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Invisible Man


            " (2369) This one statement sums up the general feeling of "Battle Royal", the first chapter of The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. This story is about the struggle of a young black man to discover who he is in a world that keeps trying to keep him from doing just that. [Explain the rebellion/conformity issue for the story in more detail.] The narrator in "Battle Royal" is throughout the story struggling with the decision of whether to follow his own beliefs and conform to the white man's vision of how a black man should act or to fulfill his grandfather's dying wish and rebel against them.
             "Battle Royal" is the story of a young black man in the 1950s that is stuck in the harsh world of post-slavery segregation and prejudice trying to make a better life for himself but not knowing how to do it. The narrator of the story, who calls himself "an invisible man" (2359), is a very bright young man, delivering a speech on his graduation day that praised the power of humility (2360). As bright as he is, he is full of questions. His grandfather, very well liked in the white community for his soft-spoken ways, declared himself a "traitor and a spy" (2360) on his deathbed for acquiescing to the wishes of the white man. This declaration brings about the birth of the narrator's confusion. Should he do as his grandfather did and comply with the way the white men wanted him to act, or should he rise up and defy their wishes? [Finish the plot summary: how does it all end up?].
             The graduation speech itself represents conflict in the boy. He gives a speech to his peers praising humility as "the very essence of progress" (2360). He confides in the readers that he does not actually believe this. He says he only pretends to feel this way because he knows it is what the leading white men of the community want to hear. If he didn't really believe that it was the only way for a black man to succeed in society, why was he so quick to appease the white man? Some part of him feels that he should rise up against them because that is what his grandfather wanted the "younguns" (2360) to do.


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