The Overlook on Battle Royale Battle Royal, by Ralph Ellison is a short story about a young African American boy who takes his grandfather’s very last words to heart he uses these words as motivation and presents a speech at his graduation, so great that the superintendent invited him to read it at Battle Royal, after presenting the speech to all the leading white citizens he feels as if he has made his grandfather proud. Once entering the main ballroom where Battle Royale is taking place the young boy denotes that it’s not what he expected, and is then forced to take part in a fight. “There was nothing to do but what we were told.” The young boy and a few others were blind folded and expected to beat up on each other. After a while he was one of the last boys in the ring having to face a vicious black male “Tatlock, the biggest of the gang.” The young boy didn’t care to win the fight he was more focused on delivering his speech. Finally when the fight was over the boys were tricked into grabbing coins, bills and pieces of gold which were intentionally placed on an electric rug shocking everyone who tried grabbing them, but the boys didn’t care.
A honorary expectation was bestowed upon him in the form of a request to deliver a speech to an assembly comprised of the town’s “leading white citizens” (Meyer 209). The narrator seemed certain that he would arrive at the specified location and just simply deliver his speech. However, the unsuspecting young man found himself being pulled rapidly into a cruel initiation instigated according to the color of his skin. The initiation started shortly after he arrived to the town gathering. He was informed that he was to join several of his peers in the battle royal, as it was considered part of the entertainment for the evening.
They also believe that women are lower than them because they can subject the blonde woman to be ogled in a room by a bunch of people to watch their reactions and not think twice about it. After the blonde woman is gone, the boys go into the anteroom and they try to leave. But they are stopped and told to get in to the ring. They feel like they have no choice but to listen. The boys are blindfolded and the fight begins.
The black students, gifted males, would go on to become athletes. Unfortunately, the class valedictorian Henry Reed would be excluded from those considered gifted because he didn’t participate in sports. Angelou describes Henry as a rather a small “very black boy with hooded eyes” (79). After Mr. Donleavy delivers his speech, Henry, who had prepared a lengthy speech entitled “To Be or Not To Be,” rises to his feet feeling the sting of Mr. Donleavy’s words. Henry does his best to present his speech by reciting Hamlet’s soliloquy does not finish.
Battle Royal by Ralph Ellison follows the life of a young African-American who looks up to his grandfather although his grandfather describes himself as a "traitor to his people". The narrator’s idea that his grandfather expresses, and when he is called to give a speech to a group of upper-class white folks, he is persuaded to fight a group of kids of the same age. He is defeated in the fight, yet he goes on to make his speech in front of the crowd. His persistence to give his speech in front of people after he lost in a fight conveys Ellison's expression of appointing identity to his main character. From reading this story, I sensed a major theme of representing one’s self as an individual opposed to giving into what society wants you to do.
Ellison’s story Battle Royal takes place in the South during the early twentieth century and is written in the first person point of view and narrated by a young African American boy struggling to find his place within society. Through the use of humility and humiliation he is eventually able to come to the realization that he can be nobody but himself and he should stop trying to be somebody else. The Theme of Ellison’s Battle Royal is that nobody can tell you what your identity should be, that only you can figure out who and what you should be and that nobody else can make that decision for you. The narrator is troubled when he overhears his grandfather on his death bed tell his father that he wants him to keep up the good fight and
Malcolm X as an Activist During the 1960’s, there was one man who really stood out about expressing the hardships of being an African American. This man was Malcolm X. Ultimately, Malcolm X believed to the fullest extent, that African American’s could not reach their full potential in society because of white racism, and the historical events leading from slavery in the United States. However, due to the events that happened in his childhood, Malcolm X tries to reverse this feeling of victimization throughout his life and tries to become a positive activist for all African Americans. Throughout his life and up until the day he dies, Malcolm X tries to pursue this ultimate goal of seeing white racism in a positive light and making something good come out of the events that happened in his life.
So they just kept holding the thought that black people were not deserved to be treated equally. Baldwin and his father, the first and second generation of freemen, was a typical example of discrimination in this time. Throughout this essay, Baldwin has explained his strained relationship with his father because of all the anger and paranoia his father expressed during his childhood. But also at the same time, he regretted that he did not get to know him better when he was alive since the moment Baldwin realized that his father was only trying to protect him from racism. By going through all the experiences that Baldwin and his father had earned by their skin color, he himself have learnt about what position he and Negroes in general were placed in by the society in that time and how he has figured a way out.
Now, let’s look at what a short summary of Gates’ essay would look like: In the essay “What’s in a Name,” Henry Louis Gates expresses his viewpoint on the discrimination that his parents, particularly his father, experienced during his childhood in the South. The specific example that Gates refers to involves an incident where a shopkeeper who was friendly with his father referred to him as “George,” a name that Gates now realizes was a popular way of referring to African Americans in those times. Perhaps because his father made good money and the shopkeeper felt uneasy about his status, or simply because of the color of his skin, Gates’ father had to accept this discrimination and there was nothing he could do about it. As his mother told young Gates, “It was one of those things” (p. 6). (A summary should be Complete, Accurate, Brief, Independent, and Neutral
He is nervous and a little scared , but instead of being grateful towards them he feels anger, especially towards Mary as he feels that they are mocking him. For example, when Mary first sees him and asks him if he belongs to a Union, he feels mocked and takes an immediate disliking to the girl. Bigger also reacts to Fear by mentally abusing certain people like Mary and Bessie, his girlfriend. For example, when Mary and Jan invite him to a black people’s restaurant where Bigger knows some of the people there, he feels uncomfortable and