The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois

The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois

Introduction

“Herein lie buried many things which if read with patience may show the strange meanings of being black here in the drawing of the twentieth century” (DuBois, 1903, pp.5).

Professor Dubois opens up his book with the significant title “The Souls of Black Folks” with the above sentence. It is one of the most interesting books someone could ever have. The chapters of the book head with a few pieces of the old Negro sorrow songs and melodies which keep the theme of the story throughout the book. “Souls of Black Folk” is a series of fourteen essays that were written under different situations and also for different reasons in seven years span. These essays are pieces of biography and history, few descriptions of persons and series, bits of criticism and controversies along with facts and statistics and a bit of storytelling (Kelsey, 1903). On one hand, all these fractions read to quite hasty transition of tone, style and point of views along with a different sense of sketchiness and incompleteness. On the other hand, book also owns a unity which is not a unity of broad topic but a harmony of rationales and purpose in the specifically slanted message that runs in every essay.

Discussion

The book opens up with the “Forethought” in which the author has directly addressed the readers while introducing the essays and outlining its themes. The author tells the readers that color line is the main problem of the twentieth century and this thought is repeated throughout the book. The segregation of African-Americans from rest of the society, white society, is the central theme of the text. In the chapter one, DuBois discusses what it meant to be a problem. Citing an example from his school experience when his classmate refused to accept the visiting card from him, he realized that he was different from other children and that being black was the “problem” (DuBois, 1903). In this chapter he introduces two concepts which define the typical experiences of Black people living in America and that are the concepts of “veil” and “double-consciousness”. Although, these terms are used separately in his text but both concepts are greatly intertwined. These concepts gave an identification the something African-Americans where feeling for many decades but were not able to express due to be short of words which could accurately define their pain and agony. The concept of veil, for DuBois, refers to three things. Firstly, the veil suggests to the dark skin of the Blacks which physically differentiates them with white. Secondly, the veil also suggests the lack of ability of White Americans to see Black people as true Americans. And finally, the concept of veil also suggest to the lack of ability of Black to see their selves other than the world described and prescribed them by Whites (DuBois, 1903).

Any present day socially aware African-American always has two life-changing ...