Battle Royal

The narrator in the” Battle Royal”, Ralph Ellison is confused and disillusioned. He is a black man trapped in a world of cruelty and social inequality with nobody to guide him. He is being ripped apart in two directions by the advice of his grandfather and by the wishes of white society, which he longs to please. While attempting to satisfy their wishes, he loses two important things his identity and his own dignity. One …

…night, the narrator had successfully endured humiliation and physical pain at the hands of the whites. However, he received a briefcase from the white men with a scholarship to a Negro college; with this, the narrator thought he had finally understood what his grandfather meant. But, it was not until he opened the letter, which read “To whom it may concern…Keep this Nigger boy running”(Ellison 528) did he truly understand what his grandfather meant.