battle royal

I think the narrator's speech was one of the most ironic parts of the story. After they had put him through hell, humiliated, and exploited him, he still wanted to deliver the speech he had come to do, despite doing it in front of an audience who obviously didnt care. The author paints a vivid picture of him swallowing blood and trying to please the people who had just humiliated him, all the time swelling with pride. This depicts the social status of black people of the time. That someone would have to go through all that just to get a scholarship to college is crazy. The price of going college was his own dignity, and i think the point this adds to the story is that segregation and discrimination had pushed african americans so far down in american society that people like the narrator had no other choice but to do something like this.