Masters Theses

Date of Award

5-1989

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Major

English

Major Professor

R. Baxter Miller

Committee Members

John O. Hodges

Abstract

The image of the "Veil" preoccupied William Edward Burghardt Du Bois throughout his life. From The Souls of Black Folk, a collection of some of his earliest essays (1903), to his last autobiography, A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century (posthumously published, 1968), he uses the image. His book Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil (1920) takes the "Veil" as its subtitle, and Soliloquy borrows some passages from Darkwater. Not restricted to a particular place or time, the "Veil" is a metaphor for the human imperfection that impedes the ideal of universal community. The "Veil," in other words, marks the discrepancy between idealism and realism. In his works Du Bois uses the image in various ways. In Souls the "Veil" represents mainly the separation between the two worlds of black and white in America. Moreover, the "Veil" blocks the orientation to the ideals that transcend it. In Darkwater, on the contrary, the "Veil" is frequently a means to describe social progress in the States and abroad. Soliloquy focuses on language as a means to lift the "Veil." This notion, having appeared in Souls,/u>, is developed further in Darkwater. Not mainly applied to specific historical situations in Soliloquy, the "Veil" suggests racial segregation in America and Africa. And it addresses itself broadly to the situation of humanity as a whole. The "Veil" signifies the everlasting striving for human brotherhood.

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