Of The Coming Of John Analysis

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Nick Ladd Professor Fair English 243 24 February 2014 In “Of the Coming of John”, by W.E.B. Dubois the main character was John Jones, and he struggled to find his own identity. Sent away to school with the promise of “When John comes home” (Page 166), he found that he had been kicked out. He still felt the pressure to do well from his obligations to his hometown, and after working pushes himself to get through school. With this education comes a “lifted veil’, for he can now see the world around him as all other educated persons can. He did not use to notice this difference between “white and black”, but his education lifted his perception and with it the “veil” over his eyes. He sees all this injustice in his world, but still does…show more content…
Dubois was whether or not this was a story about a single person. At times it seemed as though there were two separate Johns (perhaps white and black?) but it also seemed to be a single John with a desire to find his own identity in a newly realized “white” world. In the end I decided it was one single John struggling with how to deal with now understanding the injustices against African Americans. I thought the passage, “He looked now for the first time sharply about him, and wondered he had seen so little before. He grew slowly to feel almost for the first time the Veil that lay between him and the white world; he first noticed now the oppression that had not seemed oppression before, differences that erstwhile seemed natural, restraints and slights that in his boyhood days had gone unnoticed or been greeted with a laugh.” (Page 168) was particularly thought-provoking because it illustrated how both “white” John and “black” John saw the world and their own perceived…show more content…
His clothes don’t fit right, and signals a sort of childhood innocence. This John’s veil has not been lifted, and the author was trying to portray this ratty, uneducated picture as how the others see him as “black John”. They do not feel threatened by this good-natured boy, because he is still stuck in this “black” world. But after he comes back from college, the story reveals “Thus he grew in body and soul, and with him his clothes seemed to grow and arrange themselves; coat sleeves got longer, cuffs appeared, and collars got less soiled.” (Page 168) and you see that this newfound knowledge, this college education, has empowered him to see what the white folks never wanted him to see. He doesn’t understand how he could not have noticed this huge difference before, and “He grew slowly to feel almost for the first time the Veil.” (168) I think this veil, while opening up his eyes, also greatly confuses him. He had lived his whole life one way, then suddenly the wool is taken away from his eyes and he sees a sickening version of society. It is a great shock to have a burden abruptly dropped upon

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