At the root of the formations of Black American Christianity is the longing for freedom. Many Black Americans identified with the struggles and oppression of the Jewish people, as told in the Bible; Du Bois draws on this history when describing longing for freedom in Chapter 1. He alludes to Canaan, the land promised to the Israelites by God:
Here at last seemed to have been discovered the mountain path to Canaan . . . . To the tired climbers, the horizon was ever dark, the mists were often cold, the Canaan was always dim and far away.
Unlike the land promised by God to the Israelites, Black Americans' utopia is always too far out of their reach, according to Du Bois. The path towards this happy place appears never-ending; and despite the fact that one can see the light at the end of the tunnel, it never draws any closer, thwarting the best efforts of all. Quite tragically, this passage conveys the very real sense of desperation and despair that afflicted many Black Americans at the time of Du Bois's writing The Souls of Black Folk. The road to equality and liberty no doubt seemed endless; indeed, the struggle for Black civil rights has been long and hard fought in America, and still has not ended.
Chapter 5, entitled On the Wings of Atalanta, alludes to Greek mythology, employing the story of Atalanta and Hippomenes as an allegory for the relationship between Black people (or, for that matter, Americans generally) and material riches. Du Bois shares this tale with his readers:
Perhaps Atlanta was not christened for the winged maiden of dull Boeotia; you know the tale — how swarthy Atalanta, tall and wild, would marry only him who out-raced her; and how the wily Hippomenes laid three apples of gold in the way. She fled like a shadow, paused, startled over the first apple, but even as he stretched his hand, fled again; hovered over the second, then, slipping from his hot grasp, flew over river, vale, and hill; but as she lingered over the third, his arms fell around her. . . . If Atlanta be not named for Atalanta, she ought to have been.
The purpose of this allegory is to demonstrate the pitfalls of focusing only on material wealth as the end goal of education. Atalanta, distracted by the golden apples, falls prey to Hippomenes and is cursed because of it. Du Bois argues that Black Americans must not be so focused on the acquisition of wealth that they abandon the principle of learning simply for the joy of it.
Du Bois takes care to imbue Chapter 5 of The Souls of Black Folk with a multitude of literary references and a generous smattering of figurative language. One particular simile stands out, nestled within a broader allusion to the story of Atalanta and Hippomenes:
Must this, and that fair flower of Freedom which, despite the jeers of latter-day striplings, sprung from our fathers' blood, must that too degenerate into a dusty quest of gold, — into lawless lust with Hippomenes?
In the above passage, Du Bois uses simile to compare the freedom of formerly enslaved Black Americans to a flower—one that, after growing out of the bloodshed and pain of their forefathers, will wilt (or "degenerate," a term taken from eugenic writing) should Black Americans make wealth and material prosperity their goal. Du Bois worries that his comrades would choose money over true freedom. The quest for material wealth, he asserts, is misleading and will not accomplish the end goal of lifting all Black Americans out of abject poverty. Rather, the focus should be on career development, education, civic participation, and the strengthening of the family—all things Black people were denied before Emancipation, and prevented from developing in the period immediately following the war.
