Angelou’s story describes not just a fight between two boxers of different races. The writer wants to use the fight as a metaphor to a bigger fight, that of the social conflict that exists between the whites and blacks.
The outcome of the fight is seen as a reflection of how society is to treat and think about black people. If Louis loses the fight, it would justify their slavery and confirm their reputations as a people who are “Only a little higher than apes…stupid and ugly and dirty…” It would confirm the idea that blacks are inferior to whites in other aspects aside from strength in the ring.
If he wins, however, it would be a sort of redemption to the reputation of black people all over America: that they are the stronger race, after all, and maybe not accursed by God
...as even they believe themselves to be. Based on the comments of the people who are listening to the broadcast, everyone in the store shares the author’s view. They are all rooting for the black boxer. They all understand the implication of the outcome of the fight to the image of their race.
Relating what is happening to the fight with the racial conflicts that exist in society is an exaggerated way of comparing the two things. Certainly even the people’s groans when Louis seems to lose halfway during the fight cannot be equated to the disappointment of the entire black race. Everyone knows that a win would never actually change their situation overnight nor would a loss make the incidents of lynching and whipping worse. However, it makes Angelou’s narrative create the effect that
she set out to do when she wrote the story. It makes the purpose of the narrative obvious to the reader. The exaggeration makes the reader understand the gravity of what the black people feel about their situation.
No, it doesn’t detract from the story. For one, the average reader would not remember the particular fight mentioned in the story at all. He would take Angelou’s story at face value. Secondly, the fight is only a metaphor of the deeper meaning of the text, which is to make the reader understand how the blacks feel about their oppression and how they attribute every success of any African-American against a white opponent as the success of their people to rise above this oppression.
- Book Summary essays
- Metaphor essays
- Reader essays
- Rhyme essays
- Literary devices essays
- Villain essays
- Books essays
- Genre essays
- Literary Criticism essays
- Writer essays
- Protagonist essays
- Simile essays
- Poem essays
- Book Report essays
- Book Review essays
- Greek Mythology essays
- Plot essays
- Tragic Hero essays
- Coming of Age essays
- Play essays
- Rhetoric essays
- Rhetorical Question essays
- Translation essays
- Understanding essays
- Reason essays
- Character essays
- Letter essays
- American Literature essays
- Literature Review essays
- Utopia essays
- Poetry Analysis essays
- Dante's Inferno essays
- Between The World and Me essays
- Incidents in The Life of a Slave Girl essays
- Flowers for Algernon essays
- Myth essays
- Everyday Use essays
- Boo Radley essays
- Genesis essays
- Richard iii essays
- Alice in Wonderland essays
- On the road essays
- Ozymandias essays
- The Nightingale essays
- Holden Caulfield essays
- Animal Farm essays
- 1984 essays
- A Hanging essays
- Shooting An Elephant essays
- A Tale Of Two Cities essays
