'Analysis of Battle Royal – 1\r'

'A neat Compromise In the short story, â€Å" betrothal Royal”, Ralph Ellison uncovers a boy’s fight to maintain his dignity in a world of racial injustice. The starting person narration portrays a credulous view of the boy’s value of what he believes is important in life history that is just questioned by his grandpa’s firm conviction of dignity. On scalawag 39, starting with paragraph 99, the school text depicts the differences betwixt the two segregated worlds of black and pureness. The text elucidates the boy’s consent to the wishes of purity man.His acceptance of the scholarship symbolizes his acceptance of legal separation in the midst of the two societies as â€Å"it was a scholarship to the state college for Negroes. ” Although the boy realizes that discolours and blacks atomic number 18 restricted to societal confines that bottomland never merge and never let equal, the boy fails to see the force exercised by the ex sanguinouss that lock him into this box. When he prioritizes materialistic wealth, â€Å" olfactory perception the fresh leather” of the brief berth over his own dignity, he resigns himself to the desires of familiarity in that he impostures himself with affluence and thereof becomes incapable of realizing his own visions.This is further built by the boy’s commendation â€Å"I felt an importance that I had never dreamed” because it implies that he no longer needs his dignity in order to achieve a view of success. It provides him with self-respect and happiness that prevent him from inquiring the advantages of conformity. Stripped from his pride and naively stretching for wealth he contributes to his own toil as he goes to â€Å" ascertain college” in order to â€Å" sort the want of [his] wad” and thusly fulfills the plans of blancheds.While the boy puts his destiny in the custody of white beau monde, he conforms to the rules of whi te control. Despite the boy’s conformity to white rule, he continues to struggle in fall ining his dignity. The repetition of the word â€Å"blood” serves as an important symbol for the boy’s dignity; it signifies the pride he has in his own race and binds him to his people. However, the boy trunk ignorant of this tie and his â€Å"rope of damn saliva” only forms â€Å"a shape like an undiscovered continent”.This resource represents the possibility of discovering his own dignity and a new world in which he is free to shape his own destiny. notwithstanding the boy’s blindness leads him to dust the blood â€Å"quickly away” as it had â€Å"drooled upon the leather” of his brief case, and smeared the desired promises of the white men. The collocation of the line â€Å"I was joy; I did not even drumhead when I discovered that the gold pieces I had scrambled for were brass pocket tokens announce a certain make of railroad car” strengthens the idea of the boy’s blind struggle for dignity.It connotes that the â€Å"scholarship to the state college for Negroes” he had received is just as phony as the â€Å"brass pocket tokens”, thus symbolizing his reach for a counterfeit dignity. The boy’s dream in the following paragraph continues to enhance his inherent struggle to find dignity by contrasting his character to that of the grandpa. Through the compass of a circus, the narrator suggests that the boy is scarcely a clown and compliant to every orders that he is given up, while the grandpa, who â€Å"refused to laugh at the clowns no matter what they did,” sticks to the dignity of his race.The juxtaposition of this sentence also shows that the grandpa is not hu more(prenominal)d by the naiveness of the boy; alternatively he is rather disappointed as the boy is unable to see that he serves as entertainment to society. Unlike his sear grandfather, the boy id ealistically believes any promise given to him, â€Å"another and another, endlessly” until his dignity is consumed by the will of white men. The boy is so occupied in reaching these promises that he â€Å"would fall of weariness” before he could realize that the further he reached, the more distant he was from discovering his dignity.While society wants to â€Å"‘ limit This Nigger-Boy Running’” by undermining his dignity with the false glamour of a scholarship, the boy realizes that the whites only give him what he thinks he wants; elbow room to attain racial equality as a return for complacency. However, what he actually desires is break free from being loaded and net profit equal status by means of demonstrating that his intellect and abilities are equivalent to that of the whites.Because â€Å"at that time [he] had no insight into its meaning,” he had to compromise between what society could twist him and his dignity. Nonetheless, the authorial intrusion demonstrates that the narrator gained drawn-out perspective on his former naivete when telling his story; thus the reader can infer that the boy no longer sees any value in the conformation to white society. The trade-off between his dignity and false glamour is akin to the zero sum theory in that it takes power from one entity and puts it in the hands of another.Every time the boy conforms to the wishes of white society he gives up some of his dignity, alike when he strives to find his dignity he gives up his willingness to conform to ways of the white men. In the end, his realization depicts him choosing his dignity supra all as illustrated by the decision line â€Å"First I had to attend college”. Therefore, the boy’s struggle to discover his dignity is resolved through his gain of power that allows him to shape his own destiny and simultaneously break free of white oppression.\r\n'