Question

For each of the passages below, identify the title and author of the short story from which the passage comes, explain what the passage depicts or illustrates, provide the larger context in which the passage can be understood, and interpret the significance of the passage to the whole story.

"Everyone fought hysterically. It was complete anarchy. Everybody fought everybody else. No group fought together for long ... Blows landed below the belt and in the kidney, with the gloves open as well as closed, and with my eye partly opened now there was not so much terror. I moved carefully, avoiding blows, although not too many to attract attention, fight from group to group. The boys groped about like blind, cautious crabs crouching to protect their mid-sections, their heads pulled in short against their shoulders, their arms stretched nervously before them, with their fists testing the smoke-filled air like the knobbed feelers of hypersensitive snails."

Answer 1

This passage is taken from the Battle Royal chapter of the novel Invisible Man by the author Ralph Ellison. There is symbolic meaning in this text. This paragraph depicts the prevalent asymmetry in the society where black people were considered beneath white people. This paragraph depicts the struggle the black boy endures to speak his mind in front of the white audience. The blows are symbolic of the harsh treatment the boy receives for being black or it can also talk about the larger issue that black people were discriminated in society.