Search for Identity in: Ralph Ellison’s King of The Bingo Game Ralph Ellison’s short story, “King of the Bingo Game,” surrounds around an unnamed African-American male who struggles to identify himself and move against the racial and cultural discrimination, or as in Playing Dark, Toni Morrison describes it as “highly and historically racialized society,” of the north (4). He strives to save his wife, “Laura,” who needs medical attention because of her ailment, probably her pregnancy. Ralph Ellison, in 1936, moved to New York, where he met, innovator of jazz poetry and the leading poet of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes. The story, like, Langston Hughes’ poem, “Theme for English B,” is conveyed through the consciousness of an unnamed …show more content…
His realization of the reality and as master of his own destiny suggests the idea of prophecy. ‘“This is God! This is the really truly God! He said it aloud, ‘This is God!”’, his perception of the God in the wheel leads to the concept of him as a prophet, showing the world how to win the bingo game (587). Even with being self-identified as the prophet, his invisibility yet overcomes him: “but the crowd yelled so loud that they could not hear. These fools, he thought. I’m here trying to tell them the most wonderful secret in the world, and they’re yelling like they gone crazy” (587). Refusing to bingo caller’s request to finish, and still keeping the button pressed, he looks down to all black people as, “he was ashamed of what Negroes did himself”(588). He commits the same crime of racial discrimination, he is a victim of. He racializes the same race, he belongs to, He recognizes someone inside him, and contradicts from him. He realizes that “somehow he had forgotten his name. It was a sad, lost feeling to lose your name, and crazy thing to do. That name had been given him by the white man who had owned his grandfather a long lost time ago down South.” He asks the crowd ‘“Who am I?’”