King of the Bingo Game

by Ralph Ellison

Genres: Short Stories, Literature

7 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1944

About the author

Ralph Ellison was a scholar and writer. He was born Ralph Waldo Ellison in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, named by his father after Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ellison was best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953. He also wrote Shadow and Act (1964), a collection of political, social and critical essays, and Going to the Territory (1986). For The New York Times , the best of these essays in addition to the novel put him "among the gods of America's literary Parnassus." A posthumous novel, Juneteenth, was published after being assembled from voluminous notes he left after his death.

Ellison died of Pancreatic Cancer on April 16, 1994. He was eighty-one years old.

Reviews

[sylvester]

i am so confused

[Sohail · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a masterpiece of literary symbolism, and what a sad one.

[Carina Shephard · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 stars // read November 2022

[B. P. Rinehart · Rating 3 out of 5]

"...and he knew even as it slipped out of him that his luck had run out on the stage."

I read this story as a part of Flying Home: And Other Stories. I plan to do a general overview of Ellison's short stories when I review FH&OS, but I wanted to mention this story because it was Ellison's first major work of fiction (at least in Ellison's eyes) and is an interesting story. This story is about our fictional "King" who is originally from North Carolina, but is struggling to make a living in Harlem. When he walks into a bingo hall to compete for a cash prize, all the pressures of his life start to close in on him. A good, early story by Ellison.

[My Little Forest · Rating 3 out of 5]

Incredibly symbolic, and we haven't even analysed it in class; looking forward to it.

[ravioliiiiiiis · Rating 4 out of 5]

for ap lit - pretty fire with the symbolim and urgency

[caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

analyzing this for ap lit

[Raquel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despair oozing off the page. How I wish the woman would have offered him peanuts instead of the Whiskey the men provided fast-forwarding him to his end. Poverty. Hunger. Thirst. Sleep deprivation. Unemployment. Illness. Worry. Anguish. What luck.

Anyone who has come to the precipice of a mental break knows what this character is facing.

“… Don't push me/
'Cause I'm close to the edge/
I'm trying not to lose my head
Ah-huh-huh-huh…”
-Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five

Lord I pray that you keep your loving hand upon your Native Son’s and pull them away from such despair. Amen.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short but intense read. I can't wait to analyse it in class.

[bymishie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this a while back for my Lit Crit class. A symbolic short story exploring fate/destiny through the lens of race. It's more than just a bingo game, it's life.

[Gloria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Emotional portrayal of a nameless black man from the South struggling with a cold, unfamiliar, distant, mocking North and desperately trying to win money at a bingo game to save his dying wife.

His folly is thinking that he can control the bingo game, which, being low stakes gambling and thus a game of chance and luck, which means a game of randomness and unpredictability, is foolishness.

Yet, to him, he has found the secret to controlling one’s luck/life, and it is in the bingo button. Hold it long enough and you increase your chance at winning, which in the story is a double-edged sword.

Interestingly, the man seems to experience something akin to the Sufi whirling dervish in losing himself in the swirl and whirl of the bingo wheel. He talks about feeling the need to submit to it.

But, while the dervish’s submission means acceptance of God’s goodness and rejection of his own ego (the “I”; the self), this man’s link to the “God power” makes him “drunk” and charges him up thinking he can control it when no man can.

This is the sad thing that he fails to understand. And so, the title mocks him and his quest and pities him.

While emotional and likely well paced due to being a short story, the snap psychotic break and ensuing frenetic nature of the man’s “epiphany” and capture felt forced, didactic, and eye-rollingly drawn out to an obvious conclusion.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short but SO intense. I think this explains how black people in the US have had to fight so much for their lives to only get mistreated and even murdered. I love this kind of works.

We just analysed it in class :
-I really enjoyed the relationship of the beam of light (in the film they’re watching, in the proyector and on the stage lights) with power and even as the main characters says “God”.
-This denounces perfectly how only white working men could achieve The American Dream ( I mean… black people didn’t even have a birth certificate?!)
- The is a denouncement of the North states that I really enjoyed because in the civil war the north is portrayed as the good side and although “they were” there were also discriminating so.. yeah it is fresh to see someone talk about it.
Also there are MANY similarities with Steinbeck’s “The Pearl” and some with Hughe’s “The wall” so I recommend these if you liked it and want to read more interpretations of this topics.

[Jodi · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is the ultimate exercise of futility. The inevitable pain, doom, and destruction permeate the page, and the conclusion, where the protagonist wins the game of chance only to be hit into unconsciousness by the security detail, is a dose of irony and a mountain of Sisyphean proportions.

Ralph Ellison utilizes setting, point of view, tone, symbol, and imagery to explore a variety of themes--race in America, fate, freewill, hope, madness, isolation, and desperation. The story’s violence and madness are symbolic of the results of systemic racism on an individual and culture.

[anna feng · Rating 5 out of 5]

made me cry tbh. THIS is symbolism. not a metaphor wrung bone dry or pasteurized into cheesy nothingness. i felt for him and laura so deeply, though short stories rarely make me feel this way.

"Didn't they know that although he controlled the wheel, it also controlled him, and unless he pressed the button forever and forever and ever it would stop, leaving him high and dry, dry and high on this hard high slippery hill and Laura dead?"

a new favorite, thanks aplit.

[Giinny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sencillo, ameno y con muchas similitudes a La Perla de Steinbeck.

[abby]

read for 175 literature class

[Morgan Fernandez · Rating 3 out of 5]

read this for my lit class. loved the symbolism!! i wish we could’ve learned more about his background, but i love the mysterious element it adds nonetheless.

[Zain Hashmat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jackpot!! 😂😂😂😂😂

[Damin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is God!

[seacat · Rating 3 out of 5]

7 pages, yet so many symbols and ways to interpret the story.

[Kelly Cramer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Coldest take ever: Ralph Ellison can WRITE.

[Ava Jast]

this was so depressing?

[Saes Winchell · Rating 5 out of 5]

First encounter with Ellison for my college class. Beautiful. Read in a sitting but it is equally evocative and emersive as a novel.

[Elizabeth]

Last story for my short fiction class. What a ride.

[Monzenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

As much a journey to the fantastical as it is to the symbolic

[Kristi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting setting for a tale of holding on (literally) out of hope. Kristi & Abby Tabby

[Trisha · Rating 3 out of 5]

ts confusing bruh

[Lillian Hilt · Rating 2 out of 5]

This guy literally held a button for 4 pages….the story is 7 pages

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

- read for ap lit -

[Jack Herbert Christal Gattanella · Rating 5 out of 5]

"But I ain't crazy."

Incisive, tragic, harrowing, one of the great first-person (split into third person) stories in modern American fiction and a superb depiction of addiction and (arguably but it shouldn't be difficult to see) mental illness.