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d and he died. He fell in a heap like any man and his blood spilled out like any blood; red as any blood and reflecting the sky and the building and birds and trees on your face if you’d… looked into its dulling mirror——and it dried in the sun as blood dries. That’s all. The spilled his blood and he bled. They cut them down and he died; the blood flowed on the walk in a pool, gleamed a while, and, after a while, became dull and dusty, then dried. That’s the story and that’s how it ended. It‘s an old story and there’s been to much blood to excite you. Besides, it’s only import when it fills the veins of a living man. Aren’t you tired of such stories? Aren‘t you sick of the blood? Then why listen, why don’t you go? It’s hot out here. There is the odor of embalming fluid. The beer is cold in the taverns, the saxophones will be mellow at the Savoy; plenty good-laughing lies will be told in the barbershops and beauty parlors; and there’ll be sermons in two hundred churches in the cool of the evening, and plenty of laughs at the movies. Go listen to ‘Amos and Andy’ and forget it. Here you have only the same old story. There’s not even a young wife up here in red to mourn him. There’s nothing here to pity, no one to break down and shout. Nothing to give you that good old frightened feeling. The story is too short and too simple. His name was Clifton, Tod Clifton, he was unarmed and his death was as senseless as his life futile. He had struggled for Brotherhood on a hundred street corners, and he thought it would make him more human, but he died like a dog in a road.”(Ralph Ellison 1952: 457) In the passage, the narrator makes full use of paralleling, contrasting and ironing to tell Clifton’s tragic life. At the beginning, each of five actions appears one by one; this paralleling gives us an impression of unexpected death of Clifton. The narrator then talks about blood for a long passage, describing the blood from spilling to bleeding, following and finally to turning hard. Next, “There is the odor of embalming fluid.” By contrast, “The beer is cold in the taverns, the saxophones will be mellow at the Savoy——and plenty of laughs at the movies.” Here the narrator implies the cold-heartedness of the listeners. Finally, he gives a brief review about Clifton’s achievements in Brotherhood. By contrast, “he died like a dog in a road.” This passage greatly beat the criminal of injustices toward black American society. “Such was the short bitter life of Brother Tod Clifton. Now he’s in the box and we’re in here with him, and when I’ve told you this you can go. It’s dark in the box and it’s crowded. It has rats and roaches, and it’s for, far too expensive a dwelling. The air is bad and it’ll be cold this winter. Tod Clifton is crowded and he needs the room. ‘Tell them get out of the box and go teach the cops to forget that rhyme. Tell them that when they call you nigger to make a rhyme with trigger it makes the gun backfire. ’”(Ralph Ellison 1952: 457) In this passage, the narrator’s topic returns from the forward of Clifton to the present: “Such was the short bitter life of Brother Tod Clifton.” “Now he is in the box…” This is a euphemism of saying Clifton has died. Arising the people to imagine the bad condition in the box, the narrator brings the atmosphere of sorrow up. That’s a black humor. Then the narrator expresses his own meaning——“Please you (the listeners) get out of the box” and avoid futile death like Clifton. Again, in a humorous way, t