Ralph_Ellison

Ralph Ellison A PARTY DOWN AT THE SQUARE Ralph Ellison adopts the voice of white "spectator" at a public lynching in "A Party Down at the Square." The title is deceptive with dark irony, as the story documents with sickening detail a "Bacote nigger" burning alive. While the narrator himself is slightly less jaded than many in the crowd, his failure to truly recognize the horror of watching a fellow human being torturously murdered for entertainment propels Ellison's message. The physical setting of the story, while remaining vague, is certainly Southern, the Cincinnati nephew ignorant of what his uncle means when he says there's going to be a "party in the square." The night is bitterly cold, the wind blowing and a freezing rain falling. The "spectators" seem basically immune to the miserable conditions, as the square is crowded with people, all pushing to get a closer look. A statue of a general, presumably a Confederate general of the Civil War, looks down on the scene, condoning the continuation of battle it represents. In fact, the narrator notices at one point in the story that the general seems to be "smiling" down on the burning man. Cars and horses line the square, some having traveled from other communities to view the lynching. And the crowd is not composed solely of men, but of women who are as unfazed by the gruesome violence as the men. The platform on which the burning man is tied is directly in front of the courthouse and the "sheriff and his men" stand by, nothing illegal occurring in their eyes. In fact, the most callous racist of the crowd, the only individual named, in fact, Jed Wilson, is "right popular with the folks" and will be a candidate for sheriff within a year. The single-mindedness of the crowd and the repulsiveness and modern presence of racism in its most horrific extreme is Ellison's emphasis. Distracted by the blazing bonfire, a TWA plane flies low, looking as if it is bound to crash land, if not in the square then certainly nearby. Afraid for their lives, several people leave the square. Most, however, are transfixed by the "party," staying fixed as spectators with the danger of the plane merely another thing to observe. The plane snaps tree branches from the tops of the trees surrounding the square and breaks power lines, which touch the ground and hope with blue electricity. This, too, is merely spectacle, as the unruly crowd presses to get a closer look at the raging blaze and suffering black man on the pedestal. A woman is electrocuted, her body blackened and exposed in a puddle of freezing water and still the crowd is transfixed. No reason for the man's execution is given in the story. Readers know only that he was dragged to the square behind Jed Wilson's truck. He is described by the narrator as shivering, silent, and afraid. As the fire rages, blood pours from his nose and ears and he hops from one foot to the other, the flames rising to consume him. When the flames jump at his chest, he pleads for a "Christian" to cut his throat. The response, from Jed Wilson himself is the heart of the story: "'Sorry but ain't no Christians around tonight. Ain't no Jew-boys neither. We're just one hundred percent Americans." The crowd actually laughs, granting Wilson the approval he knew he would receive for the comment. Contemporary discussions of racism often omit how modern such horrific scenes have been and continue to be, regardless of how isolated. Even Ellison's Cincinnati narrator does not regard the burning man as human. Biting his lip on his way back from the dangling-blue power lines, he attributes the nausea he experiences to this slight injury. When the ropes holding the black man burn, freeing him, he rolls off the platform at the narrator's feet and his calloused perspective is a comparison of the man's burnt flesh to barbecue: "Every time I eat barbeque I'll remember that nigger. His back was just like a barbecued hog." When the next day the narrator is emotionally numb and has no desire to leave the house, he accepts his uncle's kidding that he's the "'gutless wonder from Cincinnati'" and his explanation that "you get used to it in time." Even his final synthesis of the experience connotes his inability to recognize the black man as human: "It was my first party and my last. God, but that nigger was tough. That Bacote nigger was some nigger." The tone with which he has told the story is not one of regret or sorrow, but a description of spectacle, a story to entertain. The horror of the story is revealed through the inhumanity with which it is told. The response is supposed to be anger, disgust, sorrow though no character within the story accomplishes this response. The detail of description is meant to emphasize a bitter reality of brutal racism in the United States. FURTHER READING Ellison, Ralph. Flying Home and Other Stories. [Edited, with an introduction by John F. Callahan.] New York: Random House, 1996. Bloom, Harold, ed. Ralph Ellison. New York: Chelsea House, 1986. Foley, Barbara. "Reading Redness: Politics and Audience in Ralph Ellison’s Early Short Fiction." JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory 29.3 (1999): 323-39. Graham, Maryemma and Amritjit Singh, eds. Conversations with Ralph Ellison. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995. O'Meally, Robert G. The Craft of Ralph Ellison. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980. http://www.centerx.gseis.ucla.edu/weblio/ellison.html http://www.levity.com/corduroy/ellison.htm http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/ellison-main.html