Battle Royal In Ralph Ellison’s essay “Battle Royal” he describes a Negro boy, timid and compliant, comes to a white smoker in a Southern town: he is to be awarded a scholarship. Together with several other Negroes he is rushed to the front of the ballroom, where a sumptuous blonde tantalized and frightens them by dancing in the nude. Blindfolded, the Negro boys stage a “battle royal, “ a free-for-all in which they pummel each other to the drunken shouts of the whites. “Practical jokes,” humiliations, terrors—and then the boy delivers a prepared speech of gratitude to his white benefactors. Any person with values and morals would be appalled and ashamed by that the way the wh