"Now it's the law of the jungle --- as old and as true as the sky/Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on "Why violent video games "Shouldn't it be banned? Get the original essay And the wolf that guards it may prosper, but the wolf that breaks it must die." ~ Rudyard Kipling, "The Law of the Jungle" [i] In his novel "The Invisible Man" Ralph Ellison presents, from the perspective of the 1950s, the struggle to become a black man in the United States. Ultimately, Ellison seeks to convey the effort of forging an identity in a society that looks down upon the individual because of how one identifies. If the resulting invisibility is a powerful message, the journey by which the narrator matures into adulthood is equally powerful. In the novel's first chapter, "The Battle Royal," Ellison cleverly subverts the conventional view of the "heart of darkness" as characteristic of Africa to symbolize the brutality of the American South. By selecting specific words, Ellison equates the African-American rite of passage to manhood with the brutal rape of innocence by bestial white men in their self-created jungle arena. Ellison injects the theme of rite of passage early in chapter 1, “The Battle Royal,” when the narrator discusses his graduation day. This is effective because graduating from high school, especially in the 1950s and especially for men, is a symbolic rite of passage. It is also functional because it provides a public stage in which the men of the city must act in a certain way. The narrator gives a speech proposing that humility is the secret to success. It is for this type of attitude, which is the personality that this boy presents in public, that the “whitest men in town” (1526) praise him. Ellison cleverly juxtaposes this public rite of passage with a private rite when the narrator is invited to deliver his speech again at a "gathering of the leading white citizens of the town" (1526). This repetition is clever because it forces the reader to notice the parallels of the events; for example, once again the boy gives his speech and the white men gather. These similarities open the door to comparisons, forcing one to notice the stark contrast between what is important and how people act in private versus public settings. The private scene is also important because unlike public high school graduation where the diploma, abstract and conventional proof of adulthood, proves that the boy has become a man, it tests concrete and taboo principles of virility. Unlike the public sphere, where men act as they should and a newspaper verifies that one is a man, the private sphere is made up of uninhibited men who seek tangible proof of their masculinity. It is worth noting the three major tests to which white men are subjected. black boys. The first is a naked woman. The narrator responds to her in a way that shows that he is naive to the sight of undressed women but also that he is aroused by her: "I felt a wave of guilt and irrational fear... Yet, I 'was strongly attracted and I looked in spite of myself" (1527). Like African Americans, the white woman has always been oppressed by white men of the South. Just like African Americans, in the 1950s, women white women had acquired a certain abstract public respect which was questionable in the private and practical sphere. The second ordeal to which the boys are subjected is physical violence, during which they all must stand..