Of Our Spiritual Strivings Rhetorical Analysis

“How does it feel to be a problem?” (par. 1). Throughout “Of Our Spiritual Strivings” W.E.B. Du Bois explains the hardships experienced throughout his childhood and through the period of Africans living in America before the civil rights movement. Du Bois begins with his first experience of racism and goes all the way into the process of mentally freeing African Americans. Du Bois describes the struggle of being an African American in a world in which Whites are believed to dominate through the use of Listing, Imagery, and Rhetorical Questioning because these rhetorical devices stress the importance of the topic Du Bois is talking about.
Du Bois used the rhetoric of listing to give examples of the strife the African American population was facing. Using listing also shows an importance or exaggerates his point as shown in the quote, “But the facing of so vast a prejudice could not but bring the inevitable self-questioning, self-disparagement, and lowering of ideals which ever accompany repression and breed in an atmosphere of contempt and hate”

(par. 11). By using more than one example, Du Bois brings an atmosphere of realism into his piece of writing. He further goes on to talk about the freedoms that African Americans should have but that are being taken away by the Whites including: life, the right to think for themselves and to love who they wish. Through the quote, “Freedom, too, the long-sought, we still seek,—the freedom of life and limb, the freedom to work and think, the freedom to love and aspire” (par. 12), Du Bois shows that there is an immediate problem occurring in America by listing multiple freedoms being taken away because African Americans are seen as inferior to everyone else.
In “Of Our Spiritual Strivings”, Du Bois includes many examples of imagery to create a visual of what is happening in the world around him. Du Bois shows what not only him but the entire African American population have to go through, “He felt his poverty; without a cent, without a home, without land, tools, or savings, he had entered into competition with rich, landed, skilled neighbors. To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships” (par. 9). The life of an African American was rather grotesque. Many African Americans, even after the Emancipation, had nothing and had to learn how to live all over again. All they wanted was to have mental freedom and equality with the Whites but this was a very slow process, “The cold statistician wrote down the inches of progress here and there, noted also where here and there a foot had slipped or some one had fallen” (par. 9). African Americans are not getting very far without the education that they need to understand the world around them and be able to think for themselves. They are thinking on a very basic level and are not able to even write at this point. They have no opportunity to make an impact on our nation in the current state that they are in.
Du Bois includes the rhetorical questioning to play Devil’s Advocate with what he is about which is educating African Americans.

What is the point of educating the African Americans if all they will be is paid slaves anyhow?, “Lo! we are diseased and dying, cried the dark hosts; we cannot write, our voting is vain; what need of education, since we must always cook and serve?” (par. 11). Du Bois doesn’t understand the issue with African Americans living among, equal to, and determined with the Whites, “Will America be poorer if she replace her brutal dyspeptic blundering with light-hearted but determined Negro humility? or her coarse and cruel wit with loving jovial good-humor? or her vulgar music with the soul of the Sorrow Songs” (par. 12). Du Bois and the African American population are determined to change the mindset of the Whites and America as a whole to be more accepting of African Americans and ultimately

races.
Du Bois’s use of rhetorical devices in The Souls of Black Folk helps to further advance his urge for education among the African American population