The Veil

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 and where the spirit of the lord is
there is liberty." Du Bois does not claim that transcending
the veil will lead to a better understanding of the lord
but like Saint Paul he finds that only through transcending
"the veil" can people achieve liberty and gain
self-consciousness.

The veil metaphor in Souls of Black Folk is symbolic of
the invisibility of blacks in America. Du Bois says that
Blacks in America are a forgotten people, "after the
Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and
Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a
veil. The invisibility of Black existence in America is one
of the reasons why Du Bois writes Souls of Black Folk in
order to elucidate the "invisible" history and strivings of
Black Americans, "I have sought here to sketch, in vague,
uncertain outline, the spiritual world in which ten
thousand Americans live and strive."