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Sight and Blindness in Ralph Ellison's "Battle Royal"

This analytical essay of "Battle Royal" (Ralph Ellison) examines the text's treatment of race, identity, and respectability politics as expressed through the narrator and motifs of blindness and invisibility.
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This essay received a B by one of Kibin's paper graders. Click here to see what was done well and what needs improvement.

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This essay received a B by one of Kibin's paper graders. Click here to see what was done well and what needs improvement.

More essays like this:

theme of blindness
Not sure what I'd do without @Kibin
- Alfredo Alvarez, student @ Miami University
Exactly what I needed.
- Jenna Kraig, student @ UCLA
Wow. Most helpful essay resource ever!
- Chris Stochs, student @ UC Berkeley

View other essays like this one:

Bridget's feedback:

"This essay shows you've spent time engaging with the story and thinking about its themes, characters, and messages. Your current draft has a clear sense of organization and logical progression, as well as sound diction and syntax appropriate to a formal piece of writing.

I do notice some typos and minor formatting issues that should be cleaned up, and I'd also like to comment on a recurring higher-order argumentation concern that results in redundancy across the essay. This manifests, for example, as commentary on a quotation that merely repeats, rather than analyzes, the content of a quotation. As possible, consider how you introduce the quotation in the first place: you may have already made your point about the quote's importance via the signal phrase, placement of the quote, and its relationship to the paragraph.

At the microlevel, in this case within paragraphs, there is some overlapping or redundancies that impact the discussion's efficiency (and the reader's focus). To give one example, the reader must navigate four sentences before being given the author and story name. Can you distill those four sentences down to one or two pithier sentences that keep things moving? Look for other opportunities to revise toward concision.

Finally, your first block quotation occupies a good deal of real estate proportional to the essay's overall length and paragraphing. Is that entire quotation needed? Take a look and consider if phrases or single sentences, presented correctly, will have more impact on the reader and the overall argument."

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