Racial Discrimination

Racial discrimination is a worldwide conflict that affects all races. Throughout the short story "Battle Royal," written by Ralph Ellison, racial discrimination is portrayed through himself as the main character. In it, the narrator faces many racial barriers, but overcomes them and ultimately receives a scholarship to a state college for Negroes. During these challenges, he is faced with man versus man conflict and man versus himself conflict.

Even though the narrator was originally attending the battle royal to deliver a speech he recited at his high school graduation, he was entered into a brutal battle which conveys man versus man conflict. The narrator faces the biggest member inside of the arena, Tatlock, who has no sympathy for him because no matter what the narrator offers him, he does not accept it. The narrator was hit so hard that blood filled his mouth and he could not tell whether it was blood or sweat. "A blow to my head as I danced about sent my right eye popping like a jack-in-the-box" (291).

"All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer" (285). The narrator says this to illustrate the internal struggles he faces being a Negro in a white dominated society. Throughout the short story, the narrator is reminded constantly that he, and his race, are inferior, leaving him unsure of himself and what he will accomplish. In the resolution of the short story, the narrator says, "It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man!" (285). After the narrator