W. E. B. Laurence Dunbar: What Is The Concept Of Twoness?

Among the contributions to black liberation that W.E.B. Du Bois offered was his psycho-philosophical notion of double-consciousness, or twoness, a notion which Du Bois used to explain the African-American community’s strife to his largely white readership. A contemporary of Du Bois, late 19th century poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, described by Cornell English professor George B. Hutchinson as “the poet laureate of black America,” depicted the African-American’s struggle in terms similar to Du Bois’. This paper first analyzes Du Bois’ understanding of black twoness and then applies twoness’ alleged effects to Dunbar’s poetry, ultimately attempting to reveal Dunbar and Du Bois’ mutual conception of black bondage.
Du Bois’ twoness ascends from the

“Sympathy” describes a bird confined to its cage as the sun shines down upon vast “upland slopes” with “springing grass” and a “stream of glass.” The bird yearns to escape its cage, “beat[ing] his wing/Till its blood is red on the cruel bars.” After its ceaselessly beating wing fails to break the cage’s bars, the bird is left with no choice but to send “a plea…upward to Heaven, …” the narrator sympathetically concluding that he “know[s] why the caged bird sings.” While Dunbar never directly applies his conceit to the African-American struggle (though this is almost certainly what Dunbar had in mind when he wrote the poem), the alleged end of African-American paralysis (described later) comports strikingly with the bird’s end. Thus, Dunbar seemingly agrees with Du Bois as to both the nature of the African-American’s entrapment and the consequences of that

The most readily apparent parallel between the two is that both render their captive immobile; the bird and the African-American are confined. Beyond this immobility, more telling commonalities appear vis-à-vis the nature of the captives. Dunbar’s captive is the bird, and the nature of a bird is to fly. While the bird retains its intrinsic ability to fly – its aerodynamic anatomy does not change – the surrounding cage prevents it from externalizing its intrinsic inclination. Hence, the bird’s anguish follows from the suppression of its natural tendency. Du Bois’ paralyzed African-American is in precisely the same position as the caged bird. Again, an aphorism: the nature of the African-American is to be both African and American. According to Du Bois, just as the bird’s inclination is to fly, the African-American’s natural inclination is to reconcile the two chief cultures he embodies. As with the caged bird, the African-American cannot externalize its inherent goal in the face of society’s direct opposition to that goal. In the sense that both are unable to externalize their internal urges, the bird and the African-American are