This novel was published in anonymously in 1912 (so that anything contained in it couldn’t affect Johnson’s career as a teacher, lawyer, and statesman). This communicates an anxiety about racial dissidence that is conveyed in the text itself. Choose a scene from the text that you feel situates it as truly Modernist. Be sure to refer to the notes and provide an explanation/analysis of the evidence you cite (which scene/part is particularly Modernist, why/how it is Modernist). Responses should be 6-8 sentences in length.
- As a bi-racial young man, the narrator has a complicated relationship with race. Choose a scene from this week’s reading where the narrator is granted access to a place, job, or situation because he is passing as white. Briefly (2-3 sentences) summarize the scene and discuss narrator’s internal thoughts vs external actions via Du Bois’s double consciousness (3-5 sentences).