Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Ralph Ellison's Beginning

Jason Armer
Mrs. Disher
3/16/2016
LA Period 1

            In my opinion, stream-of-consciousness stories are great because of the unique way we get to see into the protagonist. As the story starts in the prologue, you see that the narrator feels very passionately about being called a racial slur. When you see him in the first couple of chapters, however, he seems very naïve to the situation. As the spectators jeer him on watching him make his speech, he seems oblivious to what is going on. In addition, during the boxing match, he is unable to put two and two together to figure out that the reason they are in this laughable predicament are because they are African-American. Having read this story before, and knowing what is going to happen, I am trying to focus more on the character development of the narrator. So far, there doesn’t seem to be anything overly special about him, so it seems interesting that he is the main character of the story. He seems overly naïve, and he doesn’t seem to understand the bigger picture of the situations he finds himself in. However, it does seem quite interesting that the people that allowed him to make the speech did give him the opportunity to go to college. One would think that people that hate the race that much would want a man of his race to be uneducated. My question for you is, what does Ralph Ellison say about society through the actions and reactions of the white people so far in the story? Ralph Ellison is clearly painting a picture of the shortcomings of society through everyone involved.

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