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 storyin 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 ahorrible incident of lynching of a black man by the white residents of a smalltown on Saturday afternoon as seen through the eyes of a young whitenarrator. The white people from the town are attending this spectacle oflynching as if it were a celebration and the black people are conspicuous bytheir absence on the otherwise crowed square on the weekends. It is not anordinary beating to death or just a hanging form of lynching; here the victimis being burnt alive. A lot goes down during party at the town's square: alynching, a fire, a near-crash of a plane, and the electrocution of a whitewoman. The paper seeks to study the elements of racism against the African American blacks in the society having white supremacy as depicted in thestory which presents a glimpse into the psychotic side of racism steeped inhistorical dehumanizing of the African-American blacks.