Tao Hengsheng Professor Dawson English 184 11 October 2012 Everfight By depicting his grandfather’s words and his experience in the battle royal that accompanied with bewilderment and gradual maturity, the narrator presented us a story that stimulates deep thought for not only the social status, but also the mental status of blacks. There are about specific points, which are the significance of grandfather’s words and extended symbolism of “blindfold”, I would like to draw attention to and discuss, in order to provide a profound inquiry of Battle Royal.
Evidently, grandfather had been practicing for the common good for his whole life, yet he called himself a “traitor”. His words seemed more powerful than his death in that “my folks were more alarmed over his last words than over his dying”. The narrator was confused. On one hand, the narrator was “warned emphatically to forget what he had said”, raising more curiosity; on the other, the narrator “could never be sure of what he meant”, and all he could do was having a feeling of an anonymous guilt, “whenever things went well”.
Never knowing whom the grandfather betrayed, he was being praised among the whites for having such attitude, further leading to a moral ambiguity. It should be concluded, it’s himself, his family, or his race as a whole, grandfather had betrayed. At ease he was; he felt comfortable being satisfied with the current condition, forgetting to fight.
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Eventually, however, he answered to the call of guts that people who do give up arms are doomed to death and ruin, leaving his words and warns, hoping his future generations would not act like him. Blindfold played an important role in the battle royal, where apparently it’s used to block peoples’ sight, in order to increase the interest of such watching such contest. It became a huge barrier for the narrator in that without sight he felt blow from everywhere, yet the blindfold blocked not nly the narrator’s eyes. Blindfold made the narrator blind, mentally. He believed he could achieve success and win respect by genuine meekness; he cannot see the injustice in the battle royal; he dare not to fight when he is being questioned if he pronounced incorrectly; he cannot unmask what is being praised was just deliberately disguised racism; he played up to the whites, whereas what he got was venom—the electric rug, the battle field and the fake prize.
