Ralph Ellison's “A Party Down at the Square”: A Spectacle of Primitive Form of Human Cruelty in Modern Time

Abstract

Ellison's short stories present the evils of white supremacy prevalent in the
United States of America. “A Party Down at the Square” is the opening story
in the collection titled “Flying Home and Other Stories” (1996), set in the
South and told by a young white narrator from the North. It presents a
horrible incident of lynching of a black man by the white residents of a small
town on Saturday afternoon as seen through the eyes of a young white
narrator. The white people from the town are attending this spectacle of
lynching as if it were a celebration and the black people are conspicuous by
their absence on the otherwise crowed square on the weekends. It is not an
ordinary beating to death or just a hanging form of lynching; here the victim
is being burnt alive. A lot goes down during party at the town's square: a
lynching, a fire, a near-crash of a plane, and the electrocution of a white
woman. The paper seeks to study the elements of racism against the African-
American blacks in the society having white supremacy as depicted in the
story which presents a glimpse into the psychotic side of r