The Search for Identity in Battle Royal

We live in a society where everyone is free and equal, but during a certain time in American history this wasn’t the case. Identity, the whole black community was put into one identity which was suppressed and segregated from white society. In Battle Royal by Ralph Ellison we follow one of these nameless black men on his search for identity. To be specific identity in Battle Royal is the conflict between self-perception and the projection of others.

We see this conflict take shape in the nameless narrator, his story starts off as him being a model black citizen and public speaker.

He searches for identity as a black man during a segregated time in American history but sees himself as a potential Booker T Washington. This conflict of identity is the main theme in Battle Royal because the story of the narrator revolves around both his identity and how his ambitions conflict with the struggles set before him . The short story also shows a relationship between identity and race and how one's race affects not only their identity but how other people perceive you in society.

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First the narrator struggles with this conflict with the cursed words of his grandfather, on his deathbed said to his father that he was a traitor and a spy, and told them '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 open.

'. He thought he carried out his grandfather's advice unconsciously and when he did he was praised for desirable conduct just like his grandfather did. The narrator just like his grandfather went against social norms being subservient to white folk while having their own ambitions and goals for themselves and their entire race. Our narrators ambition is to be like Booker T Washington and has the chance to speak in front of the highest standing white men with a speech on humility but gets faced with increasingly more difficult and humiliating struggles.

From fighting in the ring, scrambling on an electrified carpet for a few bucks and coins, and finally swallowing blood as his speech fell upon deaf ears. Over the course of the story the way our narrator views himself and the white crowd changes as he faces each challenge. During the start he sees himself as a rabble rouser a speaker and how fighting is taking away the dignity he had coming in. Then he sees himself as a rat scavenging off the carpet for anything he could grab. At the end his late grandfather comes to him in a dream where there is a circus with clowns performing but his grandfather didn’t laugh at them. He looked at the narrator and told him to read what was inside and in all gold the words“To Whom It May Concern, Keep This Nigger-Boy Running.” was engraved. The narrator woke to his grandfather laughing in his ears, not realizing but he was the clown to be laughed at.

Second is the narrator's struggle to find identity and acceptance as an individual when the majority of society only preserves him as a tool due to his color. Over the course of the short story we see the white leaders of the town would use young African Americans as entertainment and subject them to animalistic treatment and torment. The narrator is fighting in a bloody blindfolded battle royal, and as he clashes with his nine other nine classmates while the drunken crowd erupts with racist slurs and a shear hunger for violence. He then fights one on one against Tatlock, the biggest fighter in the school. As the narrator reels from a punch he can see 'howling red faces crouching tense beneath the cloud of blue-gray smoke.”

There like wolves or how Liz Brent states “A wolf is a predator, and the racist white society preys upon the disempowered black community like a pack of wolves.” While on the opposite end Brent says “Similarly to being treated like trained animals, the young black men are treated like circus clowns, forced to make fools of themselves for the entertainment of the white crowd.'