. The grandfather is a device used by Ellison to foreshadow heavily the rest of the story . Appearing at the beginning and the end, the grandfather provides a lesson to the young narrator which his parents then tell him to ignore "Son, after I'm gone I want you to keep up a good fight. I never told you, but your 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. I want you to overcome'em with yeses, undermine'em with grins, agree'e

Ralph Ellison's short story "Battle Royal" depicts the confusion that fills the mind of a young black man trying to survive in a society where those who are white have all the power and those who are black are their puppets. This young man is torn between two choices on how to prosper in life. One choice is to follow his grandfather's life and not humiliate himself to please white men. The other choice is to be submissive and follow white men's laws and desires. The confusion that afflicts the narrator is made clear in the story. ellison expresses himself through symbolism and slang to communicate the abundant emotions that govern the narrator.

This boy and all like him live in a white dominated society , and the white men in the society can be seen as the puppeteers. In his society the black people are chained down in a reality in which the white dominating society imposes certain morals or principles by which the black community needs to act. However unlike the people around him, he is able to break the chains that imprison his mind and see how things really work. He first gets a true sense in what kind of society he lives when he is invited to give his graduation speech at Battle Royal. Battle Royal is a sort of a barbarous boxing mach in which black boys with blindfolds are forced to fight each other for the entertainment of certain town's men. The boys are blinded by a white blindfold - an easy metaphor - which the narrator circumvents in order to approach the battle royal slightly less like an animal. Before he moved the blindfold though, he notes that he had never truly experienced darkness before and it scared him. Our hero is also made to participate in this activity. "I was shocked to see some of the most important men of the town quite tipsy." he says when he sees who is there, " They were all there-bankers, lawyers, judges, doctors, fire chiefs, teachers, merchants. Even one of the more fashionable pastors." After the fight, in front of that drunk and perverted crowd of white influential males he is going to present his graduation speech, a speech that address "Social responsibility".

. The grandfather is a device used by Ellison to foreshadow heavily the rest of the story . Appearing at the beginning and the end, the grandfather provides a lesson to the young narrator which his parents then tell him to ignore "Son, after I'm gone I want you to keep up a good fight. I never told you, but your 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. I want you to overcome'em with yeses, undermine'em with grins, agree'em to death and dest

Some common words found in the essay are:
Battle Royal, Reconstruction Live, Son I'm, battle royal, Ralph Ellison's, graduation speech, black boys, University Bibliography, boy's mind, forced fight, society white, social responsibility, Royal Ralph, Royal Battle, there-bankers lawyers judges, there-bankers lawyers, fire chiefs, doctors fire chiefs, lawyers judges, judges doctors fire, tipsy there-bankers lawyers, lawyers judges doctors,
Approximate Word count = 1825
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)