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What Are The Similarities Between Battle Royal And If We Must Die

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Ralph Waldo Ellison’s short story “Battle Royal” and Claude McKay’s poem “If We Must Die” shows two different approaches and reactions to the same gruesome scene of mistreatment towards the black community, in the early 1900’s. While one is shorter than the other, both stories share the same setting, holding none of the violent tones back, and give a vivid description of what truly happened. The two vary in approach, in the way that both the main characters go into the situation. One of these, being more open and willing to submit to make the white people happy and the other one has the main character ready to fight from the very beginning. They both end with the main characters coming to the different conclusions one being more optimistic and the other ending with death being a likely possibility. In this paper, I want to compare the two in similar situations but show the two different reactions of each character in the story. The two writings, “Battle Royal” and “If We Must Die” were written on the same type of situation inside the same time period. “If We Must Die” was written in 1919 and “Battle Royal” was written in 1953. Both of these pieces, deal around a gruesome and violent scene of some the white people of that time and their vile hate towards the black …show more content…

In “Battle Royal”, the main character commits to the white people’s ways to keep the peace and succeed in society. He stays quiet and submits to the white men of the town wishes. During the fight, he does everything he is told to do to make sure he is still accepted. On the other hand, in “If We Must Die” Claude McKay reminds his people with sincerity, that they must stay strong, even if the end result is death. He tells them to die with honor, so much so, that their killers will see it. This approach to the circumstance, is a major difference between the two characters in the similar

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