The Search Of Identity In “Battle Royal“

3 Pages 823 Words

Ralph Ellison’s 1948 short story “Battle Royal” depicts a boy at a proverbial fork in the road with his identity while trying to deal with cut-throat racism. The symbolism in “Battle Royal” is given in order to show the two choices the Invisible Man has to choose from in order to overcome his oppression. On one hand he can waste his intelligence and join what he has learned to hate and become the very thing that oppresses him from his full potential. On the other, he can use his intelligence to stay true to himself while at the same time overcoming the oppression that makes him different. Ellison uses two distinct symbols in to place the Invisible Man in a decision that will ultimately create his own identity.
In the story, Ellison uses an important symbol in the form of a white naked woman who dances for the aristocrats. Through this woman the Invisible Man is faced with a choice to which the decision will ultimately decide his identity. To take one path, the Invisible Man views like his audience the aristocrats, the woman as an object to which he can control and ogle over as he pleases. However through another path he feels like the woman, an object himself. “I wanted at one and the same time to run from the room, to sink through the floor, or go to her and cover her from my eyes and the eyes of the other with my body; to feel the soft thighs, to caress her and destroy her, to love her and to murder her, to hide from her, and yet to stroke where below the small American flag tattooed upon her belly her thighs formed a capital V” (558). The Invisible Man is crossed over the decision to take the side of his enemies and ogle over her or to accept the fact that she falls on the same side as him and is nothing but a toy for the spectators. This outlook on other people is a deciding factor on what kind of person the Invisible Man himself will become. If he takes the darker view of the dancer like the aristocrats then...