Battle Royal

by Ralph Ellison

+ Want to read

A young Black man is invited to a small southern town to deliver a speech before the town's leading white men. He arrives expecting to be honoured, but the evening is built around cruelty. Before he can take the stage, he is forced into a line of boys, blindfolded and pushed into a ring to brawl with one another while the men cheer and bet. The entertainment rests on humiliating these young men for the amusement of their elders. Pressed to perform, the narrator is handed what he believes is an opportunity, only to find the terms ever more degrading. The story lays bare the hypocrisy of a society that speaks of progress and education while holding a whole population in its place through force and spectacle.

Genre
literary fictionliterary fictionMore like thisLess of this
Themes
African AmericanAfrican AmericanMore like thisLess of thisraceraceMore like thisLess of this
Audience
adult
Form
short storiesshort storiesMore like thisLess of this

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