FREE ESSAY ON BATTLE ROYAL

BATTLE ROYAL

Battle Royal is a story about a black boy that is psychologically wakened when he
overhears what his grandfather says at his deathbed to his father. This boy, before he
realizes who he really is, and his social standing in the society that he lives, is
searching to find himself. However this search is filled with many obstacles, because he
lives in a time when people of his status are conditioned to act, talk, and behave in a
certain way.
Our hero's journey toward the light (truth) is started a long time ago. However in the
beginning he is unable to get on the right course, due to the wrong advice he is given by
different people; he says it as All my life I was looking for something, and every were
that I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though
they were often in contradiction (448). Because each time that he accepts their advice he
is little by little pushed off the right track. It is not until he realizes that he is
searching for himself, and instead of asking others questions, he needs to ask the
questions to himself. Once he discovers whom to turn to, he begins a long and difficult
journey in which he realizes that he is a unique person, he puts it as, I am nobody but
myself.(449). This means that he is unique and he is who he is, black. However before he
comes to this enlightenment he discovers that he is an invisible man(449). He marks
himself invisible because in the society in which a person is unheard and unseen by
others is invisible.
At that point our young friend's problem is clear. He is a black boy in a White men's
world, in which he is not see or heard. Yet he still does not know what to do about it,
well at-least not until he hears his grandfathers words to his father: 
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 destruction, let'em swoller you till they vomit or burst wide open Learn it to the
younguns(449)
These last words that his grand father speaks are the chain-breakers that set the young
boy's mind free. What hit's him the hardest is finding out that his people are in an
ongoing fight, a war for freedom and equality. And it is these words that guide him on
the right path to the realization of who he is, and how he needs to start thinking and
acting. However this path that his grandfather sets him on, is one that presents many
mind-tormenting problems. How will his people treat him if he takes on a rebellious
attitude? Also if he refuses to fight for his rights what will his deceased grandfather
think of him? These questions torment the boy's mind and soul. In his mind he literally
sets himself between two hard places. 
Look at this new knowledge that our young hero is given as being given the secrets to
life. Breaking the walls of ignorance down, and shown in what kind of society he really
lives. This new perception of life now cleans away his old principals, morals, and ethics
and sets him up with new and renewed ones. He learns that he is not obligated to act as
the oppressing society around him demands. Reading a passage from Plato's Allegory of the
Cave helps us connect his realization of how the world around him works, and his
awareness of a new reality:
Behold! Human beings living in a underground cave, which has a mouth open towards the
light and reaching all along the cave; here they have been from their childhood, and have
their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them,
being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a
fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised
way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which
marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppet.
This boy and all like him live in a white dominated society (the cave), 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. 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. (450). 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(457).
The physical battle that our hero is made to fight in shows us two important issues:
First, how the black boys are kept down (socially) by being forced to fight against their
own. This tactic of keeping your enemies fighting each other, so you can control them
easier has been used numerous times in history. However the horrible things about Battle
Royal is that the black boys except it morally, and think that it is alright for them to
be treated as animals, some of them even look forward to the fight. The second issue that
this battle raises is the mental struggle that our hero needs to overcome. In order for
him to be allowed to give his graduation speech, he needs to overcome an obstacle by
participating in a dehumanizing activity. This fight is one of the emotional struggles
that he needs to conquer, like his grandfather says, Live with your head in the lion's
mouth overcome'em with yeses, undermine'em with grins, agree'em to death.., let'em
swoller you till they vomit or burst wide open (449) he needs to overcome this physical
and mental struggle just so he can be heard giving a speech to people who for now think
that he is just a small ant. They even give him a prize, a briefcase and a scholarship to
a University. 
At the end of the story we finally see how his morality becomes constant with the reality
that he lives. The night after the Battle Royal he has a dream. In it he hears his
grandfather give him instructions to read a note that is in the briefcase which was given
to him as an award. The note read, To Whom It May Concern, Keep this Nigger-Boy
Running(459) This is the point that he realizes that the nice things that he has been
given is not for his benefit, but he is being bout with these gifts. From all this he now
knows for a fact that he lives in a society that does not except him as a person, but
rather more like an animal that does not disserve any human rights. Because this society
is his reality, he now needs to alter his moral ideas so it will compliment his newly
realized reality.