Rhetoric in "The Souls of Black Folk"

The rhetoric in “The Souls of Black Folk” is quite different from that found in “Up from Slavery”. While “Up from Slavery” is focused on a wide variety of audiences with a broad easy to read writing style, “The Souls of Black Folk” is aimed at a much narrower audience. Dubois uses multiple references to ancient Greek mythology to illustrate3 his points, and although he explains enough so that a layperson unfamiliar with the myths would be able to understand the basic meaning of the metaphor, the text is much more meaningful to someone who already understands them. Besides this Dubois also references quite a few statistics to illustrate the conditions under which black society functions. This is itself an indication of what kind of audience Dubois is writing for. He is writing for an intellectual audience. This also indirectly relates to whether he is writing for a white or black audience. At the time Dubois was writing this the majority of the Black population would not have been able to read this text. Even if they were actually literate they would probably have been to busy working to read a text of this nature, assuming they could even get access to it in the first place. This isn’t to say no blacks at all would read it, but it would be blacks from the more intellectual side of society, likely the ones who were studying or teaching in institutions of higher education. On the other hand while the same reasoning applies to white society, there was a much higher population of white people who fit this description. Of course the entire text is not written in this style. Several of the chapters are written in a narrative style that is both easy to read and describes black life on a more personal level. These chapters would be more accessible to people who would not fall under the category of being intellectual. In fact the nature of the chapter layout itself is quite interesting. The chapters skip between topics that vary widely. While the book on the whole appeals to a more intellectual audience individual chapters vary. This was probably the intent of the relatively random nature of the chapter layout. Dubois was probably attempting to appeal to a very wide audience. So that no matter who read the book at least one or more of the chapters would appeal to them and carry across Dubois’s primary message, which was that the key to the improvement of Black society lay in the education of at least some of the black population in higher more classical forms of education. These people would then be able to more clearly deal with the problems affecting society by dealing with them in ways that would lead to more future improvement rather than simply trying to get short term gains at the expense of long term gains. According to Dubois these long term views and the ability to think and plan for the long term would eventually flow downward through the social classes as long as their was a continuous supply of people being trained at institutions of higher learning.

The Souls of Black Folk

"The Souls of Black Folk" by W. E. B Dubois, is markedly different from the last text we read. "Up from Slavery" focused mainly on the education of black people in order to give them the necessary skills to survive in society, and improve the general living conditions of black society. “The Souls of Black Folk” is a more broad overview of the transition of black society from slavery to freedom. The rhetoric in the two texts is also completely different. “Up from Slavery” is an autobiography and is written in first person. “The Souls of Black Folk” is more of an essay written in third person. The effect of this is that the “Up from Slavery” is more easily accessible and relatable to personal life, while “The Souls of Black Folk” has more of a sense of authority in terms of statistics and large general views. It also takes a more political tone than Washington’s book. While Dubois agrees that Washington’s accomplishments and goals are noteworthy and in general a major improvement he believes that Washington’s own success is one of his greatest flaws. Because of his enormous popularity critics rarely speak out against Washington. However in the particular case of politics Dubois believes that he is wrong. He believes that black people cannot allow themselves to be made inferior to their white neighbors. Although industrial education is good and will ultimately help improve society, without higher education the system is flawed. Although the majority of black people can continue with the industrial education that was primarily developed by Washington, Dubois believes that the best and brightest minds have to be trained further, and that a institute of higher education has to be founded specifically for black people in much the same way that Tuskegee was founded to for industrial education. Dubois’s reasoning is that without an institute of this kind the training of next generation of teachers would become difficult. Even if most people are doing work in industry that requires non of what might be deemed higher more theoretical knowledge, someone has to study it. Otherwise the knowledge will be lost leading to a deteriorization of the entire body of knowledge and eventually even affecting the industrial schools. In other words Dubois believes that the teachers of more industrial schools had to be trained in institutions of higher education. Dubois also believed that the black people had to continue to pursue political power simply in order to defend themselves from the white Southerners attempts to force them back into servitude.