55 pages • 1 hour read
Ralph EllisonKing of the Bingo Game
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1944A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Character Analysis
The Protagonist
The protagonist is an adult Black man living in a relatively unfamiliar city. He attends the same movie theater and plays bingo there regularly as part of “Bank Night,” a trend which arose during the Great Depression. He enjoys the movie, but having the bingo game take place after the film means that he and the other the people in the audience have to buy movie tickets in order to play the game. Many rely on playing bingo in the hopes of winning money for their life expenses, but to do so, they must also pay to watch the movie. The protagonist does not make note of the connection. Early in the story he says, “But they had it all fixed, Everything was fixed” (470). He is referring to the setup of the projector and the screen, but the phrase has thematic resonance.
Feelings of desperation and delusion define the protagonist. Poverty, isolation, hopelessness, and shame make him unable to relax. During the film, he becomes sexually aroused, but the memory of a bedbug that he saw on a woman’s neck kill the feeling. Fear and doubt accompany 
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By Ralph Ellison
