"Battle Royal"

After reading "Battle Royal", I had an unsettling feeling in my stomach. The use of symbolism is extremely apparent in every bit of the story. I had to read in-depth to the part about the boys fighting for coins the white men threw on the electric rug. I was excited because that was the part of the story that really got my attention. When I visited South Africa, which is still extremely racist, this part in particular reminds me of being in South Africa. The children there would come up to us and beg for our money, we would watch how many white Africans (mostly made up of Dutch and British) would toss them money, or simply laugh at them for the fact they were begging. This part in the story reminded me of that horrible control the white people felt they had over the blacks. In South Africa, I often wondered how could people treat others like they are nothing? This story really brought that feeling back, that because of the color of someones skin they are less of a human.

In class, I was asked what I thought the electric rug symbolized, and I had thought about it before that class and could not really pin point the symbol it creates. After class, I was really bothered by the fact I could not find a symbolic meaning for the rug, so I re read the entire story, after a class discussion, and came up with what I thought the rug meant. I believe it to represent the idea that you should never believe what you see, because it is probably not exactly right. The boys put their trust in these white men and made the boys look foolish diving for money and taking the electric shock. The narrator refers to himself as a "rat" at one point. This metaphor makes me think the connection of a slummy rodant that people view as annoying and pesty, with no concern as to if they were dead or alive. Also, rats are trash eating, take anything they can get, species. Which is how the whites were treating the boys.