Battle Royal Poem Analysis

The painfully achievable American Dream in the Battle Royal chapter of the Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison is in deep contrast to poems Harlem by Langston Hughes and yet do I Marvel by Countee Cullen which viewed the dream as a hopeless prize for the African Americans who try to achieve it. A possibility of an African-American achieving the dream in Battle Royal is possible, but requires that the person sales themselves as non-threading and weak to the white leaders of where they live. For example the narrator has gone about life by appeasing to his tyrants and as a result, he is “…invited to give the speech at a gathering of the town’s leading white citizens”. He even goes to the battle royal of the chapter’s name sake, because he was “…told that since I

Their live made more challenging during the great depression, with line nine to eleven commenting on the prices of food and commodities going up, because they too wanted the dream of stability and equality. However “On the edge of hell” (line 17) there lies Harlem with no place for the people to scale the wall of society, for there is only one destination after Harlem. The Dream in yet do I Marvel is almost the same as in Harlem, but as a thing people can work towards but never achieve. In lines four and five the poem states “Why flesh must mirrors Him must someday die,; Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus,” as well in lines six and seven “Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare; If merely brute caprices dooms Sisyphus”. This allusions to old Greek stories about the pointlessness of life, as a reference to the American Dream. It also compares to the people who chase it in line three as “The little buried mole continues blind,” This connection to the American Dream these stories share mention only those who are hopeless, blind or invisible as the people who chase the