How does the plot develop in Battle Royal by Ralph Ellison?

The action in Ellison's
is framed by references to the boy's grandfather, who early on is quoted
as telling his own son to infiltrate the white world and to defeat it with agreement,
appeasement and grins. 

"Live with your head in the
lion's mouth. I want you to overcome 'em with yeses, undermine 'em with grins, agree 'em to
death and destruction, let 'em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open."

The boy worries that he is unwittingly and unintentionally already
carrying out a program of acquiescence and the action of Battle Royal
demonstrates some of the ways in which the boy allows himself to be co-opted by the powerful
white men of the town, adopting their own views (of him) in ways that contradict the
grandfather's exhortation. 

After giving a popular speech at his graduation,
the narrator is invited to give the speech in front of "the town's big shots" and upon
accepting the invitation is told that he will be included in a battle royal with other African
American boys at the event. The other boys resent the narrator for several reasons but they all
share in his shame, outrage and embarrassment when they are made to watch a woman dance nude in
front of the crowd of men. 

The boys are then blindfolded and fight an
ineffective but prolonged fight against one another, each boy for himself. At the end of the
group fight, the narrator is not quick enough in his thinking to escape the ring and so is
forced to fight the biggest boy, Tatlock.

Denying the narrator's offers of
money if he were to throw the fight, Tatlock knocks the narrator down and wins the fight. Next
the boys are tricked into scratching and scraping for money on a electrified rug in a moment of
crude debasement. (While the previous actions of the men at the event have been quite cruel and
crude, this may be the most humiliating and debasing part of the evening as the boys are
sometimes pushed onto the mat and shocked.)

When the boys are paid, the
narrator is finally asked to give his speech, which the men appear not to pay any attention to.
He is ridiculed whenever he uses multi-syllabic terms, which leads him at one point to blurt out
the phrase "social equality" instead of "social responsibility." This
mis-speech silences the men for a while, but is soon remedied when one of the men makes sure
that the narrator had not intended to say "social equality." 

"Well, you had better speak more slowly so we can understand.
We mean to do right by you, but you've got to know your place at all times."

This statement of position resonates with the final scene in the
story wherein the narrator dreams of his grandfather mocking the prize given to the narrator for
his speech. Imagining his grandfather telling him to open his new briefcase just as the white
men had done, the narrator finds envelope after envelope and is told to keep opening
them. 

The grandfather then bursts out laughing after he tells his grandson
to read a final note that suggests the whole purpose of the accolades given to the boy are meant
to keep him running his whole life. 

By opening and closing the story with
references to the grandfather who has advocated a high degree of self-consciousness in relation
to Caucasians, Ellison presents a narrative that featuresat its core as the narrator is only
vaguely capable of understanding his grandfather's message and is only fleetingly aware of how
his own identity is being defined by the views of the men at the event who see him as an
inferior being.