St. Louis
In a piece titled “Of Work and Wealth” can be found as beautifully wrought a portrait of St. Louis as is likely to exist; a portrait of the city in metaphor:
“St. Louis sprawls where mighty rivers meet,—as broad as Philadelphia, but three stories high instead of two, with wider streets and dirtier atmosphere, over the dull-brown of wide, calm rivers. The city overflows into the valleys of Illinois and lies there, writhing under its grimy cloud.”
"The Comet"
“The Comet” is a story with a plot that might have been featured in original Twilight Zone TV series had not the thing which makes it more than that been so central to the narrative. The titular heavenly body seems to have killed every human on the planet, but two who were saved as a result of being protected within “safe” enclosures. She is white and privileged and he is a black man; ‘nuff said about that. The relationship starts as one might expect as the woman muses to herself about this man:
“Not that he was not human, but he dwelt in a world so far from hers, so infinitely far, that he seldom even entered her thought.”
Situated as something not inhuman, but definitely less so, as the story progresses forward, it seems as though he might actually rise literally. By the end, however, he is right back—metaphorically—where he started.
A Lynching in Texas
The story is titled “Jesus Christ in Texas.” That appears to be ironic since it is about a lynching. Early on, the rush to judgment that eschews intellect in favor of emotion is made clear when a white “colonel” with delusions of grandeur quickly sizes up a black convict:
“There was revolt written about his mouth despite the hang-dog expression.”
Colonization
In what is another ironically titled short work by Dubois—“The Souls of White Folk”—the author considers the concept of colonization and arrives a deeply painful and almost literal definition of the term. Colonies are
“places where `niggers' are cheap and the earth is rich; they are those outlands where like a swarm of hungry locusts white masters may settle to be served as kings, wield the lash of slave-drivers, rape girls and wives, grow as rich as Croesus and send homeward a golden stream.”
Simply Constructed, Thematically Profound
One of the most simply constructed metaphors in the entire canon of W.E.B. Dubois is also one of the most thematically rich. It stretches across not just the essay in which it appears—“Of Beauty and Death”—but throughout the volume in which that essay appears and from there it penetrates into every page the author ever published. It is not just a metaphor; it is a slogan. It is not just a slogan; it is a means of survival:
“Pessimism is cowardice.”
