Examine some of the story's prominent symbols, and tie them into the story's central message about racism and white control of blacks. BAttle Royal...

is rife
with symbolism and, especially through the section of the story that depicts the degradation of
the narrator and other young African American men.  The naked white dancer and the way in which
her sexually provocative dancing taunts the young black men is symbolic of the view of race
relations between black men and white women at the time the story was set (the 1940s in the
American South): white women were off-limits and African American men were considered dangerous
and uncontrollable around women.  Thus, the dancer represents everything the men the men cannot
and should not look at; they could be lynched for looking at such a woman in the
street,...