“I entered Routledge College in the fall of 1922. I was fifteen, and my father sent me there. The school at Red Mound didn’t go past eighth grade back then—that wouldn’t happen for a very long time. At Routledge, I had a professor who loved himself some Du Bois. His name was Mr. Terrence Carter Holmes, and there used to be all these rumors he was communist. He loaned me his copy of Darkwater and told me to be careful with it. After that, I just kept borrowing every book by Du Bois that Mr. Holmes owned.”
Just before this quote, Uncle Root asks, Ailey, the narrator who is recalling the conversation whether he has ever told this story before and then, offhandedly, inquires whether Ailey is familiar with Du Bois. That prefatory moment leading into Root’s recollection is what makes this quote important because it is a question that deserves to be asked of reader of the book. While it is not impossible to imagine a reader picking up the book who is completely unfamiliar with Du Bois, the far more likely consequence is that those who are interested in the one will be interested in the other. Du Bois remains a major figure in the history of the civil rights movement as well as the history of American literature and coming to the book without knowing at least something about that legacy would be a real shame.
It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness, an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
If it can be said that Du Bois is famous for just one single thing, it would almost certainly be—arguably, of course—his concept of “double-consciousness” within the paradigm of race relations in America. It is a concept far too complex to attempt to limit to a single paragraph, but the fundamental idea is efficiently expressed in the words of Du Bois himself here which become an epigraph preceding Part IX of this book. The idea of being forced to live one life as two different identities depending upon the context surrounding you—completely out of your control—is an underlying thematic element throughout this novel, but Du Bois would argue that this is inevitably the case in any authentic story about the experience of being black in America.
Song
The Terrible Decision
Yes.
We know you are impatient to hear what happened the night that Nick ran away. We know, and we have waited to tell you.
We have waited, sipping our own grief, before recounting the rest.
The “songs” of The Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois are an irregular part of the structural composition of the novel. The novel is separated into eleven parts, each with individual chapters. Preceding some, but not all, of these parts is section titled “Song” and the song which precedes Part XI begins with “The Terrible Decision.” These songs take the reader out of the present-day narrative in order to present a historical background to the ancestors of those characters. The entire book is preceded by an extensive family tree which follows the various births and marriages of the various families involved. At more than 800 pages, this is a story that definitely qualifies as an epic and while it can often be difficult to keep all the characters straight—especially since so many share names—the songs and the family tree prove to be tremendous importance in establishing an overall sense of how forces beyond one’s control exert such tremendous influence over lives tracing a long lineage.
