King of the Bingo Game

King of the Bingo Game

The wheel of fortune is an old concept that dates back to ancient philosophy referring to fate. The wheel belonged to the goddess Fortuna who would spin the wheel which for some meant great suffering and others great fortune. Ralph Ellison uses the motif of the wheel of fortune to express the feelings of the main character while here is on stage. This is a nameless man who has been driven down so terribly that he now has to turn to a bingo game so that he can raise the money to hopefully save his wife from death by be able to pay for a doctor. Ellison never gives the character a name for the fact that the reader can make a personal connection with the story and wheel without making it apply to just one person.

The story starts out with the man sitting in the bingo hall thinking about the food and drinks that everyone around him has, wishing he could ask them for some but being from the south and no longer at home it is not right. This gives you the sense from the beginning that he has gone through many struggles because he is hungry and thirsty. You also see this the man says “I’m just broke, ‘cause I got no birth certificate to get a job, and Laura ‘bout to die ‘cause we got no money for a doctor.(pg 228). He was playing bingo with five cards to increase his chances of winning but he was not very confident at all and really had no chance of winning. Then that chance finally came and the idea of the wheel of fortune came into the story. He couldn’t believe he won as Ellison describes “When he saw the row of holes punched across the third card, he sat paralyzed and heard the man call three more numbers before he stumbled forward, screaming, and “Bingo! Bingo!”” He was finally going to be able to spin the wheel of fortune to see if he could get that money he needed for his wife. The lucky number was the double zero and all he needed was for it to land on that number and it was like his life would change forever. You get this when Ellison states “He felt vaguely that his whole life was determined by the bingo wheel;” It was all in the wheel of fortune.

While he was up there with the wheel it seemed like for the first time ever in is life he had the control. His life was so hard and he didn’t have the choice of being poor or his wife having this sickness his life was just the way it was without him having any control. He now finally had the power and fate in his own hands which if you have never had that it is something is hard to let go of because you finally have the control. This is what happened with him and when he pushed that button to spin the wheel he realized that no one else or thing was determining if life it was only him. He gets to decide when that wheel is going to stop and as long as he had his palm on it he was in command. You can see his thought process when he thinks to himself “He and only he could determine whether or not it was to be his.” He was referring to the jackpot meaning he had the control over the jackpot. Ellison wanted the reader to make the connection to the wheel of fortune with the wheel of the bingo game. Leaving the man nameless he wants the reader