Men and women living in society often must choose between the dictates of their conscience and what is expected of them as members of a community. This conflict is central throughout Ralph Ellison's novel, The Invisible Man. Throughout the novel, the white society desires the narrator to act in a certain way, sometimes against the wishes of the narrator's conscience. Ellison dramatizes this struggle by employing various types of rhetorical devices such as repetition, parallelism and a racist setting and placing them meticulously throughout the novel.

During the beginning of the novel, the narrator is invited to participate in a Battle Royal. The narrator is ignorant of the rules and his part of the event until the white men controlling the event blind fold the narrator and place him in a ring with several other fighters. The white spectators want entertainment at the expense of humiliating black students...