Anti-Materialism
One is tempted to describe this theme as anti-capitalist, but that is not quite precise. “The Talented Tenth” is a plea in essay form issuing a strong clarion call for the education of black society for the (admittedly patriarchal) purpose of creating “exceptional men.” Du Bois right up front is careful to specifically note that if education is directed expressly toward making “money the object of man-training, we shall develop money-makers, but not necessarily men.” The rich white woman who is for the most of “The Comet” situated as the only female left alive on earth and—to an even greater extent—her rich father who shows near the end are both situated as fictional representatives of the inherent danger of materialism who view every aspect of life—including human relationships—as fundamentally transactional in nature.
Black Lives Matter
To use a term in the modern vernacular that can readily applied to the shorter writings of Du Bois, perhaps the overarching theme that applies universally to every example. That this would be major theme is hardly surprising, of course, but the sheer variety of the ways in which is applied is perhaps more so. That black lives matter is situated in the very fact that of the two people who survive what appears at first to be a global annihilation of the human race thanks to crossing of the paths of earth’s rotation and a the tail of a comet, one happens to be a black. If this does not appear to be particularly revolutionary, all one need do is search for the even the mere appearance of a black character in science fiction film history, much less a science fiction movie that places a black character as its lead.
At the opposite end of the spectrum lies another short story, “The Black Man Brings His Gifts.” Rather than mere existence representing this theme, here is a satirical work of short fiction in which an organization dedicated to making American culture great discovers the extent of the impact upon that culture by people who are not considered white. This story is essentially proposing not merely that black lives matter, but that without the input of the lives of its black citizens, American lives would not matter much.
Congenital Racism
Right at the moment that the white woman and black man who think they are all that’s left of humanity have managed to overcome their substantial differences and find acceptance of the other on their own terms with the implication of what that means for their future together as male and female, the revelation comes that they are not the last. In fact, they are “rescued” by the woman’s father in tow with a host of other white survivors. It takes less than a minute for the N-word to be spoken out loud and the black man to be suspected of rape and less than two minutes for the specter of lynching to be spoken out loud. Fortunately, in this case, cooler heads prevail and the black character is allowed to live at the end. The same cannot be said of the young black protagonist in “Of the Coming of John.”
An essay on the topic of the 1956 Presidential election titled “I Won’t Vote” seems an unlikely candidate to add to these two stories as examples of a common thematic thread, but it—as well as many other short works of non-fiction—absolutely express the theme that there seems to be—even if it isn’t necessarily so—a congenital prevalence toward racism throughout white society. Whether expressed in the extreme with the near-lynch mob mentality in “The Comet” or the realization of a lynch mob as the closing imagery in “Of the Coming of John” or the fact that for black Americans there is no substantive difference between voting for the Democrat or voting for the Republican candidate for President, the idea of a deeply penetrating systemic racism can be found throughout the writings of Du Bois.
