W.E.B. Du Bois Chapter 1

How confident are we? Do we believe in ourselves the way the way we should? Or do we live our lives guided by the way other people perceived us? Does that make us weak? What kind of society does that where they socially put someone down to the point where they no longer feel human? In W.E.B. Du Bois’s, “The Souls of Black Folk,” he shares with his audience his society. In his society he was forced to face reality even as a child. The reality was that blacks were not accepted as he once thought they were, they were discriminated against.
As a child, W.E.B. Du Bois was forced into reality. He was unprepared for what suddenly was thrown at him. Du Bois as a child felt that he was always a part of the children that he played with, the white kids. They got along well. They would play games together. He also went to school with the white children. Up until now his world was correct there was really nothing for him to question or feel confused about. Life was okay and he could deal with it and everything made sense. But one day in particular change it all for him. This reality check was all due to a newcomer. “The exchange was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer, refused my card” (Du Bois 8). It was by this unusual encunter that snapped him into reality.
W.E.B. Du Bois expresses a tone certain tone in this passage. As Du Bois comes to terms with his new found knowledge of actually being different from the people whom he has considered himself equal all his life posses a tone of shock, a tone of confusion. “Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the words I longed for and all their dazzling opportunity, were theirs not mine” (Du Bois 8). Du Bois has an internal struggle with accepting this new concept. This new theory has thrown him for a ride as he analyzes his predicament he begins to think about who he now is. “One ever feels his twoness 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” (Du Bois 9). Here, there is a tone that screams confusion, frustration, and deceit. A tone of a child who is lost and can’t figure our why nobody told him this until now. Du Bois uses other examples of feeling incomplete and lost other than this. Not only does he feel confused about not belonging to the group that he associated himself with for so long but the feels that he might have to look at him self the way others view him. “It is peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity” (Du Bois 9). Du Bois feels that when that “woman” brought to his attention that he was in fact different from the people he considered himself equal to, he feels that now he is forced to look at himself the way other people see him.
As W.E.B. Du Bois uses this tone of confusion and disarrangement the reader is able to understand the impact that this had on him. Without it the passage would not be as impressionable and not believable. This tone provides the backbone to his message and predicament. This tone emphasize the impact of racial discrimination in this day and age.