An analysis of Ralph Ellison’s short story “Battle Royal,” a chapter from his novel Invisible Man, including its themes, plot, climax, recognition, reversal, protagonists, antagonists, symbolism, and point of view. Some teachers overlook the fact that one powerful way Ellison shows that in the American South of the 1930s and 1940s African Americans were “invisible” (that is, when whites looked at them they did not see human beings but a stereotype) is by never giving the protagonist of his nove