1930s. What readers do know for sure is that the main events of the story itself take place in a hotel ballroom. The protagonist ends up in this ballroom because he has "won" the chance to give a speech about the place of blacks in American society to a group of wealthy white men. While the protagonist is eventually allowed to speak, he first has to endure unbelievable amounts of humiliation and violence in front of these men.

The setting is important because, as the ballroom of a swanky hotel, you'd think it would be a place of refined, civilized entertainment. But it proves to be anything but. The ballroom is turned into a bear pit, with a mob of baying white men leering over the spectacle of young African American boys fighting each other and scrambling for pennies.

The whole tawdry spectacle is a kind of metaphor for how this racist, prejudiced society is covered by a thin veneer of civilized respectability. The men who have turned out for this big night out are supposed to be the pillars of society, and yet they behave like animals, showing that beneath the facade of Southern refinement lurks the atavistic cruelty of a society based on hatred and exploitation.

"Battle Royal," the first chapter of Invisible Man, is set in the American South in the late 1920's or early 1930's. This is critical because of the rampant racism that informed the lives of those living in the area at the time and which is a point of discussion of the book. In fact, the narrator, an African-American man, is eventually rendered invisible as a result of his skin color--a commentary on the erasure of black identity.

The first chapter is more specifically located in the main ballroom of a hotel, where the narrator has been brought by a group of white men in order to physically fight his fellow schoolmates. The boys are brought into a boxing ring, blindfolded, equipped with boxing gloves, and forced to beat each other up in a "battle royal" for the entertainment of the white audience. Believing that obedience is the way to achieve success as a young black man, the narrator acquiesces to the men's demands, sacrificing his individualism and dignity in order to participate in the bloody fight.

Thus, the setting ultimately plays a key role in allowing for the examination of racism, alienation, and individualism that are central to the novel.   

The major setting of "Battle Royal" by Ralph Ellison is the ballroom of the hotel where the narrator and his schoolmates go to participate in a boxing match.  In the ballroom, a temporary boxing ring has been erected and there are seats around the ring.  There are many white spectators in the crowd, and the atmosphere in the room is tense. 

In other parts of the story, however, the action takes place in the narrator's home and in the realm of his dreams.