Identity

Ralph Ellison’s “Battle Royal,” is a short story of a talented young black male’s struggle to find his identity through the lies and racism of the whites, and his own people, who believe his actions, are those of a sell out, of African-Americans. This is true in a way because the narrator does take advantage of the white sponsored education, but in another sense, he is also taking advantage of the education to elevate himself in the white society and ultimately suppress white authority more effectively. Although the narrator was deceived into giving a speech at a gathering of the town’s leading white citizens, mislead into fighting in “battle royal,” a boxing match, and tricked into gratitude of the white’s gift of a scholarship to a “college for Negroes,” in the end he will discover his own identity and that neither the whites nor the blacks hold the key.
When the narrator showed up hotel to give his speech, he was told that he might as well take part in ba...