How horrible must it have been for Du Bois to recognize that he was a problem to society as a whole? His description of his reaction to the girl refusing his calling card? Why was he not impassioned and angry? Perhaps it was just that he had discovered a norm and accepted it. The ways he remembers the reactions of "the other black boys" are interesting - "their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking distrust of everything white; or wasted in a bitter cry, Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house?" (4) That whole passage is very moving -"the sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above." The passage is very bleak and depressing. The reactions of the people and their options are so hopeless.
This first chapter has really caught my interest. It has left me wondering what is to come from Du Bois....
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