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The Veil

W.E.B.DuBois' " 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 fourteen seemingly unconnected
essays that make up "The Souls of Black Folk". Mentioned at
least once in most of the 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 which 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.
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" is an allusion to Saint
Paul's line in Isiah 25:7, "For now we see through a glass,
darkly." 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 of themselves reflect back to them by others.

Du Bois applies this by claiming that as long as one is
behind the veil the, "world which yields him no
self-consciousness but who only lets him see himself
through the revelation of the other world." Saint Paul in
Second Corinthians says the way to self consciousness and
an understanding lies in, "the veil being taken away, Now
the lord is the spirit...