Darkwater · Chapter
IX: Of Beauty and Death explained
In this chapter, Du Bois reflects on the interplay of beauty and ugliness in the world, using a personal anecdote of racial discrimination at a theater to illustrate the painful contradictions of life.
What happens
In this chapter, Du Bois reflects on the interplay of beauty and ugliness in the world, using a personal anecdote of racial discrimination at a theater to illustrate the painful contradictions of life. He celebrates the beauty of nature, particularly the landscapes of Mount Desert, while grappling with the eternal presence of ugliness and hate. The chapter culminates in a powerful poem, 'The Prayers of God,' which condemns war, imperialism, and racial violence, ultimately questioning God's silence and the complicity of humanity in suffering.
Themes in this chapter
Beauty, Art, and Cultural Expression
The chapter explores the nature of beauty, its fulfillment in death, and the contrast with ugliness, using vivid descriptions of nature and a poetic meditation on art and life.
Racial Oppression and White Supremacy
The narrator's encounter at the theater and the poem's reference to lynching highlight the pervasive racial oppression and violence faced by Black people.
War and Imperialism
The poem 'The Prayers of God' condemns war, imperialism, and the exploitation of colonized peoples, linking them to divine silence and human sin.
Characters to notice
- The Narrator
The narrator recounts a personal experience of racial humiliation at a theater and reflects on beauty, ugliness, and the meaning of life and death.
- The Woman
The woman is the ticket seller who, following orders, throws tickets at the narrator in contempt, embodying the ugliness of race prejudice.
Key passages
“Suddenly that silly orchestra seat and the cavorting of a comedian with funny feet become matters of life, death, and immortality; you grasp the pillars of the universe and strain as you sway back to that befrilled ticket girl.”
A trivial moment at the theater becomes a profound struggle for dignity and survival in the face of racial injustice.
This illustrates how racial prejudice transforms ordinary experiences into existential crises.
“But Beauty must be complete—whether it be a field of poppies or a great life—it must end, and the End is part and triumph of the Beauty.”
Beauty requires completion, and death is the ultimate fulfillment that gives beauty its meaning.
Du Bois argues that death is not an enemy of beauty but its necessary culmination.
“For this, too, once, and in Thy Name, I lynched a Nigger— (He raved and writhed, I heard him cry, I felt the life-light leap and lie, I saw him crackle there, on high, I watched him wither!) Thou? Thee? I lynched Thee?”
The speaker confesses to lynching a Black man in God's name, only to realize that the victim was God Himself.
This powerful passage condemns racial violence as a sin against the divine, challenging the hypocrisy of religious justification.