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Fight for Equality in Battle Royale

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Ralph Ellison's short story "Battle Royale" is a story about a young black man who thinks that his grandfather's words are a curse to him. The narrator has just graduated high school and is invited to give a speech to the white citizens of the town. However, he is grouped with nine other black young men to take part in a battle instead of giving the speech. Ten young men including the narrator are blindfolded and told to fight each other until they are bleeding from the mouth and nose. Then, they are forced to pick up coins and bills on a rug, which is connected with electricity. Finally, the narrator receives a chance to give his speech, but the white men still see what he is doing as an entertainment for them by not caring and laughing at his speech. Throughout the short story "Battle Royal,  Ellison explores the significant theme, which is racism. In our life, there are still some people who are not respected by other people just because of skin color, language, customs, or place of birth. Ellison shows that the white men use the young black men as slaves for their entertainment activities although slavery has already stopped. The whites also use their power to control the blacks; the blacks do not have any rights to do what they want. The narrator tries to give the speech to make the whites praise him, but he ends up discovering that he is an invisible man. At the beginning of the story, the narrator describes himself as looking for something and learning that he is an invisible man. Many white men look at him as a stereotypical black man, so he realizes that in reality he is an invisible man. The narrator is affected by what his grandfather said, such as "keep up the good fight  and "our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days  (Ellison, 258). Although his father tells him to forget, those words still bring him so much anxiety. The narrator does not want other people looking at him as a traitor or a spy. T

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