Short Story Saturdays: "Battle Royal"

It's dark. It's disgusting. It's vulgar.

But it's real.

The "Battle Royal" is a fight for dignity in a world where dignity belongs only to The White Man. It's a mock trial of character, intelligence, and, ultimately, manhood. It's a place where only the absolulte strongest can survive, and where the strongest is still nothing more than a "black boy."

I love this story, but I also hate it. It's one of those that is so gut-wrenching and grotesque, it makes you want to vomit, but you still realize that it's a must-read to understand the realities of humanity.

It makes me sad, in some ways, that our American history forces stories like this to be written. In "Battle Royal," a short story later turned novel by Ralph Ellison, a young black man's idealist dreams collide with harsh reality. In a seemingly once in a lifetime opportunity, the young high school graduate is invited to give his stirring graduation speech before a group of the town's "presitigious" white men. Naively, he thinks it's the chance he's been waiting for.

What follows is a nightmare of blood, sweat, and tears. He is ushered, not to a podium, but to a boxing ring, where he is forced to duke it out with other young blacks, all blindfolded. The jeering and roaring drunkards who watch keep him swinging, fueling his ideal that they are merely testing him to see what he's made of and to give him a reward.

Admist the blood and the sweat, we see him literally grow up in a single night, from seeing the young woman humililated and mocked in the opening dance, to being stripped down and bullied in the ring, to being electrocuted and made to grovel on his knees for worthless tokens, to finally being "allowed" to make his speech...and still led to believe he can "be somebody." The narrator, this young man grown up, continuously interjects, "what a fool I was!" We hear the hopelessness in the narrator's voice throughout the story, as he recalls how naive he was about how to survive in the white man's world.

It's horrifying and gut-wrenching; in some ways, it makes me ashamed that such hatred and cruelty could ever be in our hearts.

A hard story to read. Be aware that there is some graphic sensuality (used to make a point), and a few strong curse words. Use caution, but leave an open mind. It will force you to ask the question: what does it mean to be a man?

P.S. To read the rest of this young man's story, read Ellison's Invisible Man.