Definition of Irony
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how they actually are. If this seems like a loose definition... read full definition
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how they actually are. If this... read full definition
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how... read full definition
Chapter 1: Of Our Spiritual Strivings
Explanation and Analysis—Worshipping Freedom:
In Chapter 1, Du Bois explores the false promise of freedom used to lure Black Americans into accepting a kind of half-citizenship in the decades following the Civil War. Ironically, as Du Bois notes,
Few men ever worshiped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries. . . . To him so far as he thought and dreamed, slavery was indeed the sum of all villainies, the cause of all sorrow, the root of all prejudice.