Abstract
These words from an old Negro spiritual begin Du Bois's essay entitled "Of the Wings of Atalanta." The lines themselves contain special relevance not only for the theme that they suggest, but also because they enact what is to come. "The slave's chains and the master's like are broken," proclaims the spiritual, "they are rising--all are rising--the black and white together." The act of association portrayed in these lines is the rhetorical maneuver that guides Du Bois's message in "Of the Wings of Atalanta." Through a complex prose that resembles at once poetry and political argument, Du Bois creates multiple associations to affirm that blacks and whites are interconnected, that the paths that lay before the Nation and the South are identical, and that everyone will march either toward a greater social destiny or into a decay and decline that resembles the past.
In the following pages, I will attempt to disentangle some of the complexity in "Of the Wings of Atlanta." Specifically, I intend to analyze how Du Bois's highly poetic style interacts with his political message.
Journal Title
Iowa Journal of Communication
Volume
27
Issue
1
First Page
3
Last Page
18
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Wilson, Kirt
(1995)
"Our Common Fight Against Greed: The Drive Towards Association in "Of the Wings of Atalanta","
Iowa Journal of Communication: Vol. 27:
No.
1, Article 3.
Available at:
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/ijc/vol27/iss1/3
Copyright
©1995 Iowa Communication Association
