Beginning of Essay
Ralph Ellison’s short story, "Battle Royal", is symbolic in many different ways. In one way it is symbolic of the African Americans’ struggle for equality throughout our nation’s history. The various hardships that the narrator must endure, in his ....

Middle of Essay
.... in the battle royal must face are phenomenal. At first the boys are ushered into a room where a nude woman is dancing. The white men yell at the boys for looking and not looking at the woman. It is as if they are showing them all of the good things being white can bring, and then saying that they aren’t good enough for it since they were black. Next the boys must compete in the battle royal. Blindly the boys savagely beat one another. This is symbolic of the African Americans’ fight for equality. It represents the struggle they endured, to be accepted as equals with our society’s white population, upon the abolition of slavery. Blindly ....