At first glance, these two stories do not seem strongly connected, but there are several ways to draw thematic comparisons between Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" and Ellison's "Battle Royal."
Each story presents a character that has developed a personal fixation on attaining a goal derived from the culture at large, yet the character pursues this goal in ways that are, to some extent, private and that, moreover, are contrary to the values of the specific, niche culture that surrounds him/her.
"[H]er affair with Homer Barron may be seen as a middle-aged woman’s belated rebellion against her repressive father and against the town’s burdensome expectations" .
Emily pursues a romance, which is entirely normal for her times (and our times), but she does this in secret and with a man that is not of her class. The class issue is probably taboo enough, but the rather extreme privacy of her affair sets her methods in conflict with the values and customs of the South in that era.
Furthermore, she carries on a love affair with a dead man and demonstrates an ironic psychological break by dealing death to her lover and thus to her romance. The normality of her desire for romance is brought into question by the extremity of her actions -- her secrecy, her pathology, and her breech of Southern etiquette in conducting an affair with a person of a lower station.
"Battle Royal" presents a character in pursuit of self-improvement through education. This aim is not challenged in the text, but the methods by which the protagonist pursues success in this area is laden with irony and with self-defeat.
In order to achieve success through education, the Black protagonist must fight with other Black boys and suffer various humiliations. He must also perform a speech after these humiliations wherein he praises the virtues of humility and self-reliance for Blacks seeking a better and more balanced state of affairs in America.
The aims of the protagonist are, again, not called into question. He wants something that his culture wants -- opportunity, equality, social mobility. The other boys participate in the fight on the promise of money. The protagonist gives his speech for similar reasons. However, the boys remain coherent as a group and demonstrate an understanding of one another. The protagonist's pursuit of his goals functionally separates him from the other boys.
In his isolation and in his vague understanding of the dynamics that have led him to the stage, the protagonist has strayed from his grandfather's advice.
“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.”
His head is in the lion's mouth, but the protagonist fails to see any opposition to overcome outside of poverty. While such a mindset is understandable for a young man of his age and situation, the protagonist nonetheless becomes an outcast, representing a co-opted, manipulated and unaware political view even as he pursues a viable and honorable goal.
Emily and the protagonist of "Battle Royal" are isolated from their community even as they pursue aims that, generically, are fully acceptable to their cultures and neighborhoods. The methods these characters utilize function to create a relief (a high contrast scenario) that clarifies both the nature of the pursuit (of romance, of self-improvement through education) and the importance of developing a consciousness of the larger field of cultural perspectives.
Following a normal goal with an abnormal fixed-mindedness is sometimes called monomania, a term reportedly coined for another figure from literature, Captain Ahab.
Outside of monomania as a conversation that can connect these characters, they are also connected by the idea of accepting the patronizing largess of people that do not respect them and by the idea of becoming a spectacle. Both characters accept a patronizing charity and both also are seen by others in their communities as something outside the norm, something to be looked at. Objectified, these characters also both seem to fail to overcome the impulse to deal with the world through objectification.
The protagonist of "Battle Royal" is happy to receive a briefcase and presume that it symbolizes his achievements (and he carries this briefcase through all of Ellison's novel, Invisible Man). He fails to see kinship and humanity in the other boys he fights and in the White men who offer him the scholarship. He objectifies even as he is objectified.
The same can be said of Emily, who is apparently sufficiently content to deal in symbols that she keeps a dead lover in the bedroom.
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