African American Identity Crisis in Battle Royal by Bhanu Bhakta Khatiwada

African American Identity Crisis in Battle Royal

                                                                                                          Bhanu Bhakta Khatiwada

                                                                                                                                               Kathmandu Model College

Ralph Ellison was a twentieth-century African-American novelist and literary critic whose works brought new perception on looking at the black people in contemporary America. In his early days, Ellison was a student of music who gradually entered into the literary world by reading the works of renowned writers like T. S. Eliot. Most of his writings show the identity crisis in the characters which is regarded to be his own autobiographical tone as the novel “Invisible Man”. It won the National Book Award in 1953. His literary career moved smoothly with raising the voice of the African American’s who were the victims of white racist Americans after meeting Richard Wright, who is remembered as one of the major writers who raise the issue of African Americans, their identity, and individualism.

The short story “Battle Royal” is the first chapter of Ellison’s novel The Invisible Man, told in first-person narration. It was published some five years before the novel published. The story is about an unnamed African-American boy who is treated as an object of white citizens and his existence is not realized in their societies. Although he is given an opportunity to deliver a speech in front of the important white men in the town and given the scholarship to study in a famous school for black students. But, it was not easy to get the prize. Hue, including some other black boys, is being forced to fight each other who are shown the false gold coins they get after winning the boxing. In fact, the rug was electrified. They have to fight each other, being blindfolded. After getting the letter of scholarship, that night he sees his grandfather in the dream who asks him to open and read. There was written, “ To Whom It May Concern, Keep This Nigger-Boy Running”.  

Although blacks’ rights were established some hundred years ago, racial discrimination has not been totally abolished. The blacks are still fighting to get a social, cultural, and political identity. The issue of cultural identity plays a significant role to develop individually. Seth J. Schwartz, Byron L. Zamboanga, and et all argue that understanding the cultural identity is important because cultural identity captures multiple processes (individualism-collectivism, ethnic identification) that change as a result of identification (160). Ellison brings the reference from the history of the declaration of independence, which did not apply in behavior which made them live in their own country as a slave who does not have a clear identity. The unnamed narrator narrates “About eighty-five years ago, they were told that they were free, united with others of our country in everything pertaining to the common good, and, in everything social, separate like the fingers of the hand (15).” 

The life of the black people is compared to the slaves who kept on fighting for years. The seeds of dissatisfaction were seen several years ago and they are being cheated in each generation so that his grandfather and father’s generation had to spend their lives on behalf of the white oppressors. “The social context was that even after the second world war there was the denial of citizenship and opportunity to black people. Segregation was the law of the land and Jim Crow Customs still prevailed in the south.” (Introduction by John Callaban)

Almost all the African American characters should suffer because of white domination and prejudicial behaviors. “The character's problems are always problems of personality, emotion, identity, experience. And as true as this is for the general run of novelistic character it is a fortiori true of the narrator of Invisible Man, whose re-namings, forgets, erasures from the whole set of crises that structures the novel.” (Bourassa, 2).

The contemporary situation was against black rights and it was difficult to react against the dominating voice of the white oppressors. During the narrator and his competitors at the boxing ring were blindfolded, different voices yelled insistently for the battle royal to begin. All the voices were racist and called the boy with the prejudicial word ‘nigger’. The narrator boy’s identity is never revealed in the text which shows that blacks were not taken as friends or respected people in the white’s areas. The following dialogues prove how prejudicial dialogue they utter.

“ Get going in there!”

“ Let me at that big nigger!”…

“ Let me at those black sonsabitches.”

“ I want to get at that ginger-colored nigger. Tear him limb from limb.” ( Ellison, 21)

The place for black people is not visible and the identifications as well. The treatment of them is not different as it is given to the criminals. Then the question arises are the black citizens barbaric? Uncivilized? Why the existence of African-American is not accepted by the whites? Bourassa argues “When the Battle Royal ends with the knock out of the narrator, he has one more indignity to endure, scrambling for coins on an electrified mat with the other fighters: "I crawled rapidly around the floor, picking up the other coins, trying to avoid the copper sand to get greenbacks and the gold. Ignoring the shock by laughing, as I brushed the coins off quickly, I discovered I could contain the electricity -- a contradiction, but it works" (6).

Lionel  K. McPherson and Tommish Elby opine “African Americans already suffer from great disparities in wealth, income, employment, education, and health care, and thus it is especially important, for them and the society generally, that their projects are successful. Appiah argues that contemporary African American social identity, given its reliance on the problematic concept of race is indeed incoherent (172). He further comments “our view, the social identity of a group is most clearly revealed in the behavioral dispositions of its members, not in abstract conceptual propositions to which they might assent if queried by a clever philosopher or probing social scientist” (175).

The idea of identity crisis is similar to the blindfoldedness of the individuals where his/her existence does not make any sense in society. It is one of the significant aspects of the story. Lopez Miralles raises the issue of blindness and marginalization of a black citizen in his book Invisibility and Blindness in Ellison’s Invisible Man and Wright’s Native Son.

The Battle Royal, one of the most important passages of Invisible Man, is full of symbols, metaphors, and events that illustrate the ways in which Ellison analyzed blindness and invisibility. The black protagonist is invited to give a speech about freedom in front of hundreds of whites. However, he is deceived and forced to participate in a racist show where he is going to be humiliated simply for the color of his skin. He is forced to do cruel things like beating his friends and even being blindfolded. Ellison tried to represent how blacks are blind for allowing themselves to be humiliated and for submitting to their stereotype of inferior beings. Whites’ blindness is also represented. Consequently, both races are invisible to each other as individuals (62).

However, their idea of revolution to get their identifications never stopped, though the form of revolution was quite different than in the half of the twentieth century. From the deathbed of the narrator’s grandfather told his father: “Son, after I am gone, I want you to keep up the fight. 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 give up my gun back in the Reconstruction. Live with your head in the lion’s mouth…agree on them to death and destruction, let them shower you till they vomit or bust wide open (16).”

In sum, Ralph Ellison raises the issue of identity, especially in racial and cultural forms. Through the unnamed narrator, he has presented the real social scenario of how so-called civilized white citizens behave black citizens with racial prejudice. The boy is a representative character of the whole African-American people and his sufferings were the social reality and many are still existing in the American societies. The deceptive act of the whites of giving torture by showing fake reward (fake gold coins in the story). In such a context, how the identity of the African American citizens could be established? Ellison has artistically presented the nature of whites, who are always motivated to dominate the black citizens and treating them as a creature who do not have any identity and existence.

Works Cited

“Ralph Waldo Ellison.” Bio. A&E Television Networks, 2014. Web. 21 Oct. 2014.

Schwartz Seth J, Byron L. Zamboanga and et al. The Structure of Cultural Identity in an Ethnically Diverse Sample of Emerging Adults. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. 29 (2). 159–173.

Ellison, Ralph. The Invisible Man. Random House, 1952.

Bourassa, Alan. Affect, History, and Race and Ellison's Invisible Man. Lafayette: Purude University Press, 2006.

McPherson Lionel K. and Tommiesh Elby. Blackness and Blood: Interpreting African American Identity. New Jersey: Blackwell Publishing. www.jstor.org, 2010. 171-192

Lopez, Miralles A. Invisibility and Blindness in Ellison’s Invisible Man and Wright’s Native Son. University de Almeria, 2013. 57-66.