The short story that I decided to analyze is Ralph Ellison’s Battle Royal. This short story to me implied how in essence we are not so different from our (black people) slave ancestors. A quote in the story where he says, “I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slave. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time been ashamed.” This quote epitomized the whole short story for me. During this paper, I will state why I have that particular position and will support that position from snippets from the short story. Throughout the short story, the invisible man find himself trying to prove himself to white people. With this eagerness to validate himself to white people, he allowed himself to be humiliated by them. Typically, …show more content…
I never told you, but our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy’s country ever since I gave up my gun back in the Reconstruction. 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 wide open.” To me this means, don’t forget your side in the fight. If you have to go through them to get something, do so, but don’t forget who you are while doing so. As well as don’t allow yourself to get arrogant because of your closeness to them. Remember the reasoning behind why you are in proximity of them. He like his family resented his last words; essentially, forgetting their place in the good fight and/or abandoning the good fight altogether. This made him susceptible to what happened to him doing the ballroom. They were embarrassed and degraded, yet all that he could think about were pleasing them. All he can think about were doing what he thought was what they wanted. The good fight was long gone. He just wanted to get acknowledge by white people for his intelligence because white people to him were the authority in determining intellect and good qualities for a Black person to have. He craved white approval. He didn’t want to be a traitor in the enemy’s country instead he wanted to be an ally. He …show more content…
Since in the beginning, it went from the crowd being angry and hostile to him because he said, “social equality” and reiterating that he must know his place at all times for them to do right by him to him getting a thunderous applause and praises. One can imagine that he told the white people exactly what they wanted to hear and even worse that he believed it. His participation in the good fight was nonexistent. One can know assumed that he was an informant not in white society but in Black society. They provided him a scholarship to the state college for Negroes and a briefcase. His family and neighbors were happy and excited for what he was given not knowing what he had to endure to get those things, or if they did, it showed that he was not alone in giving up the good fight. Though he had clearly chosen his side of the “war”, he knew somewhat he was wrong in his beliefs because he dreamed of his grandfather saying, Keep This Nigger-Boy Running.” What I got from that is to keep him running from himself and keep him running from the truth. Though he, the invisible man, achieved some level of success in his brief time in adulthood, he struggles to reconcile with what he had to do to achieve that level of success. But his pride of satisfying white people blinded him from admitting his