There are a couple of scenes in "Battle Royal" that strike me as extremely interesting. The author of "Battle Royal", Ralph Ellison, does not illustrate his message with his words; instead, he leaves it to the reader to decipher his convoluted implications. It takes a comprehensive understanding of the time period, the context, and message for the reader to solve this puzzle.
The first excerpt of the story that puzzled me was the purpose of the dancer in the boxing ring. At first I thought that she was just a dancer and symbolized nothing, but then, after reading the entire story, I found that she acted as a foil for the narrator. The dancer in the ring was a beautiful white woman. Although she was white, she did not receive the respect from the white community that a typical white woman did. This was woman was an object— an object of lust and affection. The only other people that acted as objects in the narrative were the black people. The white woman, because of her profession and circumstance, was taken down to the low level of the black community. She was an object performing in the boxing ring for the white community just as the black people were an object performing in the boxing ring for the white community. This is strange to me because the black community was not allowed to look at the white woman, but the white woman was subjected to the same level as the black community.
The other part of the story that startled me upon first glance was the ending. At the end of the story, the grandfather, through a dream, says to his grand son the message, “Keep This Nigger-Boy Running” (536). It is not the words themselves that startled me, but instead, the tone of mockery in which they were projected. This makes me think that the grandfather is not all that proud of his grandson for earning a scholarship to the black college. This is in fact the case, the grandfather is laughing at the boy for falling for the white people’s trick. He is going to go to college, but he is going to go to the college that the white people want him to go to. He will make a difference in the black community— not the white community. I believe that the grandfather is laughing because the boy will continue to run indeed, but he will continue to run where he is meant to run— where the white people want him to run. (425)
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Abigail, Yes, I think the young man is running where others want him to run, and his dream about his grandfather is a way for him to understand that. To me, though, it's not that the grandfather IS laughing at him but that the boy feels that way, feels he has done something wrong in a perplexing, overwhelming world where he has yet to understand his true position, one of invisibility.
Also, I want to change my answer to a question you asked me the other day. It just dawned on me that you've been posting twice a week for the month of September, which as far as I'm concerned, gives you the right to write (right to write, I like that) whatever you're interested in.
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