Batte Royal...

Everybody was assigned "close reading" toward one paragraph of "Battle Royal." I was picked for the seventh paragraph that begun with the line "We were rushed up to the front of the ballroom, where it smelled even more strongly of tobacco, and whiskey."

This paragraph was strongly molded with images. Two of the most important images or things that were involved in the story were the blonde white woman that was naked, and the ring that the black men had to fight in.

To me racism and sexism was highlighting the entire chapter. The woman seemed to have been thrown into this situation by the white men that watched ringside at the black men who fought. The woman served a few different purposes. First, the woman served as entertainment for the white gentlemen who smoked and drunk alcohol. The other purpose for her was to get the black men to look at her so the white men could have an excuse to beat them.

The narrator was one of the black men who was suppose to give a speech and got roped into this before he could do it. He didn't understand why this had happened to him. And I really didn't know exactly why the white men would give him the scholarship, and let him give the speech later.

Anyways, I believed that this own paragraph had a rhyme or beat to it, similar to the way fighters have a particular walk or step to them in a fight. But I believe this area of the story was used to build tension, and suspense.

Back to the way the fighters in the ring must have felt about the naked white woman. They must have been attracted toward her, and at the same time trying to look at her. Some I am sure were staring, while others, like the narrator, thought about covering her up. It is almost funny how both the whites and the blacks wanted to protect her, but neither did because they wanted to get a particular reaction from the other race.

So racism is the driver. The narrator said he wanted "to caress her and destroy her, to love her and murder her, to hide from her, and yet to stroke where below the small American flag tattooed upon her belly her thighs formed a capital V."<1473> He wanted to protect her and care for her because he kind of knew how she felt; both of them were being used by these upper class white men.

If the narrator looked or stared at her naked body he would have been "blinded" by the white men. Basically, they would have beat him for looking at her. This symbolizes the way the white upper class men wanted the women, and the blacks in their society to feel misplaced. And not knowing what to do or how to react toward things in their lives. They wanted them to feel like their was no positive side in their life.

The great images in this paragraph was poetic, especially when the narrator was describing the naked blonde woman.