What is the most important element of fiction in the "Battle Royal" story?

Recurring throughout the "Battle Royal" passage extracted
from Ralph Ellison's  Invisibile Man, are layers of conflict. 
First of all, Ellison introduces his novel with the observation that after the "painful
boomeranging" of his experiences, he has come to the realization that he is nobody but
himself; a realization that he made after first discovering that he is "an invisible
man."  That is, he is a man who exists only as a creature to be exploited.  Then, he
mentions the dying words of his grandfather which establish the various conflicts in the
story--as the narrator says, "It was he who caused the trouble."  The grandfather tells
his son, the narrator's father,

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"...I want you to keep up the good fight.  I
never told you, but our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy
in the enemy's country ever since I give up my gun back in the Reconstruction.  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, let 'em swoller you till they vomit
or bust wide open."

As the
young idealistic graduate who expects to be able to give his valedictorian oration
before dignitaries of the town, the narrator finds himself in conflict with being a
stereotype of his race. He is a young black male confronted with what is thought to be
his greatest desire:  a white woman.  In this situation, Ellison's narrator says that he
feels "a wave of irrational guilt and fear" as he is attracted in spite of himself, and
yet he wants to destroy her--"to love her and to murder her."  Another young man tries
to hide his lustful feelings while some shake with fear of what will be done to them if
they look. 

The blonde dances and the "big shots" watch her
"with facination and faintly smiling at our fear."  Soon, the drunken white men begin to
paw at her, Ellison recognizes the same terror and disgust in her eyes that are in his
and others' eyes in this conflict with victim and exploiter.  Then, when the boys are
blindfolded, they are again set against themselves, having been told that if they do not
fight, the men themselves will hit them:

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Blinfolded, I could no longer control my
motions.  I had no dignity.  I stumbled
about....

Once the fight is
ended, the men have the boys lie on the rug and grab for coins and bills.  But the rug
has been wired, and the narrator and the others receive electrical shocks when they
touch the "coins." When he tries to grag the leg of a chair occupied by Mr. Colcord, the
owner of a chain of movie houses, the man kicks him "viciously in the
chest."

Finally, after being bruised and tortured, the
narrator is allowed to deliver his speech, but he is "invisible" to the white men who
 loudly converse throughout his speech.  However, when he says "racial equality" instead
of "racial responsibility," there is a sudden stillness and hostile phrases are shouted
at him.  When asked to repeat his words, the narrator says "responsibility" again.  So,
he is allowed to begin again with simultaneous talking.  Yet, when he finishes, there is
"thunderous applause" which mocks him. 

Receiving a
scholarship to the state college for Negroes, the narrator feels "an importance that I
had never dreamed."  However, when he returns home and dreams that night, his
grandfather's curse emerges in his dream and the narrator opens envelope after envelope
until he reads a note about keeping him running.