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Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

The Veil

The Veil represents the dark world where Black people live, obscured in a nebulous and shadowy reality known only to them. Du Bois argues that the Veil prevents white people from seeing Black people as Americans, and from treating them as fully human. In The Forethought, Du Bois says that he has outlined the two worlds within and without the Veil so that readers can see behind it and glimpse what life is like for Black people. He clearly wants his mostly white audience to feel the shaded life of his people and to feel what it is like to be Black in America. Du Bois maintains that the Veil is so thick that his people cannot imagine life without it. In Chapter XI, he claims to have seen the Veil as it fell across his baby, and the symbol expands to represent literal death as well as the figurative deathly life available to Black people. 

Atlanta

The city of Atlanta, Georgia, represents the hard work that resulted in the financial success of some of the Black population in the South after the Civil War. Du Bois devotes an entire chapter to the city and its people, whom Du Bois says worked hard to gain Atlanta’s place as the Black center of the South. He points out, however, that their work is soiled by the promise of quick financial gain. Atlanta symbolizes the things Black people had to give up in order to be successful, and he criticizes his people for habitually thinking about money. Du Bois compares Atlanta to the myth of Atalanta and Hippomenes, and he employs the allegory to warn the reader of the dangers of the attraction of money.

Spirituals

Spirituals symbolize the constant presence of both sorrow and hope in the lives of Black people. When Du Bois mentions the “Sorrow Songs” and the “haunting melody” of Black spirituals in The Forethought, he makes it clear that he considers music to be of crucial importance to Black culture. John Jones’s hopefulness leads him to pursue educational opportunities even as his new knowledge brings him sorrow, and the whistling wind provides a backdrop for his conflicting emotions as he calmly awaits his own murder. Du Bois’s choice to begin and end his book with references to spirituals shows how much he values them as a tool for connecting past and future generations, all of whom must live with the complex feelings that arise as the result of being Black in America.

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