The Different Conceptions of the Veil in The Souls of Black Folk "For
now we see through a glass, darkly" -Isiah 25:7 W.E.B. Du
Bois's Souls of Black Folk, a collection of autobiographical and
historical essays contains many themes. There is the theme of souls and
their attainment of consciousness, the theme of double consciousness and
the duality and bifurcation of black life and culture; but one of the most
striking themes is that of "the veil." The veil provides a link between
the 14 seemingly unconnected essays that make up The Souls of Black Folk.
Mentioned at least once in most of the 14 essays it means that, "the Negro
is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second sight
in this American world, -a world with yields him no true
self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation
of the other world.
It is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness,
this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of
others."Footnote1 The veil is a metaphor for the separation and
invisibility of black life and existence in America and is a reoccurring
theme in books about black life in America. Du Bois's veil
metaphor, "In those somber forests of his striving his own soul rose
before him, and he saw himself, -darkly as though through a
veil"Footnote2, is a allusion to Saint Paul's line in Isiah 25:7, "For now
we see through a glass, darkly."Footnote3 Saint Paul's use of the veil in
Isiah and later in Second Corinthians is similar to Du Bois's use of the
metaphor of the veil. Both writers claim that as long as one is wrapped in
the veil their attempts to gain self-consciousness will fail because they
will always see the image...