King of the Bingo Game

“The man moved impatiently beside him, and he tried to involve himself in the scene. But Laura was on his mind.”

Ellison dramatizes the protagonist’s inner conflict by showing the contrast between the protagonist’s environment and his preoccupation with Laura. His mind exists in two places at once, and he is never fully able to inhabit either of his realities. His outburst as he spins the wheel occurs when the reality of his life with Laura overtakes his experience in the present moment, which leads him to appear insane to the onlookers and drives his emotional stress to the breaking point.

“It was strange how the beam always landed right on the screen and didn't mess up and fall somewhere else. But they had it all fixed. Everything was fixed.”

This passage expresses one of the story’s main themes, which is that the game—and all society—is fixed. The metaphor symbolizes how something can be made to appear one way when, in reality, it is different. In this case, the camera and screen setup have been carefully measured and calibrated to create the effect of the picture appearing onscreen, but the preparation was done behind the scenes, making the effect seem like magic. In the same way, much of what the protagonist perceives in life is an illusion; choice, fairness, and free will are illusions in a society which has decided the outcomes for certain people in advance.

“Now a dreamy music was accompanying the film and train whistles were sounding in the distance, and he was a boy again walking along a railroad trellis down South, and seeing the train coming, and running back as fast as he could go, and hearing the whistle blowing, and getting off the trestle to solid ground just in time, with the earth trembling beneath his feet, and feeling relieved as he ran down the cinder-strewn embankment onto the highway, and looking back and seeing with terror that the train had left the track and was following him right down the middle of the street, and all the white people laughing as he ran screaming…”

This dream sequence exemplifies Ellison’s technique of using rhythm, word choice, and sentence structure to create emotional intensity. In this sentence, the reality of the theater fades as the protagonist slips into a dream, and the dream quickly turns into a nightmare. The run-on sentence mimics the speed of the train as it chases the narrator and the seamlessness of dream logic; commas connect clauses that could be independent sentences, but linking them together conveys the nightmare’s inevitability. The sentence does not end with a period but with an ellipsis, indicating that the nightmare and the terror it inspires stay with the protagonist even when he wakes up.

“With five cards he had to move fast. He became nervous; there were too many cards, and the man went too fast with his grating voice. Perhaps he should just select one and threw the others away. But he was afraid. He became warm. Wonder how much Laura’s doctor would cost? Damn that, watch the cards!”

The protagonist’s anxiety over his lack of control keeps him in a constant state of doubt. Laura’s life hangs in the balance of the bingo game, which is a game of chance. To try to exert control over the situation, the protagonist has decided to use five bingo cards, thereby increasing his chances of winning. The plan backfires, though, as he realizes he cannot keep up with the numbers being called. His attempt at controlling events has placed him in an even weaker position, and this heightens his ability to focus on the game.

“He nodded, knowing the ritual from the many days and nights he had watched the winners march across the stage to press the button that controlled the spinning wheel and receive the prizes. And now he followed the instructions as though he’d crossed the slippery stage a million prize-winning times.”

The protagonist has seen others win the jackpot, and he has an image in his mind of how the evening normally proceeds. The experience seems familiar, but Ellison plants an element of danger and discord by inserting the adjective “slippery” to describe the stage. Even though the protagonist has won the bingo, his position is by no means stable.

“He felt vaguely that his whole life was determined by the bingo wheel; not only that which would happen now that he was at last before it, but all that had gone before, since his birth and his mother’s birth and the birth of his father. It had always been there, even though he had not been aware of it, handing out the unlucky cards and numbers of his days.”

The bingo wheel symbolizes the wheel of fate that has shortchanged African Americans for generations. As eager as he is to win the prize, the protagonist experiences another moment of doubt that almost compels him to leave the stage. Ellison is making a commentary on how difficult it is to seize opportunities and hope for the best when life has consistently brought disadvantage. The fundamental question in the story is whether it is possible for African Americans to get a fair deal in a world where the game is rigged.

“He steeled himself; the fear had left, and he felt a profound sense of promise, as though he were about to be repaid for all the things he’d suffered all his life.”

As the protagonist takes the control button, he has a burst of optimism that cuts through his intense fear and doubt. Experiencing extreme emotional highs and lows is one of the factors that contributes to his destabilization. There is more than Laura’s medical bills on the line; his history and his people’s entire history seem to depend on whether he wins or loses the game. An underlying theme in this story is reparations, and the question of whether there is any way to right the wrongs of the past.

“Suppose he did not spin the wheel long enough? What could he do, and how could he tell? And then he knew, even as he wondered, that as long as he pressed the button, he could control the jackpot. He and only he could determine whether or not it was to be his.”

The control the protagonist feels is an illusion. Although he can control when the wheel stops, he cannot control where it stops. His feeling that he can only control the wheel as long as it spins is akin to the paradox of Schrodinger’s cat, which can be considered both alive and dead inside a box as long as the box remains closed. Similarly, as long as the wheel spins, the protagonist has the potential to win the jackpot, which means that he has not technically lost it. As long as he stays in the indeterminate space of the wheel, he can imagine any and all outcomes.

“[H]e smiled again to let the man know that he held nothing against him for being white and impatient.”

The protagonist shows awareness of the situation’s racial dynamics. He has just had a conversation with the man about his right to play the game his own way, and he feels conscious of needing to convey that his assertiveness is not mistaken for aggression.

“All the Negroes down there were just ashamed because he was black like them. He smiled inwardly, knowing how it was.”

These lines exemplify another level of the racial dynamics at play in the scene. Just as the protagonist understands that he must appear benign to the white man, he knows that the way a Black person behaves reflects positively or negatively on all Black people. This places an enormous amount of pressure on an individual, and the protagonist’s constant self-scrutiny is a symptom of society’s racial hierarchy.

“He was running the show, by God! Let the bastards yell. They had to react to him, for he was their luck.”

As the story reaches its climax, the protagonist has a transcendental moment of overcoming fate. His continued spinning of the wheel gives him power over the other winners, a power he has never experienced before.

“[H]e realized that somehow he had forgotten his own name. It was a sad, lost feeling to lose your name, and a crazy thing to do. That name had been given him by a white man who had owned his grandfather a long lost time ago down South.”

The transcendental moment is paired with self-annihilation. Because he has gone against the laws of nature by controlling the wheel, the protagonist has forfeited his identity as the descendent of slaves. The cruel nature of his existence is that, even with that identity shed, there is no positive, self-affirming identity for him to inhabit. As long as he lives in this society, he must either be the descendent of slaves, or be nothing.

“He ran, but all too quickly the cord rightened, resistingly, and he turned and ran back again. This time he slipped them, and discovered by running in a circle before the wheel he could keep the cord from tightening. But this way he had to flail his arms to keep the men away. Why couldn’t they leave a man alone? He ran, circling.”

With bitter irony, Ellison crafts the protagonist’s antics on stage to resemble a minstrel show, the racist blackface comedy genre that was popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Minstrel shows depicted a “negro” character who was unintelligent and awkward performing slapstick comedy for the entertainment of white audiences. The protagonist’s transcendental moment of being in control has devolved into a parody, which foreshadows the story’s tragic ending.